Well, hello Mr. Driver ...

One of the little idiosyncrasies abt Afghanistan is that they get their cars from all over. Now, I don’t mean they get some cars from japan, some from the US .. what I mean is that some of the pieces of the cars come from all over. I’ve ridden in what says on the outside to be a Toyota, but the steering column says VW, the chassis has that American comfort car feel .. the whole car is a sum of its parts. There is also little way of knowing which side the driver will be on until you get in the car. Our security team recommends that we sit in the back seat of the cars so we are harder to see, but I’ve grown tired of seeing Kabul through a head rest and since most of our cars have tinted windows (and I wear a scarf over my head), I’ve started to sit in the front seat. It was dark one night after work and a new driver was coming to pick me up. There was still a lot of snow on the ground so I was looking downward as I opened the door to grab the little hang bar to hoist myself over the poopy mess. It was just as I was angling my bum downward, that I introduced myself to my new driver who (as my unluck would have it) was in a right side driving position. Now some might be able to laugh this off, but in a country where you shake hands (at most) with a man you already know, sitting on the lap of someone I had just met flies in the face of the cultural norm. Naturally I sheepishly said my best version of pardon me in Dari (boo bash-een) and sat behind him in the back seat figuring we both could use a little “alone time.”