Kabul, Je T'aime

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00:04 

George Gavrilis 

This is Monuments Woman with Laura Tedesco. I'm your host George Gavrilis. This is our final episode on Laura's journey. If you are new to this podcast, we recommend starting with Episode 1. For everyone else, welcome back.

00:23 

George Gavrilis 

My heart is heavy today.  

00:27 

Laura Tedesco 

Hmm.  

00:28 

George Gavrilis 

My heart is heavy today, because this is our finale.  

00:32 

Laura Tedesco 

Yeah.  

00:33 

George Gavrilis 

I texted you earlier today to tell you this. And I just want to repeat it here because it's true. This has been one of the most meaningful experiences of my life doing this with you. And not just because we're friends. It's all the amazing people that you got to work with, that you brought to life in this podcast, the heritage work that you did, that is such an important feature of this troubled, troubled country that deserves so much better than it's experienced. And you've taken us on this journey. Thank you.  

01:09 

George Gavrilis 

And, Laurie, there's something else that I want to tell you. You and I have been friends since 2010 or so, more than a decade. And we met virtually over the phone in Kabul. And that was that year and a half long stint that you spent there. And then we became friends later in D.C.  

01:28 

Laura Tedesco 

Yeah.  

01:29 

George Gavrilis 

Lots of lunches, commiserating, kvetching, laughing. But I had a rough time when I was in D.C. I had a rough time, because a lot of my work involved working with our government. And in that experience, I kind of lost faith in our government. I thought government was supposed to be better, I thought that there were supposed to be greater purposes behind government. So I left D.C. feeling very down in our politics, in our government, and in my own role, in what I was doing. And in many ways, this podcast and the constant glimpses that you've given us into your life and work as a State Department employee—  

02:17 

Laura Tedesco 

Yeah—  

02:18 

George Gavrilis 

—really helped restore my faith in government. It was a reminder that there are people like you in the State Department and people like you across our federal government doing wonderful, wonderful work, who are rarely appreciated, rarely get the rewards and recognition they deserve, even though you have fought tooth and nail against being recognized too much. And even against the title of this podcast for singling you out as Monuments Woman. So I just wanted to put that out there. Thank you for letting me come on this journey with you.  

02:51 

Laura Tedesco 

Oh, wow. Wow, George. It's thanks to you, because last night, anticipating that today was going to be probably our final recording, I listened to the first episode of the podcast again, which felt like something that we had done four years ago, but in fact it was really only, I don't know six, seven—  

03:13 

George Gavrilis 

It was July, right?  

03:14 

Laura Tedesco 

Was it? I don't know.  

03:15 

George Gavrilis 

It was July.  

03:16 

Laura Tedesco 

But it felt like a long time ago. And I realized, none of it would be possible without you, because I couldn't tell the stories without you, your prompts, your gifted way of getting people to talk, of zeroing in on elements that are not obvious to help really make something come to life. So I think that the credit goes to you. And there have been times when I feel like you've had to sort of drag me along on this process. And where maybe you felt this sometimes too, but where I've wanted to quit, like 40 times, like, I can't do it. It's just too much. But here we are. So thanks go to you, from where I sit, 'coz this would not have been possible without you, and our 12 listeners—  

04:09 

George Gavrilis 

Right, our 12 listeners, eight of which are Buddhist—  

04:14 

Laura Tedesco 

—and half of whom are our family.  

04:18 

George Gavrilis 

Yes, one of them being my two-year old son.  

04:22 

Laura Tedesco 

Yeah, yeah.  

04:24 

George Gavrilis 

But in all seriousness, as I looked over our previous episodes, and listened to some of them, it was a roller coaster. You know—  

04:32 

Laura Tedesco 

Yeah.  

04:33 

George Gavrilis 

There were times when we were just happy and flying and feeling so good. And other times when all we could think about was what was happening in Afghanistan in Kabul. When we started in July, the Taliban were picking up momentum and roiling across the country. A month later, Kabul had fallen. And so the majority of our recording has been with virtually the entire country being under the Taliban. Tough, very tough. There have been moments of optimism and pessimism.  

05:07 

Laura Tedesco 

Yeah.  

05:09 

George Gavrilis 

And what is important for me to remember is that it's not just your story. It's the story of the people you worked with, both inside and outside Afghanistan. And certainly the people inside Afghanistan, the many Afghans you worked with, were obviously affected by what happened.  

