Preparations

How does one begin preparing for two years in Afghanistan?

Preparing for the actual travel is one thing. I find myself seated cross-legged on my bathroom floor, surrounded by a world in miniature – Little bottles of shampoo; little bars of soap; funny little foot scrubbers. I begin to wonder whether someone will also have shrunk my destination (Little Kabul?).

Kabul doesn’t feel little at the moment. Nor does this move. The floor and bed of my sister’s bedroom, covered with what will become the contents of my father and my suitcases, attests to the bigness of this move. Apparently two years in Afghanistan roughly translates to six toothbrushes, twelve boxes of tampons, two blow-dryers, five chap-stick tubes and tons of hair things. I find all this utterly absurd and rather overwhelming.

Six and a half years ago, I found myself in a similar state, this time cross-legged on my parents’ living room floor. Piled high around me were empty boxes and suitcases, and stacks of clothes and sheets and stuff that were meant to have been neatly packed into them. I looked, half-crying, at my mother. “I’m not ready,” I said. To this day, neither she nor I are sure whether I was referring to lack of progress I had made in filling boxes or whether, instead, I was saying something deeper and more significant. “I’m not ready … for college, for leaving, for life.”

Of course, I was ready and off we drove, car packed full of all my freshman belongings. By the time we arrived, something had changed and I settled in quickly. My words to my mother were my only real hint at this vague fear I held that I was not at all prepared for the next stage of my life.

Today, I am tempted again to say, “I’m not ready.” The truth is that I’m not sure what exactly to be ready for. Afghanistan feels like an amorphous fog with promises of adventure, growth and challenge just beyond the next wisp of white cloud. Through the veil, I think I begin to see the snow-covered, dusty roads packed full of cars and trucks maneuvering themselves around one another. I think I get a glimpse of men and women wrapped tightly with dark grey-brown shawls. For an instant, I even wonder if I smell or hear something of this new and foreign place. But then, just as soon as these visions begin to crystallize – poof, a wind blows in and everything vanishes again behind a new blanket of cloud.

On Monday, I will load up a car with suitcases and bags. I will look around this house in which I have lived since I was twelve, but which my parents plan to sell for an impending move to Spain. I will step on a plane, kick off my shoes under the seat in front of me and buckle my seatbelt. I will vaguely hear the stewardess recite the safety procedures I have heard hundreds of times. And then we will begin to taxi off and I will watch this country begin to move, slowly at first with a low grumble and then quicker, whirring higher. And I will say goodbye to this country as my home for the last time. When the buildings beneath me have almost vanished, I will look away from the window, close my eyes, thank God for wonderful years here and this time, I will say, “I am ready.”