Summary of AUAF bombing posts
I hate facebook, but posted my running commentary of the days and weeks after the attack there because more peolpe read that. I prefer LJ as a blog, though, so I'm reposting the original posts here.
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Aug 25, 2016
Has it really only been ~36 hrs?
Life before that seemed so normal. I was telling Sarah why she needed to watch Dr. Horrible, and comparing IELTS stories with Angie and talking to Mathew about... I don't actually remember what, but something normal as I was packing my bag to go home and he was waiting around for his class to start--the class he was barricaded in a room with all night with gunmen shooting in the hallway.
I'd talked about test schedules with Haroon K and confirmed with Khalid that he'd contacted my students about their make-up exam. I'd chatted with Haroon A and Samoon as I was making photocopies for my new class starting Sunday. Class had gone well, aside from running out of time. I'd wanted to show a video on test prep, but decided to spend the class time practicing TOEFL speaking, and I'd just email them the video link.
When I got home, I'd run downstairs to give chef Michael passport photos to drop off at HR for me on Thur for my visa because I wasn't going to campus that day. I rechecked the transport email to make sure I knew what time I was supposed to leave to go to my part time job. I'd started to take a shower.
It was all such a completely normal day.
36 hours ago.
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September 17, 2016
It's been 2 weeks to the hour, although that's coincidental to this post.
I cried for the first time today.
One of our escorts, the guys whose job it has been to go around with us in transport for the last 7 years, was killed in the MOD attack the day before yesterday. I found out yesterday. It was Sangar. A really good and likeable guy.
I'm in Riga, and decided to take a break from walking to see Ben Hur. The book was one of my favorites as a teenage. It never struck me as terribly religious, but it deals with themes of hatred, revenge, and forgiveness. It was the scene with the naval battle that made me break down. Don't ask me for logic. I've come to realize there isn't logic in what triggers emotional reactions in these things.
Booms and explosions still scare me, even though I wasn't on the old campus that night. There were a few minutes when I genuinely thought we were under attack, though. And then the next 9 hrs listening to the explosions and gunfire and wondering if that was my friends and students getting killed.
Ben Hur made me think about my feelings toward people. No one has asked, but I've seen questions in these situations, of whether the string of events, from Lexie to Sangar, make me hate. I find the idea absurd. Would I hate the Muslims who risked their lives to save my friends? I might as well go around hating humans in general. It would make about as much sense. And I still believe--and have it proven in Afghanistan every day--that the good people far outnumber the occasional bad ones.
But an even more major theme in the movie is forgiveness. I don't forgive. I won't say "I can't." The truth is, I don't know. I haven't tried, nor do I have any interest in doing so. They say hate and forgiveness are linked, but they're not. I don't hate anyone. I'm not even sure I feel hatred toward the Taliban. Oh,I've been angry at times. I've kicked walls, and I was really glad Chef Michael has a punching bag in the gym now. But it's not focused on anything. Maybe that's because the attackers are dead and the Taliban is too nebulous or faceless a group to really and truly hate. I wonder sometimes--often, to be honest--if my lack of hatred reflects a lack of concern for my friends, but after a lot of soul-searching, I don't think it does. I think it just reflects the fact that the killers are dead and I don't have anyone to really be angry at other than a terrorist group that everyone knows is bad anyway.
But I won't forgive.
------
October 15, 2016
It's been 7.5 weeks since the attack. 2 weeks since I came back to Kabul. Things are by no means remotely normal. The university isn't actively running (we're going to teach classes online the rest of the semester.) Only a handful of key administrators are here, and a couple teachers who have come back for random reasons like me.
Nothing is normal, but mostly I've gone on about my life and I don't think about the attack too often unless it comes up in conversation, which doesn't happen so often anymore, not directly. Conversation is about the current situation, online classes, the yowling but friendly kitten-cat outside the door, why we ended up with the T-walls (additional security walls) that we did, how to air out the gym because it smells like grease, who went to which memorial service for someone kiled, the weather getting colder, whether we heard the attack that happened somewhere else that day, problems with a washing machine...
Life goes on, and so do we, and even though it will always be a part of our memory, for most of us here, the intensity of emotions on a day-to-day basis is fading.
But every once in a while I go back and read my posts from those first few days.
