San Francisco dreaming...

We recently had the wonderful opportunity to spend a few days in Marin County, just north of San Francisco. As always when on mission, one of the things we miss the most is the outdoors, therefore always dedicate a few days of our vacations to one of our favorite activities: diving, mountain biking, snowboarding or hiking. This time, we decided to mountain bike and booked ourselves into a lovely bed and breakfast, The Mountain Home Inn, in the quaint town of Mill Valley, located on Mt. Tamalpais, the "birthplace of mountain biking" in the 1970s.

Our room had a jacuzzi tub and wood burning fire place, and a balcony with a stunning view of the mountains as well as the city. We usually got up early in the mornings and went for a ride up to the top of Mt. Tam, to return to a wonderfully home cooked breakfast (selections included healthy options such as fruit and oatmeal, and not-so-healthy, though decadent flavors such as grits with ham and onion, topped in a sunny-side-up egg).

Days were spent cruising around Point Reyes, eating oysters, more mountain biking, and of course, a day of wine tasting in Sonoma and Napa. What a wonderful reminder it was for where we started off little over ten years ago. We had lunch at the exact same cafe on the water in Sausaulito, where we ate the afternoon before Chris proposed, and debated driving into San Francisco to eat at the famed Bardelli's Italian. On the first night however, we decided to stay local, and instead drove into Mill Valley in search of a meal. We stumbled upon a lovely Italian place on a corner overlooking the main square, called Vasco's. I don't know, perhaps it was the 300 bottles of wine on display in the window that sealed the deal, or perhaps fate...for when we sat down, following our wine and starter orders, Chris, as he so very often does, flips the menu over to read the story of said Vasco's. Turns out, Paul Lazzareschi named his Mill Valley restaurant after one Vasco Lazzareschi his father and, get this, owner of the very same Bardelli's where Chris and I cemented our engagement all those years before. Coincidence? We think not.

Taken at the spot where Chris proposed to me ten years before.

Dining on oysters California style - BBQ'ed!

The sun setting over San Francisco, as seen from our balcony.

Happy Cows!

Took this shot driving around Point Reyes. Just love the expression on the cow. Wonder if they know they live in some of the most beautiful, pristine coastline in the country!! Lucky cows.

The Blue Mosque

I decided to visit the Rawze-e-Sharif Mosque in Mazar e-Sharif today, one of many known as Blue Mosque. Founded in 1512, the mosque occupies a huge expanse of land in the center of the city. The grounds are covered with gardens, fountains, reflection pools and picnic spots. On any given weekend day, hundreds of families, cripples, children, beggars, and the odd entrepreneur (like the guys with the scales and measuring sticks offering their services at a small fee) gather to enjoy a picnic, feed the pigeons, visit the mosque and simply hang out in the company of friends.

We circled the mosque in a counter-clockwise rotation, pausing to take photos and enjoy the images of families occupying the bright blue picnic tables under pine trees. With two expat women in tow, my Australian friend remarked that he does not usually attract this much attention, pointing to the sporadic hordes of young people who follow us for a few steps, or simply yelling "salaam alaykum" in the passing.

I was blown away by the sheer size and scope of the mosque and in particular by the intricate tile work that covers the entire system of buildings. We did not enter the mosque grounds, opting to arrange a special visit with permission before doing so. Instead, we marvelled at the outside of this magnificent structure believed by Shi'a Muslims to house the remains of the fourth caliph and son-in-law of the Prophet Mohammed, revered as the first Shi'a imam. Many, however, still believe that his body is actually buried in Najaf, Iraq.

The ice cream shop

Despite the limitations on women, particularly in public, those fortunate to live in moderately affluent homes, manage to enjoy a fairly active social life. They have innovative ways to enjoy a day in the bazaar, shopping with friends, and even stopping for a much-needed ice cold refreshment - a welcome break from the heat of the burqa in 35+ degree Celcius weather.

This particular ice cream shop is approximately three meters wide and about twenty meters long. At about the half-way point, it is divided by a curtain that stretches across the width of the room. Women head straight for the curtain, alleviated from the heat of their chandris as they emergy on the far side to lift the blue or white burqas over their heads exposing warm and friendly faces. The room is small with tables and benches packed tightly for maximum capacity. On the walls are the faces (sometimes in erotic fashion-advertisement style) of favorite Indian movie stars. There is a plastic container with complimentary water, and soon a young boy emerges through the curtains to collect the order.