05:31 

George Gavrilis 

Laurie, I don't know if you ever shared this with anyone. I know it because you've told me your entire life story. Well, okay, not your entire life story, because you're still alive. But you know what I mean. But, there's a lot of things I know about you that you haven't shared on this podcast. Fair enough. Right?  

05:50 

Laura Tedesco 

Yeah.  

05:51 

George Gavrilis 

And that's something that your brother said to you when you were preparing to leave for Kabul for the first time, for that really long year and a half stint that you spent there.  

06:01 

Laura Tedesco 

Mm hm. Mm hm. Yeah, he did say to stick to my principles. And I hadn't remembered that he said that until I looked back at the journal that I was keeping that year and a half that I was in Kabul, and I had written that down. I think it was the day I arrived, or the day after I arrived. I had written it down as like, Okay, I don't know what I'm doing here. But here's one piece of advice that seems to be one to hold on to.  

06:32 

George Gavrilis  

And did you?  

06:33 

Laura Tedesco 

Hmm, I hope so. I hope I did. I tried to. I didn't always know what my principles are. I had to define them along the way. But there's one thing I used to say about working in Afghanistan for a long period of time, like I did. I mean, a year and a half was longish. And as you know, I'd made nearly 50 trips there in the years after. That one has to know oneself pretty well to be able to operate in Afghanistan, and not go off the rails, meaning go heavy into drinking or, you know, poor life choices, or working 18 hours a day and kind of running oneself into the ground.  

07:23 

Laura Tedesco 

And if you don't know yourself pretty well, you will be forced to learn yourself, and what your limits are in the circumstances of what living and working in Afghanistan is like. So I think that happened for me, definitely wasn't always easy. But to your question, I hope I stuck to my principles. I know I tried.  

07:44 

George Gavrilis 

And there's so much that you did in that first year and a half in 2010–2011, right?  

07:49 

Laura Tedesco 

Mm hmm.  

07:50 

George Gavrilis 

The work in Ghazni, started the work with the museum—  

07:53 

Laura Tedesco 

Hmm.  

07:54 

George Gavrilis  

—Noh Gumbad up in the north— there were all of these projects all over the country that you started to work on. Super intensive. And granted, it was better times—  

08:03 

Laura Tedesco 

Yeah.  

08:04 

George Gavrilis 

—a lot of money that you were able to push out on these projects. But I'm wondering after that relentless year and a half in Kabul, what did it feel like to come back? What was it like to be back home?

08:19 

Laura Tedesco 

"November 8, 2011, Tuesday. There is only one day left in Kabul before I depart, it's worth noting. I'm relieved to be departing and feeling shut down in some ways. I'm so afraid and threadbare. I'm waiting for something to change. I'm always waiting for change. I'm not sure how to process—or even where to begin to process how to integrate myself into my life at home with Franck and the kids. I'll just try to stay quiet for a while, and stay within myself."  

09:00 

Laura Tedesco 

Yeah. It was bumpy. I remember I didn't really know how to be a member of my family for a while. I just didn't know what was my role. I didn't do it very well for a while, in part because I was processing what had happened. And I was still so exhausted and just not feeling great or strong.  

09:26 

Laura Tedesco 

And so I would either be moody and withdrawn, or I would overcompensate and try to be over controlling as a mom, like, Okay, well, I haven't been here for the last year and a half, I better take control of everything in the house to make up for all the time I wasn't here. And it took me a while to find a comfortable balance not just for myself, but for my kids and my husband, where we could all coexist in the house and just do our thing. So I would say it was not an easy transition back into a domestic life with kids to take care of, and laundry to do, and dishes to do, and all the things that we do when we're home.  

10:11 

Laura Tedesco 

I had not realized over the course of the time that I was spending in Afghanistan, the kind of adrenaline that one builds up in one's system. When you're in a situation where there is a kind of vague sense of threat constantly, even if you don't want to say it out loud, or it's downplayed, or you don't want to look like a wuss for being scared ever, or acknowledging the threats. They're still a kind of adrenaline that builds up in one's body.  

10:45 

George Gavrilis 

Adrenaline is so addictive.  

10:47 

Laura Tedesco 

It can be. It can really be addictive. It took me weeks of being home where I could feel the adrenaline slowly draining from me. Oh my gosh, I hadn't even realized how jacked up I've been for this long until I started to feel less and less jacked up on adrenaline. And that was also part of the transition. I came back not just exhausted and a little kooky, not kooky, but maybe different.  

