Every moment we have is precious

Something about it rang a bell.
But three years had passed, and at my age you can forget a lot in three years.
Still, as I read the news accounts of a bombing and massacre at a restaurant in Kabul, Afghanistan, something nagged at me.
Something about it rang a bell.
Maybe it was the fact the restaurant that had been targeted by the Taliban served Lebanese food and Peter, the guy who had asked me to travel to Afghanistan in 2011, loves Lebanese food.
Baba ganoush, couscous, humus, you name it, he loves it. We had dinner at a Lebanese restaurant in Dubai when making the trip over, and it’s only natural that he’d know where the best Lebanese food in Kabul might be.
But I was only in the country for two weeks, and the chance that I’d been there seemed remote.
Most of my meals, in fact, were at a chilly, basement pizza parlor beneath the “guest house” I stayed in while conducting a seminar in Mazar e-Sharif. I’d had a couple of memorable meals at lunch time with a fixer/interpreter by the name of Enyat at an Afghan place in Mazar when I was the only Westerner in the joint and sat in the farthest corner with my back to the wall, wondering how long it would take to reach the exit if something happened.
But my stay in Kabul was brief: A few days before my assignment for the Institute for War and Peace Reporting in Mazar e-Sharif and an even shorter time after my work was done and I was heading home.
Still, something rang a bell.
Finally, last week, I prowled through my study and found my journal from that trip.
And there it was.
It was Jan. 28, 2011. I’d just flown back from Mazar and would be in Kabul only briefly before heading back to Indiana.
“Peter and Quassim met my plane, and I’ve been at IWPR ever since. Ate and emailed in the early afternoon.
“The big news here is an attack by a Taliban bomber on the Finast supermarket where many foreigners shop. At least six, maybe eight, dead. Three foreign women.
“Immediately I got back online and emailed Connie, the girls, and the office that I am OK.
“A different part of the city. Still, it makes departure tomorrow seem like a good idea. Peter’s talking now to his wife Dina, calming her down.
“I hope my pre-emptive email got to people before they began to worry too much.”
The next day’s entry: “Last day here.
“We had dinner last night at Taverna du Liban, a Lebanese place. The city is suddenly quiet in the wake of Friday’s bomb attack on the supermarket. Fewer cars on the street. Almost no other Westerners out.
“We drove past the bombed out store on the way to dinner.”
And now, the site of that dinner has been bombed and attacked as well.
A suicide bomber detonated at the entrance to Taverna du Liban, where the security was tight. Armed guards and pat-downs were the rule. And after the bomb went off, gunmen rushed in the back entrance, killing 16, mostly foreigners to Afghanistan. Consultants, embassy officials, ex-pats, people trying to do a little good in the world as they saw it.
It is a dangerous world, whether you’re in Afghanistan or in a classroom at Purdue University.
And as I put that dusty journal back on the bookshelf in my study, one thought was clear: Every moment is precious.
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