The ice cream is a somewhat icy soft-serve type served either in a pink or yellow cone, or in a bowl with a spoon. The taste has a distinc cardamom flavor, not unpleasant. I am informed that the ice cream is "from the milk from the cow."

Magical Maldives

Photo: The view of one of the two private pavilions at the main restaurant, this is the one Chris and I had a romantic candle-light dinner-for-two the night of our anniversary.

We left Kabul in a big hurry, always the last-minute crisis at work to deal with, but we were not even airborne when we started relaxing. My flight-enjoyment was seriously elevated when I was allowed to sit in the cockpit for the entire descent and landing into dusty Dubai. I guess it helps when the flight crew (again) are all South African. What an experience. I had been on the flight deck of a Boeing 747 once before while flying over the Swiss Alps in the mid-nineties - a little reward my dad arranged for us when the air steward asked it if was okay if a person behind us (in the non-smoking section of the flight) could smoke, obviously back in the days when flights were still smoke-friendly zones, but I had never descended and definitely never landed on the deck of a jet before.


For the past week Chris and I spent some seriously needed R&R at a small resort and spa named Island Hideaway on the northern most tip of Maldives on the island of Donakhuli. We spent our entire time eating fresh fish and fruit, enjoying amazing dives with turtles, eagle rays, scorpion fish and a thousand other ocean friends. We visited the amazing Mandara Spa for manicures and pedicures, and the highlight was a 2.5 hour session on our anniversary that included a foot ritual, steam bath, milk bath, massage and all-natural facial.

Photo: The bathtub situated on the open deck of the over-water spa treatment room.

Our anniversary was made especially great by our personal butler Baari who arranged a romantic lunch on our private beach, and an even more romantic dinner in one of the two over-water pavilions at the main restaurant, just for the two of us.

Photo: Part of the anniversary table decorations. They also hand-wove a canopy out of palm leaves for our lunch on the beach, filled our tub with flowers and built a similar congratulations on our bed.

With fewer than forty villas on the island, each separated by at least 50m from any neighbors, the emphasis was all on privacy. We stayed in a Donakhuli villa that comes with a private little splash pool right out front the bedroom. It also has a small private beach and gazebo where candle light dinners can be served by your butler.

Photo: Villa #28 "Filadoo" with bedroom to the right, living area on the left and deck upstairs

The weather was great, we each read a novel for the first time in five months, got a little tanned, and most importantly very relaxed. The week went by too fast, but we had a blast and realized that for two busy-bodies like ourselves, it was the absolute perfect amount of time to relax and catch up, and totally worth the eight year wait! Too soon we were back in Dubai and then making our descent into Kabul. As usual, work is still here, and the world did not (as one always worries) come to an end during our vacation. We are back in the full swing of things, but refreshed and filled with amazing memories of a most memorable (very) belated honeymoon.

Depressing Dubai

I write from the Emirates Business Class lounge at Dubai International Airport. Chris and I are en-route to our "honeymoon" in the Maldives. While he scouts the bookshop for beach reading, I sip a Pinot Grigio and ponder this place that so disappoints me whenever I travel through here. We couldn’t meet up with our friends H&H today, since our flight was earlier than expected, though we will see them on the way back in a week. Both high school classmates of mine, they have lived here for probably about three to five years, and will tell you there is nothing to do her but work, and go to the mall.

We arrived around 1100 and headed straight to Terminal 1 to check our bags before catching a cab to City Center, the huge mall not far from the airport. Not because we like shopping, but because we have realized that in many ways, we are more isolated in Kabul than we were in Baghdad. We have no APO, no US phone number and therefore little direct access to services and communication, and there comes a time when every one needs a new pair of shoes or pants. Enter Dubai. The place that has come to serve as our three-monthly stock-check of necessities and not-so-necessary items.

