Kabul Diary

There is a unique sound without it I cannot imagine our home in Afghanistan. When I close my eyes and think about Kabul, it is always the sound of flying kites what comes to my mind.
As we just moved to Afghanistan, I used to climb on the roof of our guesthouse: it was then the only possibility to see around. My favorite memory is about boys who just started to practice as kite runners with their primitive self-made plastic kites.
As winter is closing more and more kites flutter in the sky. The top event is Kite Festival that takes place around New Year, i.e. in March. My husband’s driver Massoud offered us to see the festival. There were thousands of men and boys – flying their kites over Kabul Stadium. We were greenhorns in Afghanistan, so we were afraid of the crowd. We preferred to stay in the car and looked at the kite runners from distance.
As a matter of fact, the string of the kite can be dangerous. Najeeb, colleague from Pakistan, tell us that Pakistanis use the small bits of glass to make the string sharper. It is a really nasty idea: those dangerous strings have caused fatal accidents.
Late Friday afternoon young relatives are visiting our landlord and trying to fly their colourful kites in our yard. The first attempt on the ground is not successful, so they move on to the balcony. I join them as an observer.
Youngsters need just one minute to send the kite up in the sky. After some time I can only see a small dot and five minutes later it is gone. Obviously somebody cut the string…

It is a fantastic feeling to sit on the balcony and to look at all those colourful pieces of joy everywhere in the sky. There is somebody on almost every roof. I try to count, but I stop after twenty. Just before the darkness falls, the experienced looking guy on the roof of the neighbour’s house draws down the last kite. The kite fighting is over.

Last Friday we drove to Paghman with our friend Jean. Driver Karim, the father of five, takes his oldest shy daughter with us as well. We have a wonderful walk up to Paghman River, enjoying warm sunshine and murmur of the stream. I wonder that there are almost no people in the popular picnic place; the season seems to be over. Just some jaded kebab-offers have a tedious time while some families eat their kebab, mast and chai under the trees covered with golden leaves.
We have had a long holiday – one and half month – in our home back in Estonia. I am always amazed about the metamorphosis inside myself, moving from my homeland in Northern Europe to Afghanistan. And opposite. For example, it takes some days to become used to the fact that we can buy frozen foodstuff like ice cream – because there is all-time electricity. Back in our lovely Kabul home, after one day I have already the feeling as if I lived here forever.
After one-month routine in Estonia, Kabul seems dangerous and unattractive. Especially thanks to media – there is a lot of coverage as there are more than one hundred Estonian troops in Helmand. After a while I stop reading the articles about Afghanistan written by Estonian journalists, spending one-week war-tourism-trips in south. Last one I tried to read began with sentence: ´”There is no doubt that military helicopter is the most preferred transportation in Afghanistan.” Really?!
I am the only Estonian journalist living in Afghanistan. I am not very beloved by my homeland defence forces because I have not praised the foreign forces. They dislike me so much that I was not allowed to listen to NATO conference about Afghanistan in my hometown. There is not enough room, was their answer.
Conversations in Estonia about our living here are almost always the same: how can you live in that horrible country? My replay is: it is beautiful country. I spend so much energy explaining the simplest facts. There are big differences between south and north. There is a different climate. There are different landscapes. There are different tribes and traditions. And definitely all Afghans are not interested to kidnap or kill me...
To explain my point of view I started to organize photo exhibitions in biggest cities of Estonia. The official to whome I showed my photos, seemed really confused. It can’t be Afghanistan, she just murmured. Also I decided to publish a book (in Estonian) with my own photos. In order to counterbalance fear and hatred, that is generally connected to Afghanistan-topic, the title will be Beloved Afghanistan.