Our House

Carrie with Alison in burqa, July 2006

A huge part of my life in Kabul centers around my house. Living in a country where you can’t walk up the block or go shopping or sit in a park or run to the market makes you very dependent on a full range of people you never dreamed of having in your life - a personal driver, a choceador (servant), a maid, a day guard, a night guard, an in-the-car guard. I am never alone yet I am rarely comfortable, almost never relaxed and often feel as if there simply isn’t enough air to share with all of these strangers. The only place I can be myself is at home. I can wear a tank top. I can play music. I can cook. I can have a glass of wine. I can sit in the sun. I can play cards, I can talk to men. I can nap and lounge and read and write. I can play and laugh and joke. I can vent and cry and sulk and yell.

My roommates - Tom, Carrie and Alison - have become my family. We all come from different places and are here to inhabit different spaces but somehow we found each other. I have come to realize that chance meetings do not apply to Afghanistan. Everyone is a little nuts. Everyone makes everyone else more than a little nuts. But we have lived a lifetime in a month. It is through their eyes that I will always be able to relive this part of my life. It is with their support and strength that I have adjusted to, and and fallen in love with, Kabul.

They are the safety and sanity in my everyday world. They are my piece of home in Kabul. They are my rhythm. They are my reality in a city, and country, that makes you question everything you know and doubt everything you trust. They are my faith in a place where, without believing in something bigger than myself, I could not exist.