I agree, I have a pretty great job, an incredible experience, and a wonderful opportunity. Again. And yes, it is wonderful, I love it. I love even the parts I don't love because it makes me stronger and builds my character and teaches me tolerance. Yet some things you can never get over. Particularly all things family.
If I have to count the anniversaries, birthdays, weddings, disappointments and accomplishments that I have missed in the past few years while pursuing my dream of working in post-conflict zones, I will invariably crack with guilt. And so it is today.
At a barbeque of a UN friend in Kabul yesterday I struggle with the string on my purse to adhere to the screaming mobile phone. I miss it. Damnit. The number is that of my sister's South African' cell. I instantly know what this means. Oupa.
I frantically text her from Chris's phone (mine cannot send or receive international texts at this time) to call me again - which she does. The news is not good. Oupa (my 86-year old grandfather) who has been in intensive care, has acute pneumonia and his heart is giving in. The doctor has ordered all meds and feeding to be halted. It is, I am told over the crackling line to Kabul, a mere matter of time.
A colleague has called for a car. We join him back to the residence. At the guesthouse I flash between emirates.com and my mobile to get hold of my country director for clearance for the emergency leave before she herself leaves on R&R the next day. Of course it is all cleared. We call in a favor with Chris’ UN travel ops guy, who's brother happens to be one of my most competent base managers in the northwest.
An hour later I have the last emergency seat on the UN Humanitarian Air Services (UNHAS) flight from Kabul to Dubai, with a connecting direct flight on Emirates from Dubai to Johannesburg. And so I find myself at Dubai airport at 2230 tonight. After some emergency shopping for family-guilt reasons, I booked in to the lounge. I could have had a hotel room, but I prefer being here - somehow I feel closer to home texting my father from an airport lounge for updates, than peacefully slumbering in a hotel room somewhere in this fake and painfully oppressive city.
The reality of my life is all around me. On the news the Arabic announcer goes between Iraqi militias and Lebanese military planes bombing refugee camps in the north of that country. My table-mate comments on my Afghanistan book and wants to know if I have "been there” informing that he has “been to over a 100 countries but not Afghanistan", I write my email down. He will not write, but thinks I'm interesting.
I think of Oupa. I drink wine. He is a wine collector. I think of him filling his seat at the head of the table as recently as March. What happened. How different things will be, can we recover? Of course we can, people do it every day. Yet not today. Today we mourn.
These are the times when I question the wisdom of my life. When missing events and opportunities. Would I have done it differently. After all, it is always coming. But tonight, shielded from this reality by my iPod and my wifi, surrounded by suits and underpaid South Asians mopping the parque floor, I wonder. Is the price sometimes too high. Will I see him tomorrow? Or will I not. I work with pain for a living, but it is not my own. Sometimes I unintentionally think or believe that it is, but in the end, it belongs to somebody else. But this, my Oupa, is my pain.
Five hours 'till boarding.
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