Earthquake

On Tuesday night I was rudely awakened at 2:30am by the movement of my bed. My first thought was that someone had come into my room and was trying to kidnap me. My second thought was that this would have to be a really bad kidnapper as they were really shaking my bed. Finally, I had a very clear realization that it was in fact an earthquake, and then I rolled over and went back to sleep mid tremor. It turns out that it was a 7.6 on the Richter scale, which is a pretty big earthquake, but the epicenter was 140km away in the Hindu Kush mountains. The population in the mountains is very low so fortunately there was no damage. Still, I have since made a mental note that when I wake up in the middle of an earthquake, I need to be sure that the roof is not going to cave in before I go back to sleep!

The Hindu Kush mountains have a poignant name which means Kill Indian, so named because when the Indians tried to invade Afghanistan, so many of them died in these mountains that they were never successful in conquering Afghanistan. This and other facts I have gleaned from a great book that I am reading called, “The Bookseller of Kabul”. Highly recommended. (Thanks Per).