11:22 

Laura Tedesco 

I guess to your bigger question— it was a bumpy transition to come back home and slow down and be a full-time mom and I was still working, though. I mean, I just worked remotely for a while. And just to try to settle back into my home life.  

11:43 

George Gavrilis 

Did you miss being in Kabul full-time?  

11:45 

Laura Tedesco 

No, I did not miss being there full time. I knew when I came back from Afghanistan that I would be traveling there frequently. And in fact, I was only back in the States for a few months, and then on a plane and back in Kabul. So not that much time had passed. I did not miss living there full time. I didn't miss the shipping container, or the crappy food— not mentioning the French food, which was fabulous.  

12:08 

George Gavrilis 

Yeah, you've mentioned, at least a few times—  

12:10 

Laura Tedesco 

—at least a few of times—  

12:11 

George Gavrilis 

—it must have been really good.  

12:13 

Laura Tedesco 

Yeah, it was. But I didn't miss living there full time. It's a tough place to live.  

12:20 

George Gavrilis 

Hmmm.  

12:28 

George Gavrilis 

Yeah. I mean, you've spent far more time in Afghanistan than I have. And maybe I just didn't go enough to get used to the constant level of threat that one experiences there. And I'm saying that having gone there, with a decent beard, and having everybody think that I was an Afghan myself, right?  

12:52 

George Gavrilis 

But I remember, when you're out, whether it's for a meeting, or just going to a restaurant, in the back of your mind, at least in the back of my mind, was, am I safe enough? Am I going to return home?  

13:05 

Laura Tedesco 

Mm hmm.  

13:06 

George Gavrilis 

And you're casing every joint you go to, right?  

13:08 

Laura Tedesco 

Mm hmm.  

13:09 

George Gavrilis 

If there's a safe enough table for me to sit at? How close am I to a window? What if there's a blast? You know, those kinds of things, that at least, I never spend enough time there that they could fully fade away from my mind—  

13:20 

George Gavrilis 

And I'll tell you a story that's kind of funny, but maybe it's not. My very first time in Afghanistan, it was 2006. And I'm there on a NATO civilian mission, where we're doing just a lot of evaluation of different projects and things like that. And I remember being put in one of those armored city vehicles, like a military vehicle, but one that's meant for cities rather than the countryside. 

13:44 

Laura Tedesco 

Mm hmm.  

13:45 

George Gavrilis

I was sitting in the backseat and there was a piece of paper pasted to the back of the front seat. Mind you, first trip to Afghanistan. And the piece of paper said, Be on the lookout for a white Toyota pickup truck: suspected suicide bomber. Of course, within three minutes, I was like, oh my god, there it is, we're gonna die!  

14:07 

Laura Tedesco 

Yeah. Was that a practical joke?  

14:09 

George Gavrilis 

Oh I don't know, because as we all know now, 20% of the vehicles on the road in Kabul are white Toyota pickups.  

14:18 

Laura Tedesco 

At least 20%— I was gonna say like, 40%!  

14:21 

George Gavrilis 

Maybe it was meant to give civilians like me a little bit of fright.  

14:25 

Laura Tedesco 

Yeah.  

14:26 

George Gavrilis 

Yeah.  

14:27 

Laura Tedesco 

Somebody with a dark sense of humor put that out.  

14:29 

George Gavrilis 

Right. And that kind of never went away. I've been to other places where I've done field research, be it the West Bank, or very remote parts of Tajikistan, where you are like, hmm, this could be unsafe.  

14:40 

Laura Tedesco 

Mm hm.  

14:41 

George Gavrilis 

But the adrenaline keeps you going and that's part of the excitement.  

14:45 

Laura Tedesco 

Mm hm. It's not sustainable though. For a healthy life, it's just not sustainable. 

15:00

George Gavrilis
Back in Episode 12, Silverback Gorillas, a title that you came up with, that was one of the episodes where we talked about the work you did in the north of Afghanistan. And one of the things that you said was strikingly forward looking, optimistic, almost. And it was about what the future holds, given that the Taliban is now in power. And you said, let's do everything we can to keep doing the heritage work even if it means that you've got to bring the forces of darkness to the table. And that was a very specific day, when maybe you had that sentiment, and maybe you don't feel it now. But how are you feeling today about that sentiment?

