the race

the well-known fact around town is that i am newly married (what? you didn’t know?!) what is less well-known is the toll that incessant work is taking on our time together at this early stage when, as the old timers would say, the henna is still fresh. we struggle to steal away together on weekends but don’t always manage. we correspond quite a lot via email and phone, and between late office hours and travels, getting to spend time together seems increasingly difficult. she works at a major international financial institution’s office in kabul, i work in arguably the most cut-throat and ruthlessly efficient organization of the afghan government (or the closest thing to it, if ever such a thing existed.)

we were talking (via email) today and noticed that in between the two of our schedules this is how things look like lately:

-i was travelling in provinces for some three weeks on and off
-within a week of my return, she goes off for two weeks to three provinces
-when she comes back, i go to turkey for ten days
-when i come back, she goes to turkey for a month (we think we might pass by each other at one of the airports)
-when she comes back, i go to the uk for a month
-when i come back, she goes to the uk for a year for studies
-when she comes back, i go off for two years for my studies

a friend was joking the other day that when we finally retire we will need a full re-introduction to each other. at least there will be plenty of stories to tell of each of our journeys.
oh the sacrifices one makes…

once upon a time when i was still in watan and my sole literary companion was a collection of 54 translated short stories, i read this story by one w. somerset maugham (i think it was called mabel, after the female protagonist’s name) where the couple are deeply, madly in love with each other but live in morbid fear of actually meeting up and spending time together and getting settled -and the more this meeting is delayed, the more the fear builds up. there are instances where they nearly meet but narrowly miss each other.
the saving grace of it all is that it has a simple and happy ending.

my hope is that ours will too. and that once we abandon this rat race, we will return to the same simple setting where i read that story many years ago, and a home with warm colors inside and plenty of firewood to burn in its cold winters, and a wood paneled library to suffice for a lifetime’s good reading, and a white-painted balcony with two lounge chairs and a view of the evergreen aawooj and the mighty maagu mountains that was the backdrop of my simple rural childhood.

~ by safrang on May 28, 2009.