48. Death by a toppling Bukhari

Well, I always thought that my downfall in Afghanistan would come in the form of a rocket or a suicide bomber, but the other night, it almost happened in the most un-glamorous way I could have ever imagined. We have just installed a wood burning Bukhari (traditional heater) in our living room and for the sake of keeping the feng shue of the room in tact, we decided to improvise by extending the pipe clear across the whole room and secure them with nylon wires to the ceiling. I know some of you are already laughing but hey we really thought it would work. So over the next couple of weeks, we noticed the nylon wire burning away from the heat radiating from the pipe but thought, it's OK, we'll fix it eventually. Then I stared noticing the pipe pulling apart in the center where they were connected and again we thought...oh we'll fix it over the weekend. Well, the Bukhari didn't want to wait til the weekend. On Sunday night, a bunch of us, including my friend who had just arrived in Afghanistan after 20 years, were sitting around and all of a sudden the pipes started coming apart and everyone jumped up to hold them up. Hands were burning, people were screaming, metal was banging around, smoke was coming out of the pipes. It looked and sounded like the aftermath of an attack. I meant to take a picture at the time of the chaos but I was more worried about not having the pipe fall on me, so I took one after we put it back together enough to stay up until the morning. You'll be happy to know we have now re-arranged the room so the pipe is shorter and closer to the wall on the other side of the room. So all is safe and quiet once again in mi casa. Aaaahhhh, the joys of living in Kabul. Hope everyone is having a better holiday season. Happy New Year.