back in my hometown

I obviously haven't blogged in a while but i've been busy readjusting to life in the US , finding a job, etc. here's a recap. So i left Afghanistan on April 11th, stopped over in dubai and landed in beirut to meet my buddy Brennan and former roomate from our days in Cairo. I stayed there for a few days which was awesome, filled with delicious lebanese food, staring at the remarkably beautiful lebanese women and disproportionally high level of nose-jobs and other plastic surgery, and seeing the enormous amount of reconstruction taking place there. The city was really amazing and the nightlife was by far the best in the middle east, and it felt great because it was not foreigners but rather local people going out and having a blast at the trendy nightclubs there. I saw a lot of porsches, hummers and other ridiculously expensive cars, people in lebanon seem to care a lot about material things. So i had a great time there, getting an introduction to the city and catching up with friends. I then took a flight to rome where I connected to Catania, Sicily where i started my weing experience, I met up with a bunch of AIESEC people in Catania and Palermo, they were really weklong trek through the island where my dad's family comes from. So, that was a pretty eye openarm and fun people. They all helped me a lot in terms of getting around and storing my excessive luggage that I had lugged all the way from afghanistan. I went to this great little fishing town called Sciacca, which was the place where my great-grandparents were born. The place was like paradise and I definitely am planning on going back there, I even managed to meet one of my distant cousins who is still in contact with my other family members. So I got a little tour around there, went to the local wine factory, and then returned to palermo for my flight back to rome. There I met my mom for a week in rome and naples, which was really fun, I met up with the crazy aiesecers from Napoli who were really cool, unfortunately i had to leave the day after I saw them, but they did show me perhaps the coolest pizza joint I've ever been to in my life, after all, that is where pizza comes from. So then I flew to new york, got on a train to DC and was finally back in my home town. Since then, I've been catching up with friends and going back and forth between New Hampshire (my home home) and DC. I won't move into my apartment until August so I have to wait for a while to totally settle down but regardless i'm really happy to be in DC and i'm excited to start the next phase in life.

trip to Mazar-e-Sharif

last weekend I went with kyle the crazy aussie to Mazar e Sharif, which was a great relief to get out of kabul. It was cool cause we both found a reliable driver like 2 days before and just said, hey let's go, and that was it. at 5am i was knocking on kyle's door and then we were off. this pic to the left is the sunrise just outside of kabul, before we hit the mountains.

by far the best part of this 2 day trip was the 8 hour drive to and from Mazar, which passes through the Salang pass, which is famous as one of the highest tunnels in the world and was built by the Soviets in the mid-1960's - a prelude to invasion later on. This tunnel road system cuts down the travel time down by days, so it is very strategic. There are these bit concrete roofs that cover the road and prevent the road from being covered by snow, these are pretty long but don't cover the entire road up so still the road needs to be shut down after it snows in the winter. Then there is this proper tunnel that you finally go through, the ventilation system in there is not quite the best, but it goes underneath a freakin mountain, so it's pretty impressive I must say. I can't believe this thing survived the war. Going through these mountains made me extremely anxious to ski, there's one spot especially that would be perfect for a ski resort, i've heard a few foreigners here talking about it, but that's a long way from reality. Perhaps the biggest problem is the landmines leftover from the war, which are not predictable even though the snow cover apparently is enough to thwart any risk. I've met some people who've been skiing around here, it was supposedly exhilerating.

After the mountains there are more mountains but without snow and they are pretty odd looking, i read that they appear like psychadelic green sand dunes, which is an accurate description even though I've never had a psychadelic experience. Luckily we picked a good weekend because the grass is just coming up and things were very green in general. Also, the apply and cherry blossoms were in bloom...reminded me a bit of Washington, D.C.

Once we got to Mazar, we went to the Shrine of Ali, basically the most famous mosque in Afghanistan. I have to be honest, it wasn't as large as I had imagined, it seemed kind of vertically challenged, but nonetheless it was really cool and beautiful. There aren't many tourists there so people just followed us around asking us questions, it was especially interesting to see Kyle get approached by women in burkas because I never talk to them but they were really interested to talk to her, guess it's a girl thing.

