hitting too close to home

So yet again, I find myself being too close to the headlines...today at 1430, I was in my room, watching TV in bed, as it's Friday, our one day of the week off, and BOOOM. I knew immediately it was a bomb of some sort and very close by.


Hmmm, what to do, I though. As I gathered some belonging (my laptop, a book, personal docs and change of clothes), and my flap jacket and helmet, almost immediately, two of our guards ran upstairs with AK47s in hand, as my room is next to the outdoor veranda. I, doing exactly what you are not suppose to do, which is get closer to the incident location, also went out on the veranda. We saw swarms of people running out of one of the largest super markets in Afghanistan, Finest, which is literally 3 buildings away from my house. Glass and debris were strewn all over the street. I saw people wounded, and I saw the surrounding shopkeepers pulling all their stock inside and close up their spots.


"What do you guys think happened?" I asked the guards. "We don't know yet, could be a gas tank..." But then we heard our neighbors screaming at us "Suicider! It's a suicider!" One of the guards looked back at me and said "It's better you go inside." I wanted to protest and say "No, I wanna watch!" but I realized, this was no joke, so I did, although only for a about 15 minutes, and then I went back outside and watch for another two hours, and that's when all the chaos really began, as this video shows, with my house making an appearance a few times:

It's been about 7 hours since the incident, and we still don't know much. What we've heard is a suicider went in there, open fired a bit, (and I did hear shots before the explosion), threw a grenade on the ground, and proceeded to blow hismself up next. The Taliban claimed responsibility immediately, and in their statement said they were targeting the infamous security contractor, Blackwater, now known as Xe. We haven't heard any reports confirming the presence of Xe staff at Finest as of yet. Although a reported 6 people have died, including a baby and there were shops on our street whose glass got blown, in some sense, we were all lucky that the explosion happened inside Finest. The building itself, although heavily damaged, contained the explosion's shock-waves and any shrapnel from penetrating the surrounding area. My house being so close would definitely have suffered damages had the bomb been detonated outside, similar to what happened to my office as a result of the December 2009 bomb.


This one hit too close to home, literally b/c it was so FREAKIN close. But for me it's also beyond what all the other ex-pat in Kabul are thinking, "OMG, I shop there all the time." For me, it's beyond my insanely close proximity and regular frequency of the store. I have been going to Finest since they first opened in 2008, and those guys all know me. I've watch them as they've expanded the business to from one level that just sold food to two stories selling clothes, appliances, DVDs and household goods, and watched as they opened another location across town. They've always been so good to me, such as letting me come back to pay later when I didn't have enough cash in hand, or specially ordering Iranian yogurt for me. And I've ALWAYS told them how proud they should be that Finest is one of the few true indigenous symbols of progress in Afghanistan, meaning they developed the business on their own, it's not some aid project "brought to you by the American people." They have the best selection of local and international products (and i mean from local almonds to tortillas to Thai coconut juice). They are the first store in Afghanistan that had bar code scanners, electronic receipts and accepted credit cards! They have hired women to work behind their counters, not something u often see even in Kabul. They've even started selling their own brand of take-away salads and baked goods! As I witnessed each of these changes, I always said to the owner, "MashAllah, you guys are doing well; good for you." And he would always graciously but humbly said thank you. Today I had to watch him get carried out of the store by two men, his blood dripping on to the street from sustained injuries.


So to me, the Finest stores really represent a true success story and while I feel sadness obviously for those who lost their lives today and their families, I dunno, for some reason it's the Finest family that I feel the most sorry for. The store is a place where all people, both Afghans and internationals could go and have a choices various products and access to wide spectrum of goods. Materialistic or consumeristic? Maybe in some sense. But it's that fact that Finest represented options in a country that for many years was only trying to survive. That people can't even enjoy the little tiny bits of progress without having to worry about some ignorant suicider walking straight out of Friday prayers just to blow himself up (and I assure u, based on the timing, that's exactly what happened), killing innocent people, including an three year old Afghan child, that's what's really hurting my heart today....