Have I Stayed Here Too Long?

Today I met an American woman who complained she’d arrived late in Kabul due to an air strike in Cairo. My first, thankfully unspoken, reaction was: Cairo’s been hit?! Thirty seconds later, I realized she meant the airline workers were on strike. Duh.

Ironically, tonight I experienced my first rocket attack, if one rocket can be said to be an attack. I was half-way to Dream Land, in that not-quite-awake, not-quite-asleep phase, when I was jerked awake by a loud boom. I lay in bed, wondering if I’d dreamed it, when I heard my fellow inmates talking outside and then sirens. A gray plume of smoke rose on the horizon, obscuring the lights from the nearby mountain. And when I turned up the radio I’ve spent so much time mocking, I heard a rocket had landed near the Ministry of the Interior and a hospital.

I’m awake now, wishing I wasn’t, but too wired to sleep