In Mr. Karimzai’s guest house

Dear friends,

here is my next chapter in Kabul/Afghanistan.

Ahmad did not show up. I went down to the reception to look for him. But his college has the only answer to me, that he comes in the evening. My mouth is open, I can’t believe, he promised to bring me to his uncle’s place in the morning. At around 6pm I went down again, Ahmad was there, he arrived at 4pm and did not call, as promised, when he arrived…… and tells me now, that we move the other day….. hä….???

Next morning again nothing happend, I am „walking“ up and down in my little hot room….. I feel I have to do something…… I sit down in meditation seat for a while, Nasim calls…. on my display I see „Nasim room“ that’s the way I remember people better, name and something how we met or other ‚marks‘. I can come he says, and mentioned, that his brother moved out, so he has the full space for himself….. I pack my things and again down, still hoping that Mr Karimzai arrived. Anyway…. 2 hours passed by, he did not show up and I leave the hotel. Waking to Nasim. After some help of people on street I find him. We are walking to his room. He also stays in a very full student hostel and had a little area for hisself, protected with a self installed door in front. The room is 2,5×2,5m big or a little bit smaller. ….????…. in the hall every room group has a gas heater to prepare meals and a improvised half a quare meter ‚kitchen“. Anyway we have a nice day together incl a time in a nearby park….. his cousin comes in the evening to stay for the night…..and at the end of the day I walk back to the hotel. 

Next morning Ahmad is there. Yes he has to ask Mr Karimzai if I can come to his guest house, today. I walk with Ahmad through the old city of clay houses to find him…. in the middle of a dusty construction side…. he bought this property…. also to have more space and build his son Naseer (17) and others a teaching space. Yes, I can come. Ahmad shows me the poor conditions of my future space…. puh…… packing, thanking my hotel room, as I always do, when I leave the place…. towards my future. The guest house is build in front the family house. Everything is build from clay and looks a bit old. The entrance area is a big long long path towards the family house with a outflow drain. All the buildings have 2 floors, the path is overbuild. Getting up to the next level my eyes have to adjust to the darkness, the stairs appear shadowy. First door right is my room. Some mats are laying on the ground, at the middle of the room a metal bed in ‚russia style‘ (I know this kind of bed from Georgia, hanging metal constuction, so you feel like a new moon, resting in there).  Behind a dusty window a overbuild small messi dusty courtyard. Between the roof and the next wall a 50cm gap so some some little light comes in, a little connection to nature….. everywhere dust. ….. for the night I get 2 sheets, I am so happy for that – one for the matress, one to cover my body and, yeah, I have my mosqito net. Nizar,37, another son, hits with a stone a nail into the ceiling, mosquito safeness….. ?. I am still a bit exhausted from the last adventure and I see myself facing the next cleaning and space building project. ….. the bathroom is also in a very messi situation. The main living room has a big window towards a side street and here are some guest at home. A elderly poet with a Afghanian teid turban, another elderly men, Pobad, and some others. During my stay, the most guest came from my guest families home province Kunar. For example 2 elderly teachers, doing some paperwork in Kabul. Or a father and son, selling bananas and apples on a rolling stand on the streets…..

Next morning Nizar comes along. He works for the High Education Ministry (nearly everyone in this family has a job in or for the different ministries). All day long we visit one University after the other, privat and government universities, and really some good connection seems to arise. Very helpful. We need really nice people, as well engaged students and some nice professors and other ‚important‘ persons. In the evening we are back I feel still a bit helpless with this massiv cleaning need. Here and there I look a bit around and I see in every corner just a mess. 2nd night in the new moon bed and second night I can’t sleep.

Mr. Karimzai and Nizar explain a few times that I am invited also for the food,  But my repetitive explanation, that I am vegetarian and that I have a onion allergy get highly ignored. Mr Karimzai says that I can eat there food as they do it, afghanian style. It will take about 10 days until they accept my eating needs. They have a super delicious full corn bread. Uuuhhh….. In the beginning I drink also green tea, they serve, but after some days I have to understand, that my body can’t coop with it. Even if I drink only in the morning, my system is so overactive, that I can’t rest in the night. So I have to also stop drinking the yummy green tea.

