When I awoke, I looked out the airplane window and saw brown. I couldn’t tell whether I was looking at dust up as high as the plane, or whether I was looking at an optical illusion that brought the desert up close to me. Regardless, I saw brown. For a little girl from the green hills of the Ozark mountains, this whirling brown dust was really unattractive. And it was BIG. I saw no trees, no lakes or ponds, no indication of a city, nothing but a vast expanse of brown dirt. I wondered what it would look like up close.

I was soon to find out. The Safi Airways flight attendants, beautiful young women in uniforms more western in design than I expected, came through the plane’s aisles and told us passengers to prepare for landing. We were almost there. As we approached Kabul, I noticed what looked like big fenced-in areas, very square, with different sized sections within each square. These fenced-in areas were far apart, and as we got closer, I could see that the square sections were actually buildings, probably some houses, with flat roofs, that were set apart like neighborhoods. I was probably looking at suburbs of Kabul!

When we landed, I was very nervous about what to expect at the passport control area. The company had given very explicit instructions about where to go and what to do after landing, saying that processing would take forever, so I expected long lines at every turn. That, thankfully, did not materialize.

We walked off the plane and through the jetway to an airport terminal that looked very old. Many of the signs, posted on the wooden columns in the room, were written in English and another language that I did not know, but surmised to be the Afghan language. In Dubai, the passport gates were stainless steel. In Kabul, they were old, worn wood. In Dubai, the floors and walls were pristine and clean; in Kabul, they were tired and dreary. Where the passport control in Dubai had been expedited by handsome young men in traditional white dress, the passport control in Kabul was expedited by nice-looking young men in military-type uniforms. I tried to surreptitiously see if they were carrying guns, but was thwarted because some silly man tried to take a picture. The expediter shouted something at him, and when he did not put away his camera fast enough to suit, the expediter rushed over to the would-be photographer in a manner that I would have considered threatening. Then it was all over.

In line at the passport control, I had my first experience of someone who was just rude. I wasn’t surprised by her actions; I had watched her and observed her attitude in the gate area in Dubai and decided that she ruled the roost. A family was traveling together: Papa and Mama, their grown sons, at least one daughter-in-law, and one infant. Mama was the first really overweight woman I had seen in native garb; she had to sit often to take a load off her feet and breathed heavily. In the passport control line, I was behind a man in western dress, and Papa was beside me. Papa indicated that I should advance in front of him in the line. Mama had moved up to stand beside the man in front of me, and politely, he indicated that she should advance in front of him. At that point, she motioned for the entire family to cut in the line with her. Papa, still next to me, hesitated, but she gave him a look that would turn most to stone and gestured for him to get up there and be quick about it. Bless his heart, he did what he was told.

Anyway, I was anxious about what the passport agent would say to me, what questions he might ask, so when it was my turn, I smiled brightly and said, “Good afternoon,” when I handed him my passport. He looked at my documentation and smiled at me and said, “Welcome!” That was it. I breathed more easily, although the hardest part of my trip was coming up. I knew no one would help with my bags, but I had to pick them up and drag them about 100 yards to my pick-up point. The cars can come only so close to the airport, and one of the parking lots I was going to have to cross was gravel and dirt.

The first surprise occurred when a man helped me with my bags. I think he was a self-employed porter who finds people at the airport and talks them into letting him help, for a tip, of course. But he helped me and didn’t ask for a tip or wait around for one. In Kabul, and in London and Dubai, after a passenger picks up his or her bags, the bags have to go through screening – all bags, nothing removed, just everything in its original container. Another man helped me through screening by taking the bags off the cart, putting them on the screening belt, and then loading them back up again to take to the front of the lobby. He did hang around for a tip, but it was worth it, because half of my work was then done. I removed the shrink wrap surrounding my bags – the company recommends doing that to avoid pilfering, and shrink wrap stations are numerous in the Dubai airport – stuck my laptop and iPad in the emptier of the two bags so I could stack the carry-on and the big suitcase, and then began the trek to find Chris, my security guard. My bags each weighed 50 pounds, and so my arms tired quickly. Kabul is higher in elevation than Denver, and though I didn’t feel ill, I did feel as if I should have lifted a few more weights before I began the trip! The wind was blowing hard, and it was hot, so I was winded more quickly than I like to admit.

