On The Road

After my solitary run this morning - I call it a run but there are runners and there are runners, and I am not really a runner - I checked the news from the war zone on my computer - as I write, the artist is giving a two-hour art lesson to our daughter's class - and saw there had been a suicide bomb on the very road I remember travelling down perhaps most only a few weeks ago. Travelling this road was like a race against the unknown. It goes back to the security dilemma of what is risk and what is threat, and whether your strategy should be based on both, or, as some mavericks suggest, threat alone. It seems to be both at present. As a result there is not a great deal of movement or traffic and that is bad news for some of the aid. I was telling the artist about this road shortly after I returned. I didn't want to say too much but I remembered for example the man standing on top of his cart as he whipped a slow and slightly morose-looking mule into action. A woman was huddled in the back, bouncing up and down and shrouded in grey and black. You could not see her face, which for security rather than religious reasons alarmed my protectors, and they surveyed the vehicle with a professional vigilance. Another moment of concern came when a people carrier drove alongside us and one or two black-turbaned faces stared out at what they could see through our vehicle's darkened windows. We sped off. Later, a man was spotted on a mobile phone. He immediately looked away. We turned sharp right, and sped off again, the medical kit bouncing in front of me and the trauma kit on standby behind. Just then, two children rushed across the road and one stopped directly in front of us. Because the older boy obviously did not know what to do he just froze and looked even more of a threat, but on this occasion the driver just drove round him, a cloud of dust still floating slowly back to earth as we disappeared towards the airport. At the airport I was told one story about a group travelling in a similar vehicle when a suicide bomber suddenly leaped on the bonnet. He didn't explode, the bomber. For a few bizarre moments, the driver and him simply stared at each other, until, coming to his senses, or so he thought, the driver did what he felt to be the most natural thing in the world. He switched on the windscreen wipers. Anyway, six people died in the blast this morning. (How green, how fresh all that grows.) This is not good news. Like our driver, we must protect the children, as the artist is doing in class today, but we must get there, too.