Rotating Bar

No, I am not talking about the Space Needle rotating restaurant, but rather the Herat expat community weekly bar held on Thursday evenings (as Friday is the day off) that rotates between different organizations. On my last night in Herat I was a lucky guest of one of our partner organizations and gained entry into the exclusive event and insight into the main social activity of the week for the expats of Herat.

Afghanis, and especially Afghan women, are not supposed to drink, but the mayor of Herat makes a special exemption for expats and allows this event to take place on the condition that there are absolutely no Afghans present. It was a fun evening meeting the characters of Herat and getting to know my colleagues in the partner organization a little better. I have not laughed so much in a long time.

I left Herat the following morning with a slight hang over (on two G&Ts – I’m a light weight), but suffering more from sleep deprivation. The flight from Herat to Kabul had no exact departure time – I was supposed to call the ticket office at 8am and ask for the reporting time. Instead, my alarm went off at 8am, I snoozed it, and two minutes later, the country director from the NGO that was hosting me was knocking on my door. Departure time was 9:30am. I jumped out of bed, threw my things in my suitcase and headed for the door. As I approached the gate of the compound, I realized that something was not right – I had no headscarf. It is amazing how quickly you get used to feeling naked when not wearing a headscarf. The problem was that I had packed the scarf and my suitcase was already in the car beyond the gate where I could not go with a bare head. I had to ask a male expat colleague to go out the gate and into my suitcase to bring me my scarf so I could walk the 10 ft to the car. If I hadn’t found my scarf, I guess I would have had an original excuse for missing my plane!