yine Islamabad

Uzun zaman oldu. cok da degil hani. en son Aralik ayinda buradaydim. degisen seyler var. ayni seyi tekrarlayip duruyorum belki; Islamabad Ghost City olmus. Insanin disari cikasi, bisey yapasi gelmiyo. memleketin hali bi degisken. ama Seferaz, Zargul, Refik Sab, Amjad felam hep ayni. Muson yaklasiyor, hazir olmali.

re-connected

yes, reconnected but the sea, the sun, the laziness is never enough, is it?...  kerem and i had our share of the beautiful blue and the green on the motorbike - a honeymoon that will last a lifetime!  louella was the highlight of the holiday with her little feet in the clear glittering waters of datca...

yigit, burcu and pinar: hope you all had a great R&R cuz there seems to be loads going on in other parts of the world that need our attention...

kabul manzarası - kabul view

yesterday i had lunch with lovely friend Naveed, who is ex-STL and DKH staff and Cehangir at Kabul's one of the most luxury restaurant. Both guys are so nice and cordial here is the view from that restaurant.

kabuli

this is the kabuli dish.

kabuli pilaw, kabuli kebap, salad and mantoo.. delicious..especially sweet kabuli pilaw with sweet orange and grape pieces.. yummy..

what a welcome!

I don't have words to describe my trip in Afghanistan. It is amazing! Kabul welcomed me very well. People in here bit freaky but lovely no doubt. here is pics of nice friends from Italian restaurant...
Me, Ahmed from Afghanistan and Kemal from Bosnia. (thank you guys)

Silence at the F6/4 ....

Well, after all we have spent a month together (dipdibe) and now felt a little bit left behind like the youngest of the family who has no permission to go out with his elders. Today we had dinner as usual with Feyyaz and Sarfraz but this time it was so quite :-)

The usual work schedule continues from 9:00 till midnight and this time more running around Islamabad to find a new location for our office. Every time we enter a house it gives a hint about the life styles of Islamabad people. Well, one of the shocks was to realize that almost all the houses have a servant's room and almost all were in a terrible condition compared to the rest of the house.

The good news is that I have found a couple of houses which looks like malikane (manor). I have placed a picture of one of the houses above. I will continue running one sector to another tomorrow in search of the perfect Diakonie / STL party house....

another planet Afghanistan

I felt great when i m going to Islamabad Airport to fly Kabul. I said goodbye to everyone in Islamabad office and take the car with Sefraz.

Passengers in Islamabad Airport have to pass through almost 4 security checks to get in da plane, so i did. Islamabad Airport had one magazine stand before a year ago, (yeah i do remember, there was) i was searching something to read such newspaper at international flights “waiting room” but i couldn’t find and the thick and serious books that i bought in Islamabad did not look attractive to me at all. Anyway i was waiting patiently when flight to Kabul was delayed for 30 min.

Well.. then i get the last seat in the plane which is nice because if you are hungry the you will be the first one who get the first meal and drinks so i had the first meal. heyyo. Farida, who was sitting next to me in plane, is journalist and we started to talk about Afghanistan. I had lots of questions because i couldn’t study my lesson this time. Anyway, Farida said “in last two, three years everything getting worse and worse in Afghanistan. People lost their trust to government as well as Taliban.” Then we talk about hope and hopelessness, elections which will take place in 2009, youth unemployment and Karzai. She highlighted independent media as best progress of Karzai government. Afghanis established several media channels since Karzai came into government. no doubt as a journalist she looks from her own aspect.

i was looking at the mountains that we passed so close when we were landing. I thought that i could be so easy to blown up the plane with a missile from that mountains, so no surprise Carsten, who is good friend and good looking ☺ journalist, mentioned the same thing when we met later on. “Landing to Kabul is hard!”

When I went out from plane to walk arrivals I was feeling great under the sun. Air (hava) was so dry (opposite of Islamabad). I always feel excited to go new places. Hallelujah! While I was waiting for immigration at the end of the huge line a police man approached me smoothly and asked my name and my passport. I was like “oh! Shit! Then what..” and I answered accordingly. He gave his mobile telephone to me and he said “this call for you”. I was shocked. When i answer the phone I realized that the person, who is trying to reach me, is our dear friend Mansoor then I get some relief. This was Mansoor’s welcome to me at airport’s international zone :) Then police get my passport and stamp it in a second without waiting in a line.. strange..isn't it?

I head to collect my luggage and I saw an US soldier next to me, I thought that it is not safe to standing next to a soldier and I smoothly swifted from that place.

Well I met with Mansoor outside of the airport and he told me that "today there is an alarm of suicide attack in airport". “oh!” was my answer to him.

I will continue to write more. Unfortunately there is no picture cos I couldn’t transfer the pics to laptop yet.. I will do it asap. But first impression about Afghanistan is multivariate. This country is like another planet.

Selam from dusty Kabul.