A Room with a View

B-Hut is actually short for "Billeting Hut". But I think of it as the "Bee Hut" because the interior is divided into 10 little pod-cell rooms and all of us busy, Bagram Air Field worker bees return to the hut each night, after a long day of work, buzz a little to each other (not "buzzed" mind you) then crash for a few hours before stumbling back into daylight for round ... i've been here so long I can't remember what round i'm on. I know, though, that I have only 60 rounds remaining before I board my plane heading home for a visit.

In the picture above, you can see rows and rows of our little bee huts. If you're up for a game of "where's waldo" let me assure you that the porta-potties, made infamous in a previous blog, are included in here somewhere, too.

Anyway, as you can see, even though I work in a combat zone and live in a bee hut, my office has one helluva view. Did i mention it's on the corner? Yeah, that's right - I gotta corner office. Okay, okay -it doesn't have a window, but whatever. The bottom line is that about a hundred times a week somebody asks me "why do you stay?" and even though I ask myself the same question about a hundred times a day (more during bunker drill days), all I have to do is look around to remember that I stay because I like the way the world looks from where I'm standing.

The Buddhas of Bamiyan ... "Gone" But Not Forgotten

In the caves in the mountains of the Hindu Kush in the valley of Bamian in the center of Afghanistan there once "stood" two 120+ foot tall buddhas. These near-mythical in stature statues had been carved from the stone of the mountain (a la Mt. Rushmore) and stood watch over the valley of Bamian in the Province of Bamiyan providing a welcoming presence to the weary travelers and buddhists on piligramage since circa the second or third century (AD).

Brace yourselves: In 2001, the Taliban (you can find videos of the event on-line if you're interested, but I warn you it will make your soul cringe to watch them) turned their tank barrells on the buddhas and obliterated them, wiping all trace of the buddhas from the face of the mountain-side. When the air cleared, all that remained of the awe-inspiring Buddhas of Bamiyan was a pile of sand.

I nearly wept with the realization that I will never rest eyes upon the Buddhas of Bamiyan. Even if the war ends and I return to this beautiful country in a time of peace I and the rest of mankind have been irreversibly deprived of the opportunity to marvel at the feat that once was the Buddhas of Bamiyan. The most tragic part, for me, was the "why" of it all: as if blowing the stones to smithereens could somehow also blow to smithereens thoughts, ideas and beliefs.

And yet, the fate of the Buddhas is, ironically, very Buddhist.

The Tibetan Buddhists are known for their sand art. Mandalas are sand "paintings" of what are considered to be the multi-level maps of spiritual consciousness. They are painstakingly exact in design and measurement and buddhist monks spend days and days tapping sand into the mandalas a few grains at a time. A few GRAINS at a time! Why bother? Because the value of the work can be accessed only through the process of making it... but the monks do not tap the mandalas for themselves - oh, no, they have tapped so many grains of sand that they possess internal multi-level maps with well-worn creases in the folds - no, the monks tap the mandalas for the benefit of all of humanity. And, when the mandala is completed, the monks walk away from the sand painting, leaving it on the steps of the temple to be carried away by the wind ... each grain of sand moving on to fulfill its next purpose.

Maybe I will see the Buddhas of Bamiyan. One grain at a time.

Tastes Like Chicken

It is "the windy season" in Bagram, Afghanistan. The Airfield is basically situated in the bottom of the "bowl" of the mountains. Much like a baggy-pantsed skaterboarder on a half-pipe, the wind gathers momentum on its way down the mountain sides then gathers speed as it cruises across the Air Field to get enough velocity to make it up the other side of the mountain.

Remember we have no dirt here? Only talcom-powder-like dust? I finally realize the value of nose hairs.

Oh. My. Goodness. The talcom-powder dust gets everywhere. Ever been to the beach and gotten sand in your swimsuit? MMMHMMMM. I have seriously considered ordering a motorcycle helmet with visor. To those of you who are thinking, "lady, ever heard of eye protection for keeping out sand?", I say, "I got your 'eye protection' right here! What about my teeth? My hair? Did I mention my teeth?" Bet you didn't know that dust is "chewy" did you?

Speaking of teeth, when I was a kid anytime my mom wanted me to try some weird meat like rabbit or squirrel or frog legs (I grew up in the country, okay!) when pressed for details regarding the taste, she would always tell me, "it tastes like chicken."

A few days ago I was at a luncheon of home-cooked food hosted by some of the Linguists who work for the military as interpreters on the project. It was a feast - even for a vegetarian (which I've been for the last 12 years)! Lentils, eggplant, rice, vegetables, a big hunk of meat in a pot with a bunch of stuff in it that all the carnivores at the lunch oooohed and aaaaaahed over - a feast, I tell you. I was sitting next to an Afghan citizen who asked me, in what was admittedly limited english but good enough to communicate with each other over lunch, what my lentils tasted like. That's actually sort of a tough question to answer even for someone who speaks my language well, so I did my best to explain the taste of lentils. We both smiled at the inadequateness of my ability to do so, but it was a shared laugh and he appreciated my efforts. I, of course, in turn asked him, "and how is your lunch?" To which he responded by looking at the big hunk of goat meat on his plate and offering, "it tastes a leeetle beeet the same like chicken."

No Lie.

I'm Sending Out an "SMS"

Anyone who has ever had any dealings with the military knows that everything is communicated in acronyms. Information is distributed on a NTK basis (need to know), your status is G2G (good to go), if you expound in response to a specific question you've provided TMI (too much information - i sure wish I could have used that when I was practicing law), all personnel are governed by SOP's (standard operating procedures), emails are addressed to ALCON (all concerned) and when your tour of duty is over you return CONUS (continental U.S.).

Well, there is one acronym you won't find in any SOP but it is THE acronym that actually unites all of humanity. Every (and I do mean EVERY) human being who has ever walked this earth shares in common this one thing - from my friend in East Timor who used to wash his clothes on rocks in a lake in Guatemala to Bill Gates in his brain-house that knows how many parts per million of oxygen is inhaled in each breath- we have all experienced the mystery of the SMS. The Single Missing Sock.

If I ever put a message in a bottle afloat on the sea it will ask, "Have you seen my other sock? I know it was here when I put it in the washer. If you have a single sock of your own, send it to this address and I will make a match." If ever I am an anthropologist I am going to devote my career to tracking down the first civilization to lose a sock in the wash. I'll bet money they found a mateless sock in King Tut's Tomb.

I don't know how it happens - I match my socks before I take them in my laundry bag to the drop-off point. A small Afghan man inventories my laundry and counts every pair of socks as an "item". My laundry gets washed in the same bag it was delivered in. It then goes straight to the dryer before getting stacked on a shelf for me to pick up 3 days later. The bag never gets unzipped, the laundry never gets taken out and yet, in David Copperfieldien fashion, without fail one of my socks disappears.

One day we will be invaded by aliens who smother us in a barrage of our own single missing socks.

Happy Mother's Day (thanks for losing my socks when I was a kid, mom. You helped to prepare me for the real world).