Notice the awesome platform shoes, pretty cool. Perhaps the best part of my trip was when we were going for dinner at Delhi Darbar, an afghan Indian food chain, we drove through the center of the city and I spotted an outdoor area with chairs and a glass shack that had a plethora of sheeshas! My eyes immediately lit up and I was yelling to kyle, is that sheesha???? as if I couldn't believe my eyes, but yes, it was indeed an outdoor sheesha cafe, reminding me much of my days in cairo. In Afghanistan, they don't have outdoor sheesha cafes, partly because of the bad social stigma that goes along with the waterpipe but also the winter has been cold so it's difficult to do so outside. The fact that I found this sheesha cafe just outside the most religious place in Afghanistan and to the north of Kabul was a bit of a surprise, but actually the weather there was warmer and as we sat puffing on the sheesha, we heard a group of young lads go by in a car screaming their lungs out - our driver Nasser proclaimed, 'bacha mast ast' or something to the effect which means 'those boys are drunk'. As we sat there chillin to the sounds of an Uzbek pop remake of Shakira's 'ojos asi', it made for a very interesting and exciting night.

shekib hamdard!

last night was the final episode of Afghan Star, i've become a bit caught up with this whole thing over the last few weeks, but so has the rest of kabul and afghanistan, it's great to see something so exciting going on here that is all afghan based. The two final stars Sami Yosufzai and Shekib Hamdard sang in front of around 400 people or so in the kabul intercontinental hotel. there were light glow sticks, a surprise guest performer of Manija - a rising star from tajikistan - and generally the atmosphere was filled with energy. i was sitting in the 5th row or something so I had a great view of everything, and as the final winner was announced things started to get pretty roudy in the crowd. people are really taking this seriously here, like today for lunch i went to a restaurant and the local people were watching the repeat episode and talking about it. the 2nd place winner and his enterage of supporters were pretty upset and he ended up accusing the SMS operater of cheating and all other types of stuff. but in the end, the winner was whisked out and he's now a real star. you can see a picture of the top two guys on this page:

http://www.afghanstar.tv/funstuff.html - use internet explorer

this was probably one of the most exciting nights i've had so far in afghanistan

shekib hamdard!

last night was the final episode of Afghan Star, i've become a bit caught up with this whole thing over the last few weeks, but so has the rest of kabul and afghanistan, it's great to see something so exciting going on here that is all afghan based. The two final stars Sami Yosufzai and Shekib Hamdard sang in front of around 400 people or so in the kabul intercontinental hotel. there were light glow sticks, a surprise guest performer of Manija - a rising star from tajikistan - and generally the atmosphere was filled with energy. i was sitting in the 5th row or something so I had a great view of everything, and as the final winner was announced things started to get pretty roudy in the crowd. people are really taking this seriously here, like today for lunch i went to a restaurant and the local people were watching the repeat episode and talking about it. the 2nd place winner and his enterage of supporters were pretty upset and he ended up accusing the SMS operater of cheating and all other types of stuff. but in the end, the winner was whisked out and he's now a real star. you can see a picture of the top two guys on this page:

http://www.afghanstar.tv/funstuff.html - use internet explorer

this was probably one of the most exciting nights i've had so far in afghanistan

afghan star

check out this new website, it's pretty cool:

http://www.afghanstar.tv/

(make sure to use internet explorer)

Right now, the tv show is in its final week, where the two final afghan star contestants dualed it out on stage. Also, in last night's show there was a bit of drama as the third person got kicked off and made a huge deal when he went off stage, it was quite the scene, it reminded me of a E! true hollywood story or something. so that was a crazy friday night, my day off yesterday kind of stunk because the weather was cold and rainy.

aiesecers in kabul

this is me and kyle from sydney, australia at a restuarant in kabul called samarkand, it's kind of a rustic and spatious bar with a dj (same atmosphere as Mcfaddens for all y'all dc people but with about 99% less women, thus a kabab fest). i forgot to shave last week, but i definitely managed to get down on the dance floor with the other expats there, when the punjabi mc song came on i was forced to whip out my 'turn the light bulbs' dance when i put my hands up and pretend like i'm screwing in light bulbs along with the beat. Kyle doing a ceed here in kabul for a few months, while a Russian aiesec trainee just arrived recently so the aiesec presence/community is growing here! a lot of the active afghan aiesecers are in germany or elsewhere on exchange but they'll be back in mid march i think, that should be fun when they get back. As for me, i'm having fun at work and finding plenty of stuff to do, today i finally bought a Dari grammar book which is really needed if i want to get past my current level of 'kam kam megoyam, farsi yad gariftom'...that's probly not even grammatically correct! but i'm starting to slowly understand bits and pieces of conversations people are having around me. anyways, things are coming along here and I'm looking forward to march and the better weather that seems to be improving day by day.