The company had given me a map of the airport, but it was not accurate, so I dragged the bags farther than I needed to. In doing so, I dropped my mother’s trench coat and ran over it with both bags in the dirt and gravel parking lot. Great. Now I had to stop, pick it up, turn around, go BACK the several yards I shouldn’t have been on in the first place, and find where I was supposed to go instead. Fortunately, at that point, the map was inaccurate in my favor. I didn’t have to go as far as I thought I would have to go before I heard a friendly voice ask, “Deborah?” I replied affirmatively, and Chris took both the big bags from me. Barely able to breathe, I told him I would probably hug him. He laughed and took me to an armored vehicle.

Now, when I say “armored vehicle,” I’m sure you are thinking, “sleek, shiny, black Lincoln Navigator or Ford something or other.” No. I’m not sure what kind of SUV this was, but it was not only a dirty bronze color, it was simply dirty, inside and out – probably having something to do with the fact that it had been driven in a desert forever. It also was a very bouncy ride, which I figured out soon after we pulled out of the airport parking.

Before we left the parking lot, however, the driver told me where we would be going, that we would pass some checkpoints, that I was not to open my door or talk to anyone, and that I should fasten my seat belt. Then we started. We passed the first checkpoint as we left the airport and I found that there are few real roads on the route we took from the airport parking lot to the compound where I am staying. The first traffic jumble was at a roundabout. According to Chris, there are no typical rules of the road in Afghanistan, something I figured out as we maneuvered among the cars and trucks and SUVs in the roundabout. My driver certainly followed no American-type rules, but Afghan rules instead, as we drove down the road sometimes parallel to a car driving in the same direction on what was the size of a two-lane state highway. One driver kept coming at us to turn left, and our driver did not waver; we missed collision by a couple of feet because the other driver finally slammed on his brakes. We took some different turns through different checkpoints, and then I thought we were probably back in Arkansas.

The first time Max and I drove to see my great-grandmother in Paragould, Arkansas, I warned him that he needed to watch for the answer to the riddle: Why did the chicken cross the road? To get to the other side. Chickens are known to run amok on US highways in Arkansas. I remember driving through the state and seeing chickens leaving their perfectly good homes in the front yards of residents and darting out into traffic, only to attempt to run to the other side of the highway. If a driver didn’t exercise great care, the road kill could be, literally, yardbird. Max was disbelieving, of course, and then he saw it with his own eyes (Today, however, I assume such a sight would not be unusual, since many cities have amended ordinances to allow residents to keep chickens in their yards inside the city limits. Why anyone would want stinky old chickens as pets, I don’t know, but people do. Really, are eggs THAT expensive?).

Well, in Kabul, the animals crossing the road are not chickens. They are goats. We saw at least three sets of goat herders walking alongside the road, such as it is, with huge herds of goats ambling alongside. The cars and SUVs and trucks had to work to avoid hitting them. And that was difficult, because the road is not paved and is filled with deep ruts that the vehicles lurch in and out of.

As we passed along the road, I noticed that we were going through some sort of neighborhood, but not like any neighborhood I have ever seen. It looked to me as if bunkers the size of 18-wheel trailers were sitting on the side of the road, being used as living quarters, or storage, or as a dumping ground. Trash was everywhere. No grass was to be seen. Here and there, buildings stood with windows broken out, and bicyclists rode by them as if they were out playing or going somewhere to see someone. And goats marched by on the other side of the road.

We stopped at one more check point, and the driver got out of the car. Then Chris got out of the car. Then some man with a cloth over his nose and mouth indicated that I was to get out of the car. Remembering my orders, I merely shook my head and pointed to the driver and Chris, and the man left. The driver and Chris got back in the vehicle and we went through a gate. We drove another twenty or so feet, stopped at the final check point, and drove through another gate. I saw a grid of buildings laid out in perfect symmetry, buildings that looked like huge Monopoly houses, and I knew I was looking at my new, temporary home.