January 2010
17 posts
Affection Sponges
Went to the girl’s orphanage again today. It’s astounding how much energy they have. Like little affection sponges, they were crowding round me, chatting, hugging, playing handclap games.
Farzia, the three-year-old whose family were killed in an IED, is becoming more sociable every time I see her. Today, she happily stood by me, chatting away, half in Dari, half in her own made-up...
There are Americans here too...
I work with one of these. Lately, he’s adopted an ‘English’ alter-ego called Simon. I put English in inverted commas as the accent he adopts sounds more like the desperate gulpings of Oliver Twist as Nancy turns on him and drowns him in the gutter for being a goody-goody little twerp. This in the unabridged first draft version.
Today I was greeted in the office by, ‘Gosh,...
First British Journalist killed in Afghanistan
Rupert Hamer worked for the Sunday Mirror and was a front-line reporter across several conflicts. It brings to 20 the total of journalists, 12 of whom foreign, killed in Afghanistan. A paltry number compared to the number of civilians.
But when a journalist is killed, I always received huge numbers of calls and communications, as if, by warning me, I can avoid the same fate.
Hamer was killed...
The Heartbreak List
My young Afghan friends, those under thirty for the boys and twenty for the girls, ask me often about romantic love. It borders on an obsession with the Afghan youth, with ‘let’s do love’, ‘I love you, I miss you’, and ‘love is all’ plastered over cars, billboards and lighters with abandon. Perceptions of the west are amusing, as many ask me how many...
'Considerably less fluffy'
So pronounced my mother of Afghanistan today. Of course, in light of Michelle Lang, the Calgary Herald journalist, being killed in Kandahar recently, her reaction was quite quelled for a mum. It does seem, however, that Lang’s death has cast a deeper chill over me and my journalist friends. Perhaps because she was here for such a short time, perhaps because we tend to have a view of...