The Last Visit In Kabul

The fifth or sixth of at least hundred rockets whistled over his head……

He always wondered where from his father took the power to stay so calm? By now, he had already his first signs of weakness.

He had arrived the day before on board of an Aeroflot flight from Tashkent, his last layover on the way from Berlin to Kabul.

Unlike the Kabul residents, he was blessed to not witness almost every day the cruelty of an undeclared noise that was raining on the city he had just entered for the last time. All he knew, or wanted to know, about that place was some broken pieces of news in the German newspapers he read. The news about his country sounded so far, so unreal, that he wasn’t really touched by it. He had successfully forgotten his now nightmarish country of his childhood and adolescent years.

But his last summer visit in Kabul was a grave reminder of things he hoped to forget: war and chaos in order of things. He could see it at the firmament, he could swear, he saw a blood and dust sky. The Kabul skies of his childhood were no more…….

He stayed at his parent’s apartment in Microrayon Three and at his in laws in Microrayon One during that last visit to the “no man’s land” of his imagination. The dust and the heat were reminders of a place he wished didn’t exit. It were travels to a present, to a place, he had already left forever.

He loved his parents and his family tough, and they were in Kabul. But of all places on earth, they had chosen Kabul?! How could one live there?
He knew he was unfair. Kabul had chosen them. But, could they not see what he read in those German newspapers?

And his dad! The Buddha, he always thought. The calm man who, while a rocket was passing by, just said: all will be fine, my son. And nothing really was fine.

During all his summer visits, day or two after he arrived, he got sick. It always started with his stomach. There was a hidden connection between the rockets and his stomach. He had learned form Kabul friends that if one hears the sound of a rocket, one is safe. But, what if I one doesn’t hear that sound? He thought.

He could not help them if something happened……He was the young son, husband and father who was supposed to protect his family. But he had become the concern of his family. They wanted him to go away as soon as he came to visit. They couldn’t promise protection. Protection for him!

His stomach again……

His mother in law had the medicine ready for him. It was a whitish liquid, prepared from a powder in a small Soviet made nickel can with black handle, which she had always ready for him. She seemed to never run out of that whitish drink. It had become tradition that he was always welcomed with a drink from that Soviet nickel can. Her eyes were demanding. He knew he had to drink that whitish drink; it was a must! He appreciated it tough.

His father in law, an important man, was projecting still his authority on him. He seemed to keep the dignity of a flag bearer on the sinking ship that he felt could not be saved anymore. He wore his dark suits and smoked his elegant Kent. In his presence, things resembled normality. Once the treatment with the whitish liquid was over, he was offered another liquid, this time by his father in law, one far more pleasant than the previous one: Czech Pilsner Urquell!

His father in law seemed to never run out of those liquids either and he enjoyed dinking those beers with his son in law. He was tired too. Tired from too much work that seemed to never end and that he had to bring home with him, after a 12 or more hours work day at his ministry and meetings.

Yes, he was a minister in a government without a country. His clinics were blown out, destroyed. His doctors killed, his nurses running out or staying home.

And he……, he tried to keep the appearance, and flew on board of old and shaky Soviet built helicopters to far away places to assure his unthankful people of a government that really seemed to care for them! He had on board with him his doctors and mobile clinics that were supposed to replace the destroyed ones, and he had medicine with him…….
The so much needed medicine!

He wondered about him too: Where did he get the power to pretend?

To him, the young student, the place didn’t mean anything anymore, except for those old and young women and man he deeply felt for. He felt ashamed that he felt so. But he couldn’t help it.

He never admitted to himself that he didn’t want to return to this godforsaken country.

It seemed that his loved ones who stayed in Kabul, all of them, did so out of a loyalty. But, loyalty to what? To an imaginary homeland? To a system that had gone wrong? To an idea of how things supposed to be?

No! They stayed there out of loyalty for each other! They felt ashamed just by the thought of leaving the city while others were still trapped in it; others who in turn felt the same shame to leave too. They maintained the love the city had long stopped giving them back.

Loyalty and love become more insane in times of war, he thought.

It was a matter of respect to the holders of the wake that he didn’t dare to tell them he didn’t like to return to Kabul! It seemed to him that all his family just hold a dead wake in that vast graveyard his country had become. A dead wake over corpses which were dead long before they were alive. He smelled the sweet smell of the death. His family seemed to not smell it. They just pretended. And he pretended too, at least for those few weeks of his last visit.

Only his stomach……his stomach was honest; it reminded him that things were not what they appeared to be.

He was happy that he would leave soon again. And he was saddened by the feeling of his happiness……

He had just realized that some of those loved ones remained there, in Kabul, so he could leave! They all had to stay so few others could leave.

As if they had to keep the dead wake so others could live……



The End