In the mall we find a salon for the pre-beach de-hairing desires. Chris for a haircut and shave, and I for a wax. In the tiny stock closet-cum-treatment room, the Filipino woman covers the bed with a large paper towel. I strike up a conversation with her. She has been in Dubai for three years; she has only been home once. They have to pay their own way for everything, and I can attest to the fact that prices are skyrocketing in Dubai, a trend which apparently do not extend to salaries.

She has two daughters, one in high school and another in college doing "mass media", though she was not quite sure what that entails, and explained that this one wants to be an air stewardess, adding that family members fly for only 10% of the ticket price. We talk about my work, she knows what an NGO is. She asks about Kabul. Apparently some guys have been trying to recruit some of them to come and open a salon there. We make more small talk. Why Dubai I ask, why now? She explains the family business of bag-manufacturing which perished at the hands of China a few years ago, necessitating her to move to this heartless city, leaving her family behind, just so they can survive. I leave her a 25% tip, Chris is shocked at how much I can learn from someone in forty minutes.

It is 1400 on a Thursday, the mall is packed. The restaurants overflow, the shops are overrun by people dashing between "sale" signs and fitting rooms. Women in hajibs nonchalantly shop for lingerie that would make Paris Hilton blush, and I look for bikinis. We find Chris a nice pair of Aldo sandals; he only tried about forty pairs before settling on one. We go to Woolworths (the South African version, not the US el-cheapo kind) and find him two nice board shorts and a bikini for me - not many options for these items in Kabul. A few more items and we are exhausted and feel guilty for indulging alongside this conspicuously commercialized society. We head to the airport. We like business class. Not something we have ever done (at least not paid for, I've negotiated myself in a few times, but this was the first "legitimate" claim to the fame).

So here in the lounge I wait. I showered. The wine is cold. I am happy. Not quite relaxed yet, but clean, and content. I am desperately trying not to check my work email...

17 Mar: Update from Kleinmond

How do you get from Baghdad to Cape Town via Amman, Petra, Paris, New York, New Haven, Boston, Los Angeles, Park City, Visalia, Yosemite, Dubai and Pretoria, and do all of it in 4 weeks? Very, very carefully, with a lot of patience and a huge bottle of vitamin B complex, a lot of coffee and a strong stomach for airport security.

Today is St. Patty’s day, Kevin’s birthday and my two-week anniversary in Kleinmond. I still get nightmares from time to time. And emails, all the emails from friends in Baghdad. “We miss you”, “we are doing okay”, “love, your Iraqi sister”. My life over the past year plays off in my mind like an HBO series without an intermission. I sometimes wake up in the middle of the night and wonder where I am. When I look at my photos I see the attractive couple, and I think, wow, how lucky. Italy, Croatia, Turkey, Jordan, Iraq, Morocco, Egypt, Dubai, France, South Africa, United States…and soon, I must examine my vaccination record for Afghanistan.

But today I write from a small town on the Indian Ocean coast of South Africa: Kleinmond on a dial-up connection. I will be here for the next month where I am well under way to finish my thesis for my MA in African Studies on a fellowship from UCLA.

So many of you have written to inquire about my whereabouts and more importantly, on why I have not been writing more. The lame excuse is that I don't have Internet in the house, but that, indeed is a lame one since I access it daily at the tourist center in town, and that is not the main reason for the silence.

I guess it is understandable to want to “hide” for a few weeks after leaving a place as intense and draining as Baghdad, not to mention submitting ourselves to the travel schedule we did. So forgive me for my brief absence, rest assured it has not been maliciously intended, nor devoid of thoughts off all of you.

To make good on my promise to give a thorough update of the past whirlwind five weeks, please click on January in the archives on the right of the page and scroll all the way down to the post on January 21st, "Leaving Baghdad", and work your way back up to today. I have divided the posts up by location - alas I could not justify squeezing 7 countries, 16 cities and 4 weeks into one post, and trust me, you would not have wanted to read for that long. So instead, they are broken up into bite sizes, including photographs.

I already have a few current anecdotes I want to share, but will wait a few days before I post those.

