The huge sign had to be completely redone as human depictions such as Neptune are discouraged by Islamic custom. Noor’s two hajji uncles advised him to redo the sign without Neptune. My wise-ass son remarked that Neptune is not human, but a god.
The hajjis laughed good-naturedly and hugged Kirk saying, “There is but one God and that is Allah, and Mohammed is His messenger, blessed be his name.” Remarkably, my son was respectful and thanked the hajjis for the lesson. Often he’s snotty about such things, but I warned him repeatedly to show the greatest respect for anything to do with Islam.
Now the sign has a large trident with, “Neptune’s Inn, Good Food, Lodging, Water Beds, Camping, Garden and Parking.” It took Kirk and five guys to lift the sign to an eight-foot high platform above the hotel entrance.
My son wrote something in his journal that he wants to share with the world:
Chicken Street is a long market place with lots of shops along the way, sort of a bazaar really. When Mom checked-out the copper-ware, brass pots, clothing, carpets and other things of interest, she thought the prices were too costly, maybe that’s why the crowds are at the bazaars and not on Chicken Street.
Most tourists were scared of Kabul when the fighting, really just a small riot, was in Mazar-a-Sharif, a few hundred kilometers away. That’s starting to affect business in Kabul. Now the government is dividing the huge estates among poor farmers. Mom says, “It’s about time.”
TV is only a year old and the picture is piss-poor. All they show on TV is news in Pashtun which I can’t understand. Lately there’s ear-splitting music from East Gabib, wherever the hell that is. I keep asking people where is East Gabib, but no one seems to know.
The TV was blaring in the lobby when I came down for breakfast and I made a bee-line for the café. Mom and another woman were sipping coffee when I joined them. Mom introduced me to Rosy as I stood by the table. Rosy, all beautiful six feet six of her, stood to shake hands. I felt like a midget next to her.
“Your mom and I were in high school together. I’m now on the American Embassy staff, to advertise American women’s basketball, I think. But not really, I’m officially the Cultural Attaché,” said Rosy.
We sat down and I ordered breakfast. I asked, “Excuse me for asking, but what does a cultural attaché do?” She replied, “These days I’m supposed to keep an eye on your mother and you, to keep you out of trouble.” We all burst out laughing.
Rosy continued, “Seriously, my field of study is Middle East tribal art and I’m employed to implement U.S. support for Afghan tribal art, that is, when I’m not shooting baskets. By the way we have a basketball game at eleven and need a tenth player. Lela volunteered you. If you’re willing I’ll buy you lunch at the embassy and introduce you to some cute girls, what do you say?”
Well, that was an offer I couldn’t refuse and it turned out to be one of my best days in Kabul.
I wrote Paul an air-gram about these events. I emphasized my part in the Great Game and asked him what he thought of all this. Ten days later I got a wordy air-gram from Paul. His writing philosophy is ‘Why use one sentence when a paragraph will serve?’ It was so wonderful and tediously typical of him that I am compelled to include the full text:
My dearest love, my morning and evening star, I miss you so much, my right hand aches, and I have many wonderful dreams in which you have a starring role.
Your information about the Great Game is more significant than you may realize, at least to me. It relates to my interest in ‘energy transfer systems.’ Some researchers actually use that term, the Great Game, in reference to cosmic information transfer.
The Great Cosmic Game refers to the perpetual recycling of all energy-code-information in the Cosmos. Many in the scientific community believe that the Cosmos consists of energy in a multitude of geometries and forms.
I suggest that when your group plays the Great Game, you exchange energy in the form of information. People can’t help it. We are programed, by our genetic code, to transmit-exchange-transfer energy-information as spoken words, facial expressions, body gestures, written text, pictures, music—all of which are forms of electromagnetic vibrations, radiating waves of energy.
My favorite energy source is a woman’s smile, especially yours. When you smile at me, I experience a surge of energy coursing through my mind and body. I believe photons of light from your eyes to mine switch on nerve impulses and hormones, providing a surge of energy, sexual and otherwise.
