Most Afghans go to bed early in the evening and it is an early riser. In the city, television and the internet have only partially changed habits, in the countryside people continue to follow the sun and the light. I gladly imitate them. Not being on social media and limiting the use of email makes it easy for me. I fall asleep easily, I sleep a long time and in the morning I am in a good mood. That was up to three weeks ago. Now I wake up in the middle of the night thinking about people running away, about what I haven’t done or could have done better, wondering what tomorrow will be like. I have bad dreams. Like me, half of Afghans sleep poorly, including children, who are infected by the mood of their parents.
They all say that anxiety devours them, together with the fear of poverty and the memory of the Taliban rules of the past. Women especially. Every day I find some of the employees with their foreheads on the desk. They use the tea break to take a nap and need to shake them to wake them up. Yesterday a sea of foam flooded the laundry room from a clogged pipe, while Maruf snored on the ironing table like Noah on the ark.
Diary from Kabul by Alberto Cairo. “The bomb has swept away all illusions”
by Alberto Cairo
Facebook increases anguish with news of all kinds: a famous mullah screams that the Afghans of the North are not true Muslims, proposing, to correct them, to install zealous and Orthodox Pashtuns among them. A self-styled Taliban commander threatens a massacre among the Shiite-Hazara: already planned, it is only suspended for the moment. Another insults women: “It’s over, stay home shamed.” I urge you not to pay attention to it, indeed, not to even read; only exalted people write things like that, but they come back to it every day, like addicted drug addicts. And the mood gets worse. But, even among our staff, there is no lack of those who sleep blissfully, happy with the new situation.
Diary from Kabul. The anguish before knowing they are safe
by Alberto Cairo
S., cleaner, comes to mind. He works well, with patients he is kind, never absent. His problem is women, which he avoids and ignores; if he really has to speak to them, he does so by looking conspicuously elsewhere. At first I thought it was shyness or respect, then they explained to me: for him women are strange, dangerous and tempting beings. There are, alas, many Afghans like him. Who knows who instilled it in them? I’d like to ask S. if he thinks the same about his mother, but he wouldn’t understand, and he’s also touchy. I know that once the head physiotherapist, tired of talking to those with their backs to her, gave him orders without looking up from the computer. He had gone mad. Now he seems excited, his moment is back. I wonder what you dream of at night.
Diary from Kabul. Here are those ambulance sirens again
by Alberto Cairo
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