Leaving: last impressions

In less than 24 hours, Afghanistan will stop being a totally unknown quantity. All being hitch-free, I will get to Kabul after an overnight flight to Dubai and a 2 1/2-hour-long hop northwards. From then on, I should start to have impressions of my own. But I don’t yet; they are all borrowed. 

For now, I have a sudden unexpected blank bit of time before a car arrives to fetch me in 20 minutes or so. Last.fm is on the computer, a brilliant website to which you suggest music you are in the mood for. It then plays you other stuff that it thinks you will like. My brain follows its example. With the encouragement of a glass of wine, it sets off in roughly the following directions.

• I am about to go to Kabul. A big bomb went off there today. A suicide bomber detonated a carload of explosives close to the Indian Embassy, killing 41 and injuring over 140. Not auspicious.
   
• I don’t think the real level of physical risk is greater than going round London on a motorbike. But the type of danger is nasty. There is no upside to it, nothing like the swooping glee of two wheels. It is just in the air, in chatter and feelings and threats; sinister but intangible until something happens. Things, when they happen, are vile and deliberate. Not blatantly self-induced and accidental. The risk only exists because human beings want to destroy others, which is something that goes against everything rational or tolerable and there are better ways of spending life.
   

I think that there are about 3 things to do when faced with that sort of thing. They are:

• know why people behave like that, and why the help others to do so, then make the reasons go away.
• cheer people up about how much more there is to be had out of life than death, destruction and blowing things up.
• stay steady.

Talking to, involving, people is the the only way into the 3. Which is what I am going to do. So that’s good.