The honeymoon is over

I’m not sure when it happened but one day Kabul ceased to amaze me. I no longer flinched when barreling towards a head on with a tank and a donkey; the Taliban became amusing rather than frightening and the sight of four toddlers on the knee of a woman in a burqa on the back of a motorbike no longer seemed that dangerous. Salmonella, giardia, chryptosporidium, and leptospirosis have become like treasured appendages to my body – I wouldn’t know what to do without them.

I’m now entirely immune to self humiliation because my column last month on my intestinal worms had to be a low point; I am clean out of pride. Kabul stole it.

I used to like meeting new arrivals who seemed normal and untainted, despite their wide-eyed naivety about what they had got themselves into. Now, I only have one question for them:
“Hi, nice to meet you. Do you have Hello?”
“Yes”
“Can I have it?”

But, Paris Hilton’s latest love trysts no longer titillate; I haven’t heard of 90% of the new “it” people and quite frankly the latest fashion in shoes has my metatarsals in a quiver. Instead, I now opt for gumboots for walking in the mud and a cardigan long enough to cover my behind. The latest fashion? Bite me.

I am disconnected from the real world and afraid that perhaps if I don’t leave soon, I’ll never fit in again. I’ll be one of those Fresh-Off-The-Boat immigrants who can’t use an escalator and stands at the top for three hours, too terrified to step onto the ‘magic dragon’. Or I’ll stare blankly at a supermarket shelf for 45 minutes trying to choose one of 43 brands of ketchup; so spoiled for choice that I can’t choose one.

Truth be told; there are things that utterly suck about Kabul and I am sure you’re all aware of them. I’m not sure who the miscreant is who inflicted Celine Dion’s “My Heart will go on” on Afghanistan, and I feel particularly Machiavellian about the sod who introduced Ricky Martin; these are definitely two dangerously low points about Afghanistan. I have an obvious level of antipathy for the reprobates who blow things up and make my life difficult and as for the pollution, clean air now hurts my lungs. This city is a festering cess pit of dust, faeces, guns, poverty and diesel grease. Kabul may be a toxic hellhole but it’s my toxic hellhole and I have grown strangely fond of it, and all its quirks. I have become a barnacle on the back of the beast and oddly feel quite at home in a sado-masochist kind of way.

The thing is, I know how to live here now. I have become somewhat of a fatalist and fully acknowledge that I will never be able to control my world, and oddly, I enjoy that feeling that comes from not knowing nothing. One day may be fascinating, and one day may be terrifying, but it will never be boring. I could be dodging bombs one day, or heaving over the toilet when the parasites throw a party in my intestines or disinfecting my boots after stepping in an open sewer… again. Or I could get that sense of satisfaction merely from watching a DVD that works all the way through to the end without bizarre flying graphics or people getting up and walking in front of the screen that it was illegally filmed in. Have you noticed how you never get depressed in Kabul? Angry, tired, disillusioned, fatigued and dissolute, but never depressed. How can you be depressed when the one thing you have here every day, is gratitude for being alive and that you’re not living in the bowels of the middle class suburb of whatever city it is you come from?

I could continue to live here, riding the gravy train of the UN and sucking the development industry for all it’s worth, however I have lately been bugged by an annoying little thing called ethics. My appointment to the UN was really just a terrible mistake. I have actually just been making it all up as I go along and I want to apologise to Afghanistan. I hope you understand, it’s just that I needed the pay check. It’s a large, tax-free pay check you see. I finally get what it is that the UN does – they alleviate poverty one staff member at a time. I have yet to work out how six-weekly R&Rs alleviate the suffering of those living on less than two dollars day; and it sure as hell beats me how those big white vehicles are fighting poverty. I just can’t work it out.

It was meeting Axe Max that finally tipped me off into this existential crisis. Axe Max has been here since September 12, 2001. He’s in golden handcuffs, strapped to a job he hates in a country he loathes earning a truck load of money but too scared to go home to his native country for fear of dying of boredom. Max earned his moniker: he goes at life like wants to kill it and everyone in his path. Expletives pour from his mouth as he vents on a daily basis about people he works with, his driver, his house, the milk in his tea or the smell of his dinner. The fuse on his temper is about as long as a sperm tail, and he gets drunk on such a regular basis that I cannot help but recommend that Alcoholics Anonymous branch out into Afghanistan. Staring at Axe Max, frothing at the mouth over some triviality, I stood back in fear, leant forward in curiosity, then screamed a muffled shriek in the horrifying realization, that I was… looking at… me?

I have become short-temper girl; whinging about the guards and going into a mental meltdown every time (ie all the time) a driver failed to show up. Instead of giving money to people in need with a glad heart, I started resenting that I was being seen as a walking ATM. I ignore beggars now whereas before they broke my heart. I have become my worst nightmare. I cringe to write this and I am loathe to admit; I’ve become hard and immune to it all—I write about poverty whilst ordering a steak. What the hell do I know about suffering? I am a fake, a fraud, a waste of space. If someone is going to earn a heap of dosh doing some menial and irrelevant task in the UN then they should at least enjoy earning that money instead of feeling guilty about it. And they should at least enjoy the wonderment and excitement that post-conflict development work in Afghanistan offered before you realized it was an illusion.

Is it, possibly, just maybe, time to go home?