Ashura - 10th day of Muharram

Today is the holiday of Ashura, a day that Shia muslims commemorate the death of a really important religious figure by mourning and beating themselves. here's a link to an explanation and a little history of the event since i'm still sort of learning about it and can't explain that too well,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashura


here goes a long-winded explanation on what i saw,


They do different rituals for 7 days up until today, I went the other day to see it with an Afghan friend and it was quite amazing. they all sit in long rows facing eachother while a person leads a prayer at a microphone, which is a very interesting chant that is accompanied by the people raising one hand above the head and slapping the chest, then raising the other and repeating. They either have no shirt or a special shirt that has holes cut so as to expose the chest. After a while, the chest becomes red from slapping. This goes on for at least a couple of hours, when I went, it went by really fast but I could imagine how difficult it would be to continue something like that for so long, it would definitely hurt and become tiring for the arms (kind of obvious). The slapping is a repeating beat that goes along with the prayer, so when I first heard a tape recording of it in the car when my friend was driving me there, i thought it was some type of drum or something - not the case! It sounds very powerful and has a lot of energy to it. They switch people who lead the prayer on the microphone and the prayers are sung in what can sound very beautiful if a really talented person happens to be taking his turn. Little kids from the age of what i'd guess to be about 8 years old or so and up participate in the ritual with men of higher ages. At different points, a group of small people gather in a circle and take a metal chain whip and start beating themselves in the back to the same rhythm of the slapping of the hands. I saw this up close while I was taking pictures and it appeared to be pretty painful as I could see the whip marks starting to appear stronger and stronger as the people beat themselves. While they whip themselves, they also rotate in the circle, and eventually stop after maybe 7-10 whips from what I remember. Throughout the time, with the slapping and whipping (the chains only come out once and a while), there is a period where they hit themselves, then a small rest period where they sing out and wait to beat themselves again. After that, they start by slapping their knees, then go to the full out chest slaps. One of the most intense parts is when they go from the knee to the chest and this one guy yells something really loud (i obviously had no idea what he was saying) right at the time when they start slapping their chests. This is the point where they beat themselves the hardest and where the energy is the highest, so it gives sort of a rush. One most important things I could not capture on camera was the facial expression that a person gives while doing this, there's a certain point where a person has this really distinct look on his face that conveys a raw toughness that can't be described in words. But this facial expression is really short and I couldn't really get a picture of it even after taking some 200 or so photos - the light was bad and my camera is kinda slow.

a picture of the chain they use to whip themselves, it's a little dark and i put my hand there to give some perspective:


The people who perform this ritual are Shia muslims and the original event they are commemorating happened in Karbala, Iraq. You may be able to see something on CNN about the same or similar ritual being performed there, where security is extremely high due to the threat of bombings and what not. In Afghanistan, there is a sizable minority of Shia muslims, the rest are Sunni, but it seems like people respect the differences here pretty well. I just saw that there was a bombing in Pakistan where 9 people were killed in a sort of sectarian violence during a Shia procession, the amount of Shia in Pakistan is less than in Afghanistan I think.

During the last 3 days, they attach small blades to the end of the whip and cut themselves to intensify the mourning and rememberence. I haven't seen that part yet, but still I can definitely imagine it now that I saw the less intense but still really intense part a few days ago.

Last year at this time, I was taking a class on middle eastern politics and I remember seeing a video clip on CNN of Karbala, where they were whipping themselves, and I was totally in shock. I remember seeing that and thinking, 'wow', and never even imagining that i'd be in the position to see such a thing. A year later...here I am. It is really weird how when you're going about your normal life, there are these little things you encounter on tv, in class, or whatever; they catch your attention as being totally crazy and you never even contemplate that you'd ever see such a thing, but yet sometimes things happen and all of a sudden that thing reappears and comes back to shock you once again. Like with this event, it wasn't like i had been waiting to see this for weeks in anticipation like i did with Ramadan. I didn't know about it until like 2 days before i went to see it, and then a light bulb went off in my head when i was reminded of that video clip on cnn and thought, sooooo this is what they were doing....

room #7

My new home in kabul: i moved into a pretty cool place and things are much easier than my last time here when i lived in mecroyan. i liked the area and people in mecroyan, but we didn't have a kitchen, working hot water or furniture, so it wasn't as cozy as my new place which has rugs, a living room with tables, cable tv (I actually get the Hallmark channel, out of all the stations to get...but i also have bbc, cnn and tons of indian movie channels so that's great), and a kitchen. I got this book right before i came back called "Afghanistan: A Traveler’s Companion and Guide", which is a really great book that gives tons of information about history, travel and culture of afghanistan without being boring and while including tons of amazing pictures to keep lazy readers like me occupied. i found it in b&n in georgetown and eventually bought it at a b&n in burlington, mass the day before i left, what a good buy even though it's $30 which is a bit ridiculous, but i digress cause it's the only recent guidebook for afghanistan. here's a link to the description: http://www.travelafghanistan.co.uk/pages/guidebook.html

also, check out that general website for information on traveling to afghanistan if you're interested.

I just got my sim card back for my phone and i'm pretty much settled in for a cold but very interesting winter in Kabul.