Kabul: and a tale of remembering

I hadn't seen him.  I hadn't seen him in so long.

 
There was a time when we had watched from the shadows of our rooftop as the city burned all around us.

 
A time when more than 30 hostages had been taken in a single week.

 
Our body guards had told us that if we tried to flee for the border , we would never make it out alive.

 We had laid down in the back of the car as it drove over 120 miles an hour so we wouldn't be shot through the windows.

  We had made it to the airport just in time for it to be shelled.

 

The plane that had been sent to evacuate us radioed in that it was too dangerous to land.  And then it flew away.

 
We had to spend hours upon hours with foreign mercenaries for hire who told us that the solution to the problem was to "grind people into dust."

 
Finally, finally, we left that place. 

 
 Now a different time, a different place.  We smoked a shisha in Kabul.   

 
And he remembered. 

 
And I remembered, too.

Kabul: and a tale of the beginning

I boarded the plane.  As I sat down in my seat I saw that it had no seatbelt -- an airline oversight, of sorts.  All the other seats were taken.  And so perhaps it was that this seat, yes, this seat, was meant for me. 

As I looked out the window, I thought to myself, I can either decide to see the beauty 


 
or the scratches.

 
And then I knew with a kind of certainty

that on this journey I would see both. 

Marrakech's Koutoubia mosque: and an existential tale of waiting for Godot

I am waiting.  Waiting for so many things. 

Including the bus. 

A bus came but it was going the wrong way. 


A bicycle passed me by.  There was no room for me.

 
A taxi honked its horn at me.  But I didn't have enough money.


I heard the gallop of horses, and I was tempted.  But I looked away.


Finally.  Oh finally!  The bus....


Good things come to those who wait.  Or at least that's what I tell myself.  

Tell me, are you waiting, too?