Cold turkey for Afghanistan

Kabul during winter / Wikipedia

These days, a virtual acquaintance is in Afghanistan and following his tweets, Facebook statuses and pictures from the place, I once again feel a strange feeling that I last had at university and almost forgot how it was.

I had several teachers and university professors who worked in Afghanistan during Soviet times and all of them were longing for that place - talking a lot about it, with something like nostalgia for a lost heaven and perhaps with a guilt for losing that.

I even had an impression that Afghanistan was for them what opium was for drug addicts. All those people - my Farsi teacher who had to fight sexism of Soviet officials, a venerable orientalist who traversed the country with geologists in search of oil and gas, or a former employee of Soviet MFA who authored top secret reports on Afghanistan - they all seemed to have an eternal cold turkey.

Listening to their memories occasionally popping up in boring lectures, I had a feeling I was also getting addicted to that opium – without tasting it. And without seeing, visiting, knowing Afghanistan, I also started to long for it - I didn’t come, I didn’t see, but it conquered me.

Time passed, I finished university and lost contact with my "Afghani" teachers. Frequent media reports about Afghanistan brought nothing but anger against Taliban, Al Qaeda and George W. Bush government, frustration about coalition effort[lessness], amazement at corruption (though we have a lot at home here) and that indescribable feeling seemed to sink completely into oblivion.

However, as I discover these days, it seems it didn’t.

I don't know how much the Afghanistan in my mind looks like the real Afghanistan out there. I don't even know what the Afghanistan in my mind looks like - for the Afghanistan my teachers were addicted to was so faceless, shapeless, vague and unsolid...

And I don't know how to finish this post...