First night I prayed with the group of guests and we spoke afterwards, how my prayer is different from there’s. Actually I do the same prayer movements than everyone else. This family is Sunni, so one movement is a bit different from the Shiia prayers, but I adjust. As in any tradition my prayer is in silence, so I do not repeat any arabic words even so I know some of them. But I do every movement a bit slower until I feel something. In my time in Muslim countries I learned to love the movements, they have power, but I need to make it a bit slower. A prayer without my heart is just not possible to me. Even though I hear in the next days, that someone of the group appeciated, that I prayed once with them, I feel a lot of scepticism and not the needed trust in me, that I maid do right, ‚you are just not a real muslim‘ and it has to be ‚ that way’….. I feel not excluded at all for the next prayers, but I also feel not really accepted, not trusted, that I found a good way for me, and it maid adjust by itself after a while….. So I decide, if I do pray, I do it in my room. I don’t like to discuss every time after a prayer. I don’t feel the suggestions I get are coming from a wholesome place, it just has to be as Mohammad said, point…… It does not mean, that I do not appeciate there doing and discipline and group being, sharing together a spiritual path, not at all. I love people who practise together, a beautiful and basic part of the day.

The next day the energetic heavy works starts. From the beginning I have Nazeer (17), the youngest son of the family by my side. We are witnessing the dirty blankets and mats lying around in one corner, smelling badly. Everything comes up in the sun, so she maid help cleaning some smell!!??…. other blankets and even the carpet is smelling so badly, Nazeer looks for a vakuum cleaner, to vacuum the carpet. But this is just to much. After a while he has the solution. The carpet has to be washed. So we roll him together and he brings the heavy one down to the girls, who have now a big task to do. Underneath the carpet is a layer of plastic. Sooooo dirty. It also has to be moved and cleaned. The job becomes with every step bigger. I already bought some cleaning utilities, but he organises some more old fabric. So we start washing the walls. It must have been years someone did that last time. On one side of the room, there is fresh cement used to fix a hole. I learn, that the big explosion from 6 weeks earlier – it was 800-1000m away, made the old house shake, and caused this problem. I am a bit shocked, never thought that it would have had that badly effect, but true it was a very big blast. So, the hole was not fixed well, so Nazeer and a cousin make some more cement……. With every square meter of washing the walls and any other effort the room becomes more and more light. What a job. That’s the way of a pilgrim sometimes, when I come to a place like this, I have to create some space, just where I am first, to start working from there. If there is no space where I am, I have to create some space.

Even though the room is not ready yet, it will take all together 3 days, I start in the late afternoon to clean the bathroom. All the guest of the house do they washing ritual before praying in this super ugly messi, dirty bathroom. How can you clean yourself in such a dilapidated, bad smelling bathroom, seems not to be cleaned in month or years. No place in the bathroom can be touched….. Mohammad had some so many rules for Moslems, but I guess he forgot to tell, that they also have to clean the areas where people clean themself. The bathroom also will need 3 days to be ready and cleaned again. I know, that I took my first shower there, 5 days after arriving. (But the shower is broken, also no warm water -it’s summer, no problem – so you have to use little buckets to clean yourself.) With Nazeer we did some signs, I also bought a wiper and sponges, so hopefully people learn to clean after themself.

Another ugly thing appears. Some of the guest have some chewing tabak in there mouth, if there are done, they just spit it out in the stair hall. Or even spit some spittle out in the same hall or the bathroom floor. So disgusting. How can they do in a house, where they are guests. In the beginning I just could not believe and it still shakes me…. what a disrespect……  some also, when there are done with the tabak, take the ball out and place it underneath of the carpet……. Even though this is another culture, not possible to say nothing…….

So for all my time at Mr Karimzai’s guest house I slept on a less but still smelling mat, later I realised, there are also some very little fleas and lices living in there, they like to bite around the ancles, knees and ellboes….. The mats are just not refreshable. They are made from sheep wool, covered by some fabric. A second fabric is covered around the first one. (I love this kind of mats so much, I did some of them in Armenia) so the second layer of fabric is supposed to be cleaned at least once a year,  but not done for years. So the dirt went all the way into the mat. Only solution now is to make new once.

Nisar organized in the following days some events. So once I was invited at a meeting in a privat university to discuss what to do about peace for Kabul or Afghanistan.  The University seemed to have already something in mind, a cultural exchange with a University in Parkistan. My idea of making peace birds, starting to clean the Kabul river, or bring a homeless family away from the street…. they did not like it so much….. but it does not matter, whereever we begin with a good intention, it will help to create a better world. Every step is precious.

Another time he brought me to a festival. It was a bit outside if Kabul, surrounded by big mountains. The conference center was on a smaller mountain located, beautiful gardens around. The first time after one month in Kabul I enjoyed so much the fresh air…… uuuuhhhhh. It was a Pashto festival, outside under the sky, celebration this tripes culture, with lectures, poems and cultural music. A lot of ‚important‘ people where there. I was introduced to some of them. During the evening a had to give two interviews.