And I remember.
-----
October 24, 2016
Today is the 2-month anniversary of the attack (it's been almost 9 weeks), although that's coincidental to this post.
AUAF invited people to send in their stories of the attack. I suggested/offered to compile them into a book of some sort, so I've been working on editing them (ie, fixing the English/punctuation.) It didn't really occur to me that it would be a difficult project on an emotional level. I've heard a lot of stories by now, and I didn't think it would be specifically hard to read them. But it is.
I went to see the movie Sully today. It's a good movie and worth seeing. Why a movie about a heroic forced water landing on the Hudson River would make me think of a suicide attack, I have no answer for. I guess, really, quite a lot of things make me think of the attack, even though I mostly go along normally without dwelling on it now. Still, it's there, and I suppose will be for a while.
I didn't exactly expect an emotional reaction to the movie, but I wasn't surprised by it. What did surprise me, completely, was that by the end of the movie, the overwhelming emotion wasn't sadness, loss, or grief.
At the end of the movie, the overwhelming emotion was anger. It wasn't fair that heroics and skilled people got all the passengers to land safely. It wasn't fair that everyone could be happy after a disaster. It wasn't fair that they all lived!
Anger is certainly one of the stages of grief, and I certainly went through it in the days after the attack. That doesn't mean it doesn't crop up later, though, even if completely unexpectedly and irrationally.
------
January 15, 2016
Thursday morning, as I was taking care of my grandma (see next post) I got an email about the Taliban having released a video of Tim & Kevin, my two fellow teachers who were kidnapped last August. I didn't watch it then. I didn't want to deal with it on top of trying to take care of my grandma. I watched it Friday night. Tim had only been hired at the university 2-3 weeks before the kidnapping, and the rest of us were on summer break, so most people didn't know him. Kevin is a friend of mine. I don't clam we were absolute best friends, but certainly friends. He's a quiet and reserved person who cared about his students and always tried to help people. He was always in my "good person" category.
It's a hard thing to watch your friend beg for intervention to save his life, and hear them say they will be killed if the US govt doesn't cooperate with the prisoner exchange.
I know everyone is doing everything they can, and the "don't negotiate with terrorists" policy is a valid one. But it sure doesn't make it easy to deal with.
--------------
Aug 25, 2016
Has it really only been ~36 hrs?
Life before that seemed so normal. I was telling Sarah why she needed to watch Dr. Horrible, and comparing IELTS stories with Angie and talking to Mathew about... I don't actually remember what, but something normal as I was packing my bag to go home and he was waiting around for his class to start--the class he was barricaded in a room with all night with gunmen shooting in the hallway.
I'd talked about test schedules with Haroon K and confirmed with Khalid that he'd contacted my students about their make-up exam. I'd chatted with Haroon A and Samoon as I was making photocopies for my new class starting Sunday. Class had gone well, aside from running out of time. I'd wanted to show a video on test prep, but decided to spend the class time practicing TOEFL speaking, and I'd just email them the video link.
When I got home, I'd run downstairs to give chef Michael passport photos to drop off at HR for me on Thur for my visa because I wasn't going to campus that day. I rechecked the transport email to make sure I knew what time I was supposed to leave to go to my part time job. I'd started to take a shower.
It was all such a completely normal day.
36 hours ago.
------
September 17, 2016
It's been 2 weeks to the hour, although that's coincidental to this post.
I cried for the first time today.
One of our escorts, the guys whose job it has been to go around with us in transport for the last 7 years, was killed in the MOD attack the day before yesterday. I found out yesterday. It was Sangar. A really good and likeable guy.
I'm in Riga, and decided to take a break from walking to see Ben Hur. The book was one of my favorites as a teenage. It never struck me as terribly religious, but it deals with themes of hatred, revenge, and forgiveness. It was the scene with the naval battle that made me break down. Don't ask me for logic. I've come to realize there isn't logic in what triggers emotional reactions in these things.
Booms and explosions still scare me, even though I wasn't on the old campus that night. There were a few minutes when I genuinely thought we were under attack, though. And then the next 9 hrs listening to the explosions and gunfire and wondering if that was my friends and students getting killed.
