A Short Walk

Finishing Touches

I had my first good laugh about this trip today. I was standing in front of the mirror in my bathroom and I realized that a few days from
now, I'll be in Central Asia. A place I've never been, in a culture I've never touched, informed by a religion I have next to no understanding about, immersed in languages I don't speak. I'm excited! People have been asking me that for weeks now and I think they've been disappointed by my casual shrug. But now, with that realization, I feel genuinely excited. I'm going to splash down into a new and foreign situation, spending a month thinking on my feet, learning new things, every sense excited by things unfamiliar.

A few days ago, I received an email back from Nancy Sours, a professor at SFSU in whose class I read Jason Elliot's An Unexpected Light and first started making vague plans to visit Afghanistan. She mentioned that she's doing Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner in one of her classes this semester and that it might be interesting for me to come in and talk about my trip. My immediate thought was, "Uh oh! I'd better read The Kite Runner and I'd better be sure to visit Herat while I'm over there!"

Those of you who've read the book know that it does not, in fact, take place in Herat. I must've been confusing it with that other pop-Afghan book I haven't read, The Sewing Circles of Herat. Figuring I could just blast through the book in a few days, I checked SFPL and there're about eight copies in total, all of which are checked out. There're 62 holds on the first copy returned. Instead, I went to the Borders on Union Square and just sat down and read it. It took about five hours, total. It's a delightful, fast read, alternatingly heady and contrived. Overall, I enjoyed it and thought it was very good, despite the bits that outed Hosseini as a first timer. And now, of course, I feel off the hook for visiting Herat. I think the only time Herat was even mentioned was early in the book when referring to a "Herati carpet."

The last few days have been spent putting some of the finishing touches on my prep work.

I finally finished selecting, reformatting, organizing, etc, all of the music to put on the little Sony player. It feels somewhat chintzy, but I think it'll hold up. With such long battery life, there ought to be less chances to snap off the battery cover.

Tonight, I'm packing the backpack and running down checklists. I'm using rolled up jeans to approximate the sizes of the shalwar kameez pair that'll eventually occupy that space. If anything is still missing, tomorrow is the time to get it handled. I've already got a few things that I should pick up which aren't really necessary: small safety pins, sun block, sandwich bags.

I've spent a few days at the mosque on Sutter talking with a Lebanese Palestinian (or Palestinian Lebanese) named Walid about the practical side of Islamd. I read a few books on the subject over the past few weeks but they were nearly entirely history and theory. Walid helped me explore some of the practical aspects and, at my specific prompting, the daily prayers (salat) both in terms of mechanics and theory. I'm a little better off to understand the culture now, but it's really only a sliver.

All the books I've read on Afghanistan history and culture, also only a sliver. A mere vestige of what it's like to truly experience a new
culture. My Persian is very sparse, amounting to nothing more than enough to get me into trouble. That said, it's ten times better than my Spanish was when I went to Ecuador, and I got around with no problems there, even culminating in a long, albeit simplistic, discussion with a woman the night before I left.

That reminds me, I need to get on the ball with sending out a mass email letting people know I'll be gone and inviting them to read this blog. Of course, if I end up spending the whole time out in the boonies, this blog will sit idle and I'll feel like an ass for the email.

Overall, I feel fairly well prepared for this trip. I wish I spoke more Persian, knew the history better, especially regarding Sufism, had a better understanding of Islam, et cetera. Yadda yadda... I wish I had a darker tan; being impervious to Central Asian sun would mean one less bottle of goop to carry. :) But yeah, overall, I feel decently well prepared. I've done my homework. There's a chance that I'll have bad luck and end up smooshed, but it's overwhelmingly likely that I'll just wander back to the States in a month, no worse for wear except for a sun tan and a (much) thinner wallet.

Oh, and as an aside, this post was made via email, not via the Blogger interface. That's a nice feature and one that'll make updating this blog substantially easier while travelling.

posted by daviduri @ 12:40 AM