For 3 or 4 days the kids of Karimzai’s family came to my room. I started with doing some peace birds and offering colours and papers. Because they loved to become so much attention, they started to bring me so many painted and folded presents, that I started to decorate one corner of the room with around 50 gifts. Soooo much love. But after some days I felt, I am not a kindergarten, I am very happy to continue the work, but parents need to at least witness what I am doing, but better somehow participate in it – at least a little bit. In Moslem culture, kids don’t become so much attention. They are just there but often parents are not playing with them….. they are just around….. some kids really understand the peace bird thing, took them home to paint and write on them ‚Peace and Love‘ and even distributed them on the street.

One Friday morning Mr Karimzai and his son Nizar brought me to a wedding. All kinds of people where present, many of them work in the ministeries, also a member of the Afghanian parliament was present. In one moment I asked him, if he could help me to prolong my Visa for Afghanistan and he said ‚Yes‘ he can do that and he has the power to do so. I made the mistake not to take his phone no and trusted that my hosts, who knew him good, would help me the next days with it. I asked Mr. Karimzai in the evening, if he could take me next day, because I knew he had a meeting with him next day. But no answer.

Anyway I had to find a solution for my Visa situation. If I could not stay in Afghanistan, I anyway had to get a Visa for Pakistan….. Pakistan has a policy that you can only ask for there Visa in your home country, what I knew….. There were 2 more possibilities to get a Visa for Pakistan. Having a work Visa in Afghanistan  ( so you could have a 3 weeks visit Visa for Parkistan, after you come back to Afghanistan) or asking for a letter from my German embassy, certifying that I do a peace walk, or this could be also done by the Afghanian tourist ministry (But both have a bad relationship in the moment) Then there have to be done a request to the foreign ministry in Pakistan. This would take 2 weeks…. if there is no answer coming, it’s a ’no‘. And you could get also a 3 weeks visit Visa.  I did not have so much time in my actual Afghanistan Visa left, so I did not follow the option – I had to drop the idea of walking through Pakistan. Uhhhh, that was hard.

I applied for a Indian Visa and got now a 12 month multiple entry Visa, what allowes me to stay 90 days in a row in India. Because time until 5th of August was running short and I saw , that all the flights to India were very much booked, I went on advise of Nizar to a travel agency to reserve a flight until I have the India Visa in my passport. It took only one day more. But then suddenly the flight was not reserved anymore……. ?????

So……. Mr Karimzai offered to help me next day. And then a big thing for me took place……..!!!!!!!!@

All the time in Afghanistan people do tell me things, which they dont do. I don’t know how many times I waited for someone, patiently, sometimes unpaitintly and I was just not willing anymore to continue so. And I told some people earlier, that they provoke, that I have to get unfriendly or very loud, because they are otherwise not listening or believe me. I felt this energy rising up in me here and there before and it seemed just a matter of time, that I had to be loud. But for a long time, I did not agree with that action, because I don’t believe in this kind of talking. But now the time had come. It feels a bit like the rage Jesus had in the temple, to shake up people, that there action is not healthy.

What happend. Mr Karimzai did not show up in time. I called him and he said, he is there in 15 min. After 15 min no one there. I called him again, he said, I am there in 10min. I was standing on the street in front of his house and started to screem in the phone. It was a clear rage energy rising up from some place close to my spleen. I told him: no he has to come now imideately…… this game has to stop now, he has to do what he is promissing or inform me that he is not in time…… he will be there in 5min, he said and he did.  But the game was not over. Sitting in the car I continued talking to him in that way. I told him also, that this is not ‚me‘ talking anymore. This is a message from God, from Allah through me to him. He was aware, that Allah has sent me to him, to support my work…….I told him, that I am still thankful what he all did for me, and to the same time he could have done with such an ease so much more for me and the peace work, he has so much good connections and he did not use it for all the time. It would have been so easy to make the connection with the member of the parliament for a longer visa possible, he felt earlier that he has to help this peace walker, but he did not do, he let the peace walker pay and wait in the hotel, he did ‚offer‘ this peace walker the most messi room and bathroom he could offer. How can someone invite a peace walker into such a situation……  how could he disrespect his guest need for vegetarian food….. and so on. I had a lot of examples to present and for me it was clear, here is not ‚me‘ speaking……. this is from another level. And it had to be so loud, because here is noone listening to you, when you speak in a normal and loving way. (we solved the problem with the flight ticket in between all this talking, it was more or less a lecture). When Mr Karimzai came home, he told his youngest son Nazeer, what happend during the day and ‚Thomas‘ was right.

When I said goodbye to him that day at lunch time, I told him also that I am so grateful for everything what he has done for me and that I still very much love him.

The energy went on inside of me for a long while…… and its another break through to the being I really are. And I am still kind of grateful what happend. The next day in the city, I was there with another energy, I felt it ……  In the afternoon Nazeer and his teacher colleges had invited me at a private afternoon school. I spoke more confident and deeper to the students. I spoke out of a deeper connection, with clarity and sometimes witnessing, what comes to my mind, what to talk about.