Ben Hur made me think about my feelings toward people. No one has asked, but I've seen questions in these situations, of whether the string of events, from Lexie to Sangar, make me hate. I find the idea absurd. Would I hate the Muslims who risked their lives to save my friends? I might as well go around hating humans in general. It would make about as much sense. And I still believe--and have it proven in Afghanistan every day--that the good people far outnumber the occasional bad ones.
But an even more major theme in the movie is forgiveness. I don't forgive. I won't say "I can't." The truth is, I don't know. I haven't tried, nor do I have any interest in doing so. They say hate and forgiveness are linked, but they're not. I don't hate anyone. I'm not even sure I feel hatred toward the Taliban. Oh,I've been angry at times. I've kicked walls, and I was really glad Chef Michael has a punching bag in the gym now. But it's not focused on anything. Maybe that's because the attackers are dead and the Taliban is too nebulous or faceless a group to really and truly hate. I wonder sometimes--often, to be honest--if my lack of hatred reflects a lack of concern for my friends, but after a lot of soul-searching, I don't think it does. I think it just reflects the fact that the killers are dead and I don't have anyone to really be angry at other than a terrorist group that everyone knows is bad anyway.
But I won't forgive.
------
October 15, 2016
It's been 7.5 weeks since the attack. 2 weeks since I came back to Kabul. Things are by no means remotely normal. The university isn't actively running (we're going to teach classes online the rest of the semester.) Only a handful of key administrators are here, and a couple teachers who have come back for random reasons like me.
Nothing is normal, but mostly I've gone on about my life and I don't think about the attack too often unless it comes up in conversation, which doesn't happen so often anymore, not directly. Conversation is about the current situation, online classes, the yowling but friendly kitten-cat outside the door, why we ended up with the T-walls (additional security walls) that we did, how to air out the gym because it smells like grease, who went to which memorial service for someone kiled, the weather getting colder, whether we heard the attack that happened somewhere else that day, problems with a washing machine...
Life goes on, and so do we, and even though it will always be a part of our memory, for most of us here, the intensity of emotions on a day-to-day basis is fading.
But every once in a while I go back and read my posts from those first few days.
And I remember.
-----
October 24, 2016
Today is the 2-month anniversary of the attack (it's been almost 9 weeks), although that's coincidental to this post.
AUAF invited people to send in their stories of the attack. I suggested/offered to compile them into a book of some sort, so I've been working on editing them (ie, fixing the English/punctuation.) It didn't really occur to me that it would be a difficult project on an emotional level. I've heard a lot of stories by now, and I didn't think it would be specifically hard to read them. But it is.
I went to see the movie Sully today. It's a good movie and worth seeing. Why a movie about a heroic forced water landing on the Hudson River would make me think of a suicide attack, I have no answer for. I guess, really, quite a lot of things make me think of the attack, even though I mostly go along normally without dwelling on it now. Still, it's there, and I suppose will be for a while.
I didn't exactly expect an emotional reaction to the movie, but I wasn't surprised by it. What did surprise me, completely, was that by the end of the movie, the overwhelming emotion wasn't sadness, loss, or grief.
At the end of the movie, the overwhelming emotion was anger. It wasn't fair that heroics and skilled people got all the passengers to land safely. It wasn't fair that everyone could be happy after a disaster. It wasn't fair that they all lived!
Anger is certainly one of the stages of grief, and I certainly went through it in the days after the attack. That doesn't mean it doesn't crop up later, though, even if completely unexpectedly and irrationally.
------
January 15, 2016
Thursday morning, as I was taking care of my grandma (see next post) I got an email about the Taliban having released a video of Tim & Kevin, my two fellow teachers who were kidnapped last August. I didn't watch it then. I didn't want to deal with it on top of trying to take care of my grandma. I watched it Friday night. Tim had only been hired at the university 2-3 weeks before the kidnapping, and the rest of us were on summer break, so most people didn't know him. Kevin is a friend of mine. I don't clam we were absolute best friends, but certainly friends. He's a quiet and reserved person who cared about his students and always tried to help people. He was always in my "good person" category.
It's a hard thing to watch your friend beg for intervention to save his life, and hear them say they will be killed if the US govt doesn't cooperate with the prisoner exchange.
I know everyone is doing everything they can, and the "don't negotiate with terrorists" policy is a valid one. But it sure doesn't make it easy to deal with.