I'm a Black Hawk helicopter crew chief on my second deployment to Afghanistan. The mission is a painful bad joke, and I have long been ambivalent about the war.

I love flying, and I love my brothers in arms. But I miss my girlfriend and my family and friends back home.

This blog is my attempt to share with my friends and loved ones (and anyone else who cares to look) any beauty I can find in what is otherwise just another shitty year in another shitty place.

28th January 2012

Photoset with 1 note

Kabul, briefly: I like flying over this city because, so far, it is the only one. Most places we fly are extremely rural, just family compounds or qalats, or brick factories spread out over any one of Afghanistan’s many valleys. Some places are a bit more built up, with the occasional paved road and even -gasp- gas stations scattered here and there. Others look like something out of an archaeology book, with mud and stucco houses built on top of each other until you have one giant hillside amalgam of family compounds…

The point is, even the more built up, affluent areas which we fly over and to pale in comparison to Kabul. Nothing looks new. In fact, it is a very old city (over 3,500 years old!). Even the newer buildings look old, and the buildings currently under construction appear as though they are actually being built in the distant past.

Its anachronistic qualities are many. For example, this major metropolitan area (nearly 4 million people live in Kabul) is trapped under a layer of smog which is largely a product of the city’s many wood burning stoves.  

Flying over Kabul makes me wish I could experience the city first hand, instead of from the air, behind a machine gun.

  1. mysecondyear posted this