The Great Cosmic Game is how we participate in Mother Nature’s energy game. While you folks confine your understanding to a quest for the hidden knowledge underlying business and political action, you are, in fact, playing the Great Cosmic Game.
We are all players and essential parts in the cosmic energy game. In the Information sciences, words such as: energy, code, data, information, knowledge, intelligence and program are all forms of energy. Quite literally, knowledge is power or energy.
All forms of energy contain an underlying code or program, something like a computer program. It is written, “In the beginning was the word,” suggesting that in the beginning was the code, the program. I believe that all forms of energy possess an underlying code.
The Cosmos seems to have an underlying geometric “curvature” code. The Earth “spins” on its axis, “revolves” around the sun in an “elliptical” “orbit.” Our solar system makes an elliptical “circuit” “around” our “spiral” Milky Way galaxy. Our galaxy does a circuit around our system of galaxies, which in turn circuits the Cosmos.
I placed quotation marks around words indicating cosmic geometry. The fact that most galaxies are “spiral” and “hexagonal,” “pentagonal,” geometries is part of our genetic double “helix” DNA—all of which underlie our human star shape.
Is it an accident that the human body has two arms, two legs and a head, five appendages, and there are five digits on our arms and legs, as well as five sense organs on our head, two ears, two eyes and one mouth-nose for taste-smell?
Wheels are nested within “wheels,” ellipses are networked within “ellipses.” There is a basic code at the root of all these energy systems. All curved energy motion begins with Pi, the circumference of a “circle” divided by its diameter. But many other codes are involved such as Phi the Golden Ratio for “spirals” and most all cosmic energy geometry.
The human body is a massive assembly of 100 trillion cells. Each cell contains about 25,000 genes. Each gene is a set of chemical codes, programs for transferring energy between and within cells. Within all the cells are chemical molecules and atoms. Within atoms are subatomic particles, such as electrons, protons, neutrons and quarks.
All these energy geometries are in perpetual “curved” motion, because curved motion accelerates-speeds particles, renewing its energy, like a car wheel revolving to renew battery energy. Giving rise to subatomic particles are energy “strings” that are so small it would take a trillion-trilliontrillion strings to measure one meter.
It is said that “Life begins on the sun.” And, for people who can see no further than the sun, this is true. But, radio telescopes in orbit will “see” much of the Cosmos. Formations of energy will be found that also play the Great Cosmic Game.
The Great Game of Cosmic Energy Recycling
I suggest that the entire Cosmos is alive, because all forms of energy are alive, from the smallest energy string to the Cosmos itself, IT’S ALIVE! What does it mean to be alive? No real agreement exists on defining life, so my theory is as good as any other. For an energy particle to be alive it must move, reproduce and have some degree of intelligence or code.
The Great Cosmic Game is the story of recycling energy in the Cosmos. In my view, the Cosmos is a perpetually recycling, living, totality of energy:
The Cosmos expands from a compact, unstable singularity (consisting of all weakened energy) into a new cosmos at 0° curving, cooling and expanding over a 14-billion year cycle. We are now at about 180° or 7-billion years, half
-way through the current cosmic cycle.
At 360° or about 14-billion years, black holes attract all weakened energy and each other, like big fish consuming smaller fish, until there’s only one “singularity,” super-concentrated Cosmos without space-time or dimension. The singularity remains in an extremely unstable geometry.
Like a tanker of gasoline compressed into a thimble, the singularity expands instantly at trillions of degrees of heat, cooling rapidly and expanding until the point of the next cosmic singularity, 14-billion years later. This is all speculation, of course.
The point is that we are all part of the Great Game of information-energy exchange. Your Great Game in Afghanistan is a real part of the Cosmic Great Game. At least that’s my take on it. Yours in horniness, Love, Paul
In February, 1979, the U.S. ambassador was murdered while a swat team stormed his kidnappers’ hideout. Since then all sorts of changes had taken place. My son brought a notice from school. The American school grades nine through twelve were going to be moved to Pakistan, probably just over the border, in Islamabad. It would be a boarding school, but the students would be bused back to Kabul on weekends. Lower grades would be moved out of Kabul.
