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82 nineteen Indian Holiday Without realizing it, people get used to everything, even the most absurd situations. It wasn’t until I went to India that I grasped what kind of life I was leading in Kabul and how little personal freedom I had left. NATO is very generous with its civilian staff in Kabul and schedules rest periods out of the country every three months. Unlike my co-workers, however, for one reason or another I hadn’t been able to pull the plug for six months. Seemingly out of the blue, I found myself walking around Connaught Circus in New Delhi, where Francesca and I had decided to spend Christmas in 2008. It felt so unreal. Time and space seemed to vanish, as they do in dreams. It was as if it was all happening only in my imagination: the lights, the music coming from the shops, chaotic sidewalks packed with people. Francesca had arrived in Delhi from Italy a day before me and I’d met up with her in front of the airport. Just hugging and talking face to face seemed like a dream, and it took me a moment to get used to it. The first night we wandered around the old city. Kabul seemed so far away, with its dust, sirens, suicide bombers, and uniforms, even though India was still in shock itself over the Mumbai terrorist attack, and there were a lot more police around than usual. I remember at one point during that strange evening I got a call from my deputy, Nick Williams, whom I had left holding the fort in Kabul. Francesca and I were having dinner in a restaurant, a strange place with a vintage Balilla car parked right in the lobby and lots of Asian tourists. I don’t remember exactly what Nick said during that call, office stuff without a doubt. But I do remember exactly what I told him: that for the first time in my life, I’d stopped working and been able to forget everything 19-2423-0 ch19.indd 82 6/3/13 1:53 PM Indian Holiday 83 in a few hours. This was exactly what had happened—I’d left Kabul just that morning and it felt as though days, even weeks, had passed. The strangest thing about the entire holiday in India was not having bodyguards and being completely free to move about. At times I looked around to see where my Tuscania guardian angels might be lurking, and not seeing them nearby left me dumbfounded. I was free to go out, walk around, do as I pleased for as long as I pleased, but I needed to accustom myself to this new freedom. We did everything we’d talked about, Francesca and I, when we’d planned our trip on Skype. We went to the colorful cities of Rajasthan, we walked up and down the ghats of Benares for three days, slept in old Maharajah palaces, spent a night on a rat-infested train to reach the fort of Jaisalmer (OK, we hadn’t planned that, but it was fine just the same); we visited the monkey temple, ate as many chapatis and lentils as we wanted, and re-read Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None straight through. Our days in India passed without mishap, each one the same as the day before, but there were times when I didn’t feel completely at ease. I was apprehensive, restless, I got annoyed for silly reasons (mainly with tuk-tuk drivers who tried to rip us off). Sometimes my reaction to a hitch, even something very minor, was absolutely over the top. Indeed, we were no longer in the realm of “reactions.” At some point, Francesca must have thought something wasn’t working between us, or that I was losing the plot, but it had nothing to do with her. In a sense, it had nothing to do with me either. It was simply the fault of Afghanistan, which was reproaching me for leaving and trying to erase it from my mind. The evening I’d arrived, when I told Nick that I’d just put Kabul and the rest out of my mind, I’d been kidding myself. Indeed, exactly the opposite was true, because when I arrived in India, although I didn’t realize it, I spent my whole time comparing anything I saw with the things I was used to in Afghanistan: landscapes, people, food...

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