Halajan. “Life changes and you choose to flow with the river or you build a dam. In this case, flow. Let’s make some money. It can be fun.”
“Forget fun. I’m just hoping people show up,” Sunny replied. Maybe she’d be lucky and Jack would stop by, as he often did late in the day.
In the meantime, some entertainment would liven things up. She had her iPod and the speakers for music. But music wasn’t enough. Tonight they’d show a movie.
That afternoon, while the coffeehouse was quiet, she put on a large purple scarf and went out the back door, past her beloved generators, past Yazmina’s window and the pomegranate tree, and out the back gate to the narrow alley where her car was parked.
When she got out of her car on Chicken Street, a horde of young boys wearing the standard brown pants, shirts, and vests came whooping and begging for an afghani or two, their arms outstretched, their eyes laughing to belie their hunger. She’d made the mistake once of giving a few coins to a young boy who looked desperately hungry. The minute she’d turned her back, he was attacked by a mob of boys intent on stealing the money she’d given him. She’d tried to break up the fighting and was bitten in the process. Now she gave only to children who were selling something, anything, just so she wasn’t encouraging begging. It wasn’t as if it was acceptable to beg in Kabul; in fact, begging on the streets was new to the city, something that appalled Halajan. But it had become a way of life for the hundreds of thousands of people with no work, the displaced, the starving, the uneducated and disenfranchised.
When she got to her favorite store, she stepped inside and greeted the owner. “ Salaam alaikum, ” she said. “Anything new?”
“ Wa alaikum as-salaam, ” he answered with a small bow. “Definitely, much new. Check out my New Arrivals wall, over there.”
Sunny was, as usual, impressed with the store. It was well lit and organized like a mini Blockbuster back home. It was critical that she find something good to show, so that people would come back. The problem was that the only videos available in Kabul were pirated. You couldn’t rent one, so those for sale had to be cheap, and the legal versions were too expensive to sell. The pirated videos were secondhand versions—made illegally—sometimes impossible to hear or see, because the movies had actually been videotaped by some guy who snuck his camera into the movie theater under his jacket, or made in someone’s living room, where somebody copied an already lousy copy of a TV show or movie. Recently, though, more tapes were coming in from China, and though they were not the homemade variety, they were a gamble as well. So Sunny made it a habit of buying a few at a time to be sure there was something watchable. Today she picked up the complete first season of Grey’s Anatomy and the recent Academy Award winner Crash . She’d wanted The Man Who Would Be King , but it was so popular because it was about Afghanistan that there was a perennial waiting list. She added her name to it.
Sunny had ordered delicious sweets from the French bakery that brought her the warm, crusty bread each morning all the way from Carte Se, about a forty-five-minute drive in traffic, and Yazmina had agreed to work late to serve coffee. The coffeehouse was inviting at night, with its soft lighting and warm colors. Who wouldn’t want a place to hang out and talk and watch a great movie and drink the best coffee in Kabul?
Nobody, that’s who. Or almost nobody. At seven, Sunny wondered if there’d been a bomb or a roadside blast. She tried the walkie-talkie with the UN channels, but everything seemed normal. So she told herself maybe they would still come, that there was a lot of rush-hour traffic.
At 8:00, Halajan said, “No one’s coming. And why not? Because people are afraid, and they won’t go out just for a movie and some talk. You have to offer more. And then maybe
“Forget fun. I’m just hoping people show up,” Sunny replied. Maybe she’d be lucky and Jack would stop by, as he often did late in the day.
In the meantime, some entertainment would liven things up. She had her iPod and the speakers for music. But music wasn’t enough. Tonight they’d show a movie.
That afternoon, while the coffeehouse was quiet, she put on a large purple scarf and went out the back door, past her beloved generators, past Yazmina’s window and the pomegranate tree, and out the back gate to the narrow alley where her car was parked.
When she got out of her car on Chicken Street, a horde of young boys wearing the standard brown pants, shirts, and vests came whooping and begging for an afghani or two, their arms outstretched, their eyes laughing to belie their hunger. She’d made the mistake once of giving a few coins to a young boy who looked desperately hungry. The minute she’d turned her back, he was attacked by a mob of boys intent on stealing the money she’d given him. She’d tried to break up the fighting and was bitten in the process. Now she gave only to children who were selling something, anything, just so she wasn’t encouraging begging. It wasn’t as if it was acceptable to beg in Kabul; in fact, begging on the streets was new to the city, something that appalled Halajan. But it had become a way of life for the hundreds of thousands of people with no work, the displaced, the starving, the uneducated and disenfranchised.
When she got to her favorite store, she stepped inside and greeted the owner. “ Salaam alaikum, ” she said. “Anything new?”
“ Wa alaikum as-salaam, ” he answered with a small bow. “Definitely, much new. Check out my New Arrivals wall, over there.”
Sunny was, as usual, impressed with the store. It was well lit and organized like a mini Blockbuster back home. It was critical that she find something good to show, so that people would come back. The problem was that the only videos available in Kabul were pirated. You couldn’t rent one, so those for sale had to be cheap, and the legal versions were too expensive to sell. The pirated videos were secondhand versions—made illegally—sometimes impossible to hear or see, because the movies had actually been videotaped by some guy who snuck his camera into the movie theater under his jacket, or made in someone’s living room, where somebody copied an already lousy copy of a TV show or movie. Recently, though, more tapes were coming in from China, and though they were not the homemade variety, they were a gamble as well. So Sunny made it a habit of buying a few at a time to be sure there was something watchable. Today she picked up the complete first season of Grey’s Anatomy and the recent Academy Award winner Crash . She’d wanted The Man Who Would Be King , but it was so popular because it was about Afghanistan that there was a perennial waiting list. She added her name to it.
Sunny had ordered delicious sweets from the French bakery that brought her the warm, crusty bread each morning all the way from Carte Se, about a forty-five-minute drive in traffic, and Yazmina had agreed to work late to serve coffee. The coffeehouse was inviting at night, with its soft lighting and warm colors. Who wouldn’t want a place to hang out and talk and watch a great movie and drink the best coffee in Kabul?
Nobody, that’s who. Or almost nobody. At seven, Sunny wondered if there’d been a bomb or a roadside blast. She tried the walkie-talkie with the UN channels, but everything seemed normal. So she told herself maybe they would still come, that there was a lot of rush-hour traffic.
At 8:00, Halajan said, “No one’s coming. And why not? Because people are afraid, and they won’t go out just for a movie and some talk. You have to offer more. And then maybe
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