The interpreter and I were just coming back from a drive. As we drove closer to our final destination on base I stopped the SUV. We then gazed in awe at the sight of the mountains which mark the beginning of the Hazarajat in central Afghanistan.
Immediately surrounding us were American military equipment and many temporary buildings. Things that may be gone as soon as 2014. However, in the distance the eternal mountains loomed in a fog which gave them an impression of being out of this time, there but not really there. The interpreter and I spent ten minutes just gazing into the mountains and talking about the history of the region. We wondered what the Mujaheddin, the British, the Mongols, and Islamic soldiers who fought the militant Buddhists of the region for 400 years, and the Macedonian Greeks all thought when they saw these same mountains. We also discussed how the people of the region changed (and stayed the same) throughout the millennia. Seeing these beautiful works of physical geography kept us in the same place but took us out of time.
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