Kabul Beach II
Yesterday, Pervaiz, one of the guys working in IT, at DACAAR, his father opened an exhibition of his paintings, sponsored by the French embassy. The opening was during work hours and although I wanted to visit the exhibition, I couldn’t really drop by during working hours.
Seemingly, Pervaiz though I could and so he called me around 2:30, saying that everyone was waiting for ME. I had no choice but to go, figuring that, with an opening, come drinks and snacks, so it wasn’t going to be all bad.
The paintings were nice, not just paintings, but also drawings, collages, tapestries and more, but there were no drinks or snacks.
The father, a banker by trade, expanded his hobby over the years and now uses all sorts of materials to create reasonable to quite good objects. My favorites were the paper collages, using bits of paper from magazines to create colorful scenes from Afghan life., which is typically the subject of most of his work.
Oh, you can tell I’ve had some time to spare. Check out the virtuagirl-hitlist.com.
Guns
Driving home from the hash today and waiting in front of the gate, for the chowkidar to open it, a small boy, dressed up in a nice but dusty suit, took out his, I hope, toy gun and made it clear he wanted to shoot me. I asked him why he wanted to do that, upon which the kid slid into childlike wonder, asking the chowkidar what strange a fellow I was.
Earlier, together with Lev, we had tried to get up to what I think is the bala hissar, the fort were the Brits were slaughtered in the late 19th century. It was a bit of a struggle trying to find the right road and the road was pretty bad, right on the edge of a cliff, but the view was worth it, if not the two what only could have been English canons.
We could see for miles around and could hear the screams of the kids playing in the Kabul river, right behind the zoo. I suppose this was the real Kabul beach.
On the warm side of things
Meanwhile, the city is starting to heat up. Temperatures rise to above 40 degrees and even in the evenings it doesn’t cool off enough.
Today’s hash was a pain, in the blistering heat. Struggling up the hill on which the Intercontinental is located, a small boy, who had just fetched water in several cans from one of the wells on the hill, pressed me for drinking a glass of his newly obtained water. The boy kept on pressing, even though I really wanted to avoid catching cholera, something which is now roaming around Kabul, but I had no choice. I drank a couple of sips and gave the glass into which he had poured the cool water back to kid.
I’m still alive and kicking.