My Afghan friends thought the shooting would initiate some type of military action. Looking across Chicken Street, I saw dozens of soldiers with rifles and bayonets. Rosy, Kim, Kit and I met for breakfast at the Neptune café. They assured me that there would be no military response and that it would all be settled diplomatically.
[After the April, 1978 coup, relations deteriorated. In February, 1979, U.S. Ambassador Adolph “Spike” Dubs was murdered in Kabul after security forces burst in on his kidnappers. The U.S. then reduced bilateral assistance and terminated a small military training program. All remaining assistance agreements were ended after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
Before the 1980’s Soviet war, Afghanistan pursued a policy of neutrality and nonalignment in its foreign relations, being one of a few independent nations to stay neutral in both World War I and World War II. In international forums, Afghanistan generally followed the voting patterns of Asian and African non-aligned countries. During the 1950s and 60s, Afghanistan was able to use the Russian and American need for allies during the Cold War as a way to receive economic assistance from both countries.
However, unlike Russia, America refused to give extensive military aid to the country as the government of Daoud Khan developed warmer ties with the USSR, while officially remaining non-aligned. Following the Marxist coup of April, 1978, the government, under Nur Muhammad Taraki, developed significantly closer ties with the Soviet Union and its communist satellites.
After the December, 1979 Soviet invasion, Afghanistan’s foreign policy mirrored that of the Soviet Union. Afghan foreign policymakers attempted, with little success, to increase their regime’s low standing in the noncommunist world. With the signing of the Geneva Accords, President Najibullah unsuccessfully sought to end the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan’s isolation within the Islamic world and in the Non-Aligned Movement.]*
My sixteen year old son Kirk, told us about his day. The Americans, and especially the students, had been strongly cautioned about kidnapping. They were told to stay in groups, to go only to public places, no solo dates, and they had been drilled about avoiding kidnappers or giving out information as to their goings and comings.
I suspected they were cautious about Kirk, since he and I had many Afghan friends. For my information, Kirk wrote the following in my journal:
Boy-o-boy, everyone is going mad. To start my exciting story, I’ll tell you how I rushed to school even though it was closed. The International School for American Students was closed for the preparation of a government festival tomorrow. They were closed late this morning. Even the baseball game was canceled at Newman field.
The pathetic thing is there wasn’t even school support for the festival and Mom gave me 100 AFs ($2.25) for a taxi so that I could attend school. It wasn’t so bad since I called Rachelle, a girl from school, to go out tonight. She said at 7 p.m. her friends and I could go somewhere.
I heard that she went to see Twilight’s Last Gleaming, at least that’s what her brother said, but she never showed.
This is life in Kabul, no schedules, no sense of time. People here just come and go when the mood takes them. They are taught to be suspicious of Afghans and each other.
The Americans are kind of paranoid of military, pickets, demonstrations, and Afghans in general. The American kids say the Afghans in the bazaars always try to rip them off. But, I am always well treated. Of course, they know I’m the son of the ‘Afghan Queen,’ as they call Mom.
The Afghan merchants say, ‘Oh, I’m just happy to be a poor man, just look into my shop.’ I begin to realize that life goes on here and these merchants are the privileged class. But, outside the cities and towns, most Afghans are impoverished serfs. My Afghan friends tell me they are trying to liberate the serfs by giving them possession of the land.
I phoned Sherry once again, she’s my American connection. I now realize that she has given me many wrong numbers. I don’t know if it’s accidental or intentional. After 30 minutes on the phone, I told her I wanted Jenny’s number not Rachel’s or Lisa’s. She claims not to know who I’m talking about, until I pointed Jenny out at the baseball game.
At the game I learned that my friends would go to Marco Polo’s tonight for spirits. So without warning I showed up as the stalker. Laurie says to me, “How did you know we were going here?” I replied that she spelled it out at the game: “See you all at Marco Polo’s tonight.”