[please see blog description on the right for some recent changes, I encourage you to leave a brief comment/remark if you are so inclined]

3 Mar: Cape Town!

[The view from my window, yes, I know, I know]

When I learned they released my shipment from customs, I did not wait around to schedule a delivery, instead I offered to drive to the airport and collect it myself. This was Friday, on Saturday morning I was on a 737 headed south toward Cape Town. Eager to get started on my thesis and to have the opportunity to reminisce and catch up. Here I stay in the most peaceful, gorgeous place of a good friend I met in the gym in Baghdad. A South African former member of the special forces, Marius became like a brother in our house in Baghdad as we shared a braai and bad Baghdad wine on an almost weekly basis. Today I am nestled in his restored home in the town of Kleinmond 1.5 hours up the coast from Cape Town in route to Hermanus. The enclosed porch is where I spend my days, research spread out across the entire dining table I watch the world go by outside my window. The Indian Ocean spread out like a blanket at my feet, a truly inspirational place to complete a research project.

[My workstation]

21 Feb: Pretoria/Johannesburg

As the wheels touch down in Johannesburg I say a little prayer, and I am grateful to be home for a while. I am exhausted, the sinus I thought would explode on the descent into JFK is still not letting up. Customs line is a mile long. I am pulled out of it. I am mad, definitely didn’t have my A-game on when I smiled at the official. The pregnant inspector however, takes pity and only checks my one bag and lets me through the doors where my sister anxiously awaits my arrival. My shipment from Baghdad is stuck in customs. It takes ten agonizing days to secure a release. Ten days can be a long time, a very long time.

18 Feb: Leaving the US..

How did it get to be the 18th of February already? We return our rental car, I argue with Delta over the upgrade they refuse to give us. Not surprisingly, at LAX Chris finally gets the full body-cavity search we knew was just of matter of time. Turns out a dark-haired guy with facial hair, traveling one-way back and forth between the US and the Middle East on tickets he buys on the Internet, is a big no-no. We board the flight headed to Dubai via New York. This time the North East is freezing, in the teens. The only reason I know this is because we erroneously ended up outside the terminal while looking for the airtrain. I was seriously not sure that I would make it the 300 meters to the airtrain, we run. My hands turn blue.

14-18 Feb: Los Angeles

We are back in Los Angeles. We spend every waking (and as Chris has proven some not so “awake”) moment with the dozens of friends and colleagues we acquired during our seven years in Tinsel town. We continue our "road show" of photos and stories as we share the experiences with what feels like hundreds of people. Out of necessity, we divide our days into “breakfast”, “morning”, “lunch”, “afternoon” and “dinner”. We have coffee, meet new babies, bring food to those recovering from illness, and dine out daily. We present at a forum at our church in Santa Monica, and host a slide show for our friends at Doug and Stacy's place in Marina del Rey. It is wonderful to see everyone! Chris accuses me of causing us “to have too many friends” since “before I met you I never had this many friends, and the ones I did have, I lost contact with as soon as I moved away”. I roll my eyes and look for parking. I also touch base with my professors at UCLA to map the strategy for my thesis to be completed in the next two months.

[Some of our friends who made it out for our slide show]

9-12 Feb: Yosemite, California

In an attempt to get everyone away from chores and the mundane, we reserved a cabin in Yosemite for the whole family to celebrate Chris's mom and dad's 60th birthdays. The extended family joined in, and in the end we were 14 in total. The cabin was wonderful. The weather was wet, but we are elated to be together. The fire roared, the food was hearty, the companionship necessary. Finally on Sunday it snowed, the little ones were ecstatic.

8 Feb: Coming home

Visalia, California - There is something very surreal about unsuspectingly crawling up a familiar driveway in the middle of the night. A homecoming. It has been over a year. Things look the same, they smell the same. We ring the doorbell - the elated family – somehow I feel like I am watching this on a movie screen, from afar, perhaps from the neighbor’s yard. Then it sucks you in, deep into the belly of the house, and it snaps you back in a heartbeat. The room is as it always is (save for the floor under repair), but the bathroom is new. The rest is eerily similar. It is comforting. The family looks good, I shower, we go out to dinner. I drift in and out of reality and remembrance.

