A Friday walk---and a Day Glo Goat...

Happy New Year-1386

This is a picture out of our bedroom window of our neighbor exercising his pigeons-I supppose Afghans have been exercising their pigeons off the rooftops in Afghanistan ever since Kabul began.

Norm and I have had a heavenly two days of quiet...a luxury for westerners here...something that Afghans have difficulty understanding as their idea of heaven is a room full of relatives-eating and chatting. For the new year, we recieved "Seven Fruits" as a gift from our Yasin and Salia, and ventured out in the streets to find a hill to walk but the streets were filled with Afghans trying to find a place to picnic. Traffic being rated as the highest stressor here in Kabul (by Afghans) above suicide bombers.

My son is getting ready to come and visit me-my mother is extremely nervous and it seems that the airwaves are full of dire stories of the disentegration and chaos here....as usual not the whole picture or even part of the picture. In fact, as far as I am concerned it is all old news and the upheaval was anticipated and is being addressed. American media has not lost their ability to promulgate fear, hopelessness and the sense that nothing we do makes a difference-a view of the world I do not subscribe to.

I will stand corrected if the predicted "spring offensive" materializes and impacts us...the conditions do not seem much different from when I started coming to Afghanistan-but Afghans-at least in Kabul are getting on with life. Especially as our hard winter relents and is turning into spring. Maybe it is just our two year mark and we are used to exercising caution and living with it but we feel like peace has taken root and is imminent.

An “Afghan Women’s Walking Dog” ..the daughter of a “fighting dog”….

My dog, ChooChay (little one) has been with us a year and a half…I take her for a walk periodically and I am unlucky if I do it when the high school gets out. I am just fluent enough in Dari to understand the casual comments obnoxious, high spirited school boys make about me and my dog….dogs in Afghanistan are feared, persecuted, admired and I always raise comment when I walk her. Afghans have what are called “fighting dogs” or “Sahgee-Jangee” that are expensive and magnificent. We have one around the corner that stands almost to my chest-who waltzes out for his walk with his fierce Pushtun owner in smart red boots. They are bred for fighting and having one is quite fashionable as well as speaks well for ones courage. Pictured here is “Palang”
or Tiger –a fighting dog we encountered on our walk today.
One day on a walk with my Choochay, a couple of neighborhood high school boys saw her and sniggered in an offensive way. I was just irritable enough to turn on them and ask them what they were looking at…..”Your dog, it is a bad dog” they commented.
“Why do you say that? I asked.
“Well she has no chest, and is not big enough to win a fight. She is a small poor example of a dog”.
“Oh” I answered.” But you are mistaken. She is not a fighting dog. Men do not even have permission to walk her….in fact, she is an “Afghan Women’s Walking Dog”.
They looked at Choochay with astonishment having never conceived of such a dog, or in fact of Afghan women ever walking dogs.
“She protects me.” I said smugly.
“Oh!” they said " in this case she is a very beautiful dog…and it is right that she is with you…”
I could hear them as they walked away...agreeing that an Afghan Women's Walking Dog is an imminently sensible idea-if you could get an Afghan women to agree to get near a dog enough to walk with one.

This success in establishing the usefulness and beauty of my dog in the neighbor boys eyes has gone to my head....I am now dead bent on getting some henna so I can dip her paws and make them red…the ultimate sign of regard for a dog…after red boots.