Later that evening we went to the American teen center next to the Datsun place. We danced to a disco. The place was full of big lighting effects, revolving mirrored ball and lit dance floor. I danced with some gals I met for the first time. They were from Germany and Denmark, in their twenties, I think, and really sexy.
On the bus to the hotel I talked with Jenny’s boyfriend Chris. The stupid Hercules movies were fun, we both agreed. Films like the Sinbad series give kids a magical view of the Middle East and that is about as far from reality as you can get.
Chris told me that the embassy kids were given lessons almost daily on avoiding kidnapping. He and the other embassy kids were frightened and lived with an increasing sense of fear. I told Chris that I just finished reading the Amityville Horror. I said that I would bring it to school for him. It might take your mind off the kidnapping stuff, I said.
Here in Kabul, the Afghans and the kids at the American School have no sense of the threat of pollution and nukes. At school, we learn about feudalism and serfs in Europe, but no mention is made of serfs in present day Afghanistan.
At the end of the lesson, big mouth me told the teacher that a few miles outside of Kabul we could study serfs first-hand. The teacher, a Mormon, said that we must avoid insulting the Afghan government, and that means avoiding the Afghan issue of serfs.
I told the teacher that the Afghan government is trying to end serfdom. He agreed. We are all aware of the Afghan effort, but bringing up the subject in class might be considered interference by a foreign nation, he said.
As we walked out of class, he offered me a ride to the hotel and said, “The kidnapping and murder changed everything. Now, with the Russian presence, it’s a whole new ballgame, and the U.S. will be kicked off the playing field, I suspect.
“The new Afghan government called in the Russians, and the Kalq party leans toward the Russians more and more. Since your Mom is in business with some of the Kalq ministers, she is suspect. That’s why we are cautious with you, Kirk. We fear that you are passing information about the school to your Mom, and it’s natural for students to keep parents posted about school.”
Kirk told me about this and he told his teacher that he talked with me only about the school work and ball games. He did not provide specific information about students or staff. He explained to his teacher that he was aware of his awkward position as a student and und
erstood why he was not fully trusted by other students.
Today I was a baseball hero. I got a triple and a homer at the game this morning. I was hitting better than I ever thought I would. The next game in the early afternoon was so slow that I was able to play some tapes on my battery tape cassette player. It got so hot and the game became so tiresome that we ended it at mid-afternoon.
I was still hyped by the morning game and got a lift back to the hotel. Noor, Mike, Kit and Mom just finished their afternoon tea when I walked in with my Frisbee. Kit suggested we all play Frisbee in the cool-shaded garden. They were all quite pleased with the changes in the political landscape and said so openly.
My son is doing well at the American school. His main interest is making friends. Due to my business dependency on Kalq party officials, Kirk is only in contact with other teens at school and not after, except at an occasional movie.
I didn’t realize that I would be putting Kirk in such a position that he would receive a cool reception from American teens. Embassy staffers continued to invite my son to go riding and for basketball and ping pong. But, it was the same old story. American, Russian, and Chinese staffers continued to pump him for information or plant information for him to transfer.
The Italians and Afghans seemed to genuinely enjoy Kirk’s company. My friends at the embassies were kind to my son, but were pressured to patronize him. They viewed my son as an information conduit, and this I regretted.
Embassy staffers paid a great deal of attention to Kirk and I was grateful for that. Kirk realized what was happening, but didn’t let it bother him. In this regard he was getting quite savvy. He happily took each invitation in stride and mostly enjoyed himself in the process.
My son was reading and writing much more than he did in the States. The situation in Kabul encourages Kirk toward a more contemplative and reflective lifestyle. He was maturing noticeably and for that I was grateful. Yet, he remained a typical teen whose reading preferences included Amityville Horror and Things that Go Bump in the Night.
The Afghan Queen: A True Story of an American Woman in Afghanistan Page 26
