Another #&^%ing wedding

I'm trying to duck out of another Afghan wedding. It's for one of my colleagues, who I really like. But I just don't think I can take another one.

Imagine a sweltering room built for 100 but packed with 300 women, all glaring at each other and waiting for the American to do something interesting. You can't communicate with these women, and you know in the next room, Afghan men are bellydancing together (I've heard this single-sex dancing gets oddly risque). Now imagine there's no food, not until at least 10 or 11 pm. Kids are crawling all over you because you're the oddball foreigner and are the best chance for entertainment they've got tonight. Little do they know you're fantasizing about punting them across the room. But you grin and bear it when the little ones jam their sticky fingers into your hair, rather than risk getting torn to pieces by a howling mob of Afghan women.

Alcohol might make the ordeal bearable. But the best you can hope for is a warm coke.

I've never seen such miserable affairs. In every other country I've attended weddings in, they're a time for celebration. Granted, nine times out of ten an Afghan bride is basically being sold into slavery. Maybe that's why the women's side is such misery. But men I've known who've gone to weddings here say it's just as awful on the guy's side of the curtain.

I think I feel a flu coming on.