So on Sunday morning I left for a quick trip to the Spanish-led PRT in Qal-i-Naw, which is pronounced, more or less, "call-ee now." I got back Thursday evening. Turns out that the weather is a bit unpredictable there. Back in 2009 when we learned we were coming here, we gave Afghan province names as the backup names for our cats. The rotund Niebla was given Jalalabad, since the word reminds me of Jabba the Hut. Tiger, who tends to bang his head against doors for no apparent reason, we called Wardak, since that sounded like a barbarian warrior a little short on brain power. And Qalinaw was the name we gave Parsley, since it sounded cute and delicate. Well, it seems I should have researched the weather a bit more, or at least taken a few more changes of clothes. It was cold, misty and foggy for four straight days, and the cloud cover wouldn't lift to let the planes land. Every day they sent a plane for us; every morning we heard it circling overhead for 30 or 45 minutes, then it would fly back to Herat, wait for a couple of hours on the off-chance the sky would lift, then fly back to Kabul. Not until Thursday morning did it get in. That was lucky, too; there was a snow storm moving in that would have trapped us there for another three to five days. In the bottom photo you get a view of the city itself, and the mosque stands out. What's of note, though, is the long strip of pavement running left to right, with some people walking along it. That's actually the airport landing strip. It's right in the middle of town, and in fact people regularly walk and drive across it and kids play soccer on it. When aircraft are due in, Spanish troops set up a perimeter along the runway and shoo the kids away and yell at the trucks to wait until the plane lands and taxis out of the way.
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