Call of doves preferred over call to prayer

The dead body of the once-pudgy puppy, sprawled out as if sleeping, was in the same spot this morning that I found it in a few day earlier while running on the undeveloped lot of land on Kabul’s south side.

Students in my U.S. foreign policy course last Sunday told me about the revulsion they experienced watching the closed-circuit TV footage of the man who methodically shot and killed customers in the lobby of a bank in Jalalabad in eastern Afghanistan a day earlier. Five armed suicide attackers killed 38 people and wounded 71 others, according to published reports. Four of the attackers were killed when their suicide vests detonated during gun battles with police. The fifth, who was filmed killing bank customers, was captured, according to Afghan police.

“I couldn’t sleep after watching it on TV,” said one student.

Nearly two months after the parliament was inaugurated by President Hamid Karzai, Afghan lawmakers have failed to agree on their leader. The credibility of the last September’s elections to the lower house of the parliament, or Wolesi Jirga, was shredded by widespread evidence of fraud. Demonstrations against the outcome as well as investigations have continued since then.

Last Tuesday was recognized as the 31st anniversary of Kabul residents’ revolt against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

Outside, the amplified call to afternoon prayer drifts into the backyard of my guest house, though I would prefer the soft, familiar sound of mourning doves.