3-8 Feb: Park City, Utah

Park City is fun. The snow is a little scarce, but the weather is great. We have a nice apartment. I shopped at Wild Oats with tears in my eyes as I ogled over the abundance of wonderfully fresh produce I missed so dearly in Baghdad. In an attempt to maximize our “experience on the mountain” we signed up for a few lessons with what has to be Australia’s own “carrot top”. Great guy, and we got to jump the lift line. We pretend to have an interest in timeshare and get free lift tickets from one of the newly constructed über-resorts. At night we cook, drink wine, catch up, talk about Baghdad and what the future hold. We also debate the Vietnam and Iraq wars with three grey beards in the hot tub who bring us plastic cups for our wine.

[Main Street. Pricey, but nice]

1-3 Feb: Los Angeles

A brief stop in Los Angeles in route to Park City for a five day snowboarding break awards us just enough time to satisfy our ravenous desire for Mexican food, shared aptly with 25 of our friends in our favorite, La Cabana, with pitchers of Margaritas and happy conversation flowing; for me to appear on an NPR affiliate radio station; visit our beloved Nelson; and to drop off our excess baggage at the Bratcher B&B.

[Nelson, as handsome as ever]

Listen to "Eating in a war zone", my interview with Evan Kleiman on KCRW.

With Evan and fabulous produces, Jennifer, at "Angeli Caffé", Evan's restaurant on Melrose Blvd.

27 Jan-1 Feb: New York, New Haven, Boston

27 Jan: Charles de Gaulle airport submits us to the first security screening we both believe was actually worthwhile. Quick and efficient, the security procedure leaves us both confident. We are on board an Air France (aptly known as Air Chance for their superior tendency to misplace luggage) flight to JFK. We are running late. At JFK we are offered the upgraded, much larger version of the short-wheel base mini van we reserved to move all of our stuff at the low-low price of $150. We decline. They are out of the short base, we get the upgrade for free.


[Our first forum at FPC New Haven, the next four weeks will prove to be somewhat like a "book tour" as we take our "Chris & Susan does Baghdad" story on the road]

28-1 Jan: New Haven is pleasant, fortunate for us we did not come a week earlier when temperatures hovered around 1 degree Farenheit. We visit with friends from Yale, the rugby team, and do our first forum at the First Presbyterian church the morning after our arrival. We try to extract ourselves from the basement of our good friends Ken and Judy, and consolidate our belongings in our heavily overburdened storage in Boston. The minivan turns out to be a blessing as we pile our earthlies in the back and shuttle then up to Boston for the big prioritization operation. Salvation Army makes out like a bandit. We are horrified at the consumerism we had forgotten about for a year as we pass box after box after box of oversized collection of useless stuff that someone somewhere somehow convinced the public that they must have.

[Consolidating]

24 Jan: Paris

[brrrr, standing on a bridge across the Seine]


The 0400 wake-up call from the front desk of the Four Seasons Amman comes too early, but sets us in motion for our flight to Paris where I have been invited for an interview with a French humanitarian aid agency, ACTED (The Agency for Coordination of Technical Development) with a large program in Afghanistan. Paris is cold, but this somehow elevates the romance as we wrap ourselves in wool coats and scarves, huddle close together, and dine on fondue and soufflés. We visit the Louvre, but prefer the Musee du Orsay with its spectacular collection of Impressionist masters. We saw a show at the famed Moulin Rouge. While the quality is nowhere near something you’ll find in Las Vegas or Broadway, it is still fun and worth doing. (Note: do not take photos during the show, oops).

[The dining was exquisite, soufflés, fondues, hand-made chocolate (I finally taught Chris that it is NEVER too cold for ice cream), cheese, and of course wine]

And the reason for us being in Paris in the first place, my interview

22-23 Jan: Amman and Petra, Jordan

[Bedouin tea in the early morning light in Petra]

I wasn’t going to depart Jordan for good without visiting the magnificent Petra, so we spent two days in the Movenpick for a 10-hour hike around this amazing place. January turned out to be the ideal time for a visit, it was empty and cool, allowing the musky atmosphere of the ancient waterways to permeate the nostrils as young men on camel back charged by yelling “you want camel? You want camel?”

Flying down the interstate (after another of our famous “short cuts”) we dined with good friends from the US and South African Embassies, two colleagues of my then future employer: ACTED, as well as two lovely Iraqis currently living in Jordan as refugees. Looking around the table I am amazed at who and what I have come to see and become in the short span of one year.