15:45

Laura Tedesco
Yeah. Um, good question. Today. Okay. So let me just throw out a hypothetical. Because, you know, as we talked about, I do work for the government. My work is dictated by what foreign policy is. And that's fine. I fully accept that. If I were instructed, Alright, Tedesco, we're going to start engaging with the Taliban. And among the 47 things we're going to engage with them openly, is cultural preservation. You need to go to Kabul and meet with the new Taliban Minister of Information and Culture, and figure out what our future work is in the National Museum. I'd pack my suitcase and go.

16:31
George Gavrilis

Will you put me in your carry-on?

16:33

Laura Tedesco

[laughs] I mean, if that's what the conditions were in order to keep cultural preservation work going, I'm in. I mean, there is still cultural preservation for Afghanistan, it's just happening remotely right now. And I'm not engaging with the Taliban, and I'm not meeting with their ministers, like I would have previously under the previous government. But we're still able to do a little bit remotely without working with the Taliban. But if I were instructed, okay, you know, we're changing course, this is how we're going to do it now. And it would enable me to get more involved on the ground with preserving sites and monuments or getting back into the National Museum to see what are the needs there now, how can we contribute to alleviating some of those needs? Then I'm in.

17:27

Laura Tedesco
With Toño, if his museum design were picked up by the Taliban government, and they were ready to start working with Toño, I mean, I'm not speaking for Toño. But if Toño were like, Hey, I'm back in. Alright, Let's go, Toño. Let's make this work.

17:42
George Gavrilis
Yeah, Toño was the architect who won the international competition to design the museum, and we had an episode with him.

17:48

Laura Tedesco
He did. Yeah, Antonio, yeah, that's right, of course.

17:51
George Gavrilis
He did express more optimism than you had, at least at that point, where he was willing to do that kind of work.

17:59

Laura Tedesco
Yeah.

18:00

George Gavrilis
And there's something almost surreal about imagining Toño and you in Afghanistan, building a new museum under a Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, and you yelling at the Deputy Minister of Information and Culture for not putting the Buddha heads in a more prominent place. That's just my dream, but—

18:22

Laura Tedesco

I might not yell, but I could make my point known in a subtle yet sharp way.

18:29

George Gavrilis

Yeah, yeah. We said earlier that when you do this kind of work, you have to keep cynicism from destroying everything. And maybe the sentiments you're expressing are part of that.

18:46

Laura Tedesco

Passion for my work or general excitement about it— that's very genuine for me. I don't force it, it comes naturally. And I remember over the years working with various diplomats at the U.S. Embassy, some of whom may have been interested in cultural preservation, some of whom weren't. But in talking about the importance of heritage preservation, and expressing it with a sort of singular passion—

19:09

Laura Tedesco

—there were times when I was chided by other State Department people as somehow I wasn't really very serious about my work, because I was too emotional about it. And a few times that would hurt my feelings. I had questioned myself and thought, like, oh, yeah, all right, I really need to try to be less passionate about what I'm doing, and just don't show that you care, like that seems to be the way to get ahead, don't show that you care.

19:37

Laura Tedesco

And I guess as years passed, I made a decision for myself, I'm not going to try to tamp down what is a very natural passion for the work itself, that I think it matters, that I think it's important, simply to appease the culture of others in the State Department or other diplomats who might look down upon me as being not a serious person because I'm just too attached to my work.

20:10

Laura Tedesco

It took me a number of years to fully accept— I really think the work is great. And I wouldn't want to do anything else, even when it's hard, or even if it means having to sit at the table with people whose ideology I fundamentally disagree with.

20:32

George Gavrilis

Some of the diplomats that I came to know, struck me as being incredibly passionate about their work—

20:38

Laura Tedesco
Definitely.

20:39

George Gavrilis
And in fact the most successful ones, right?

20:41

Laura Tedesco
Yeah, definitely some are. And maybe in my memory, I should think more of those that I encountered and less of the few grumpy ones, whose side eye I got? And who might have thought that oh, yeah, culture, it doesn't really matter, that's not what diplomacy is about. Diplomacy is about economic policy and trade. And I think it's about much more than that.

21:11

George Gavrilis

It deserves to be mentioned that the U.S. Embassy in Kabul is closed. It's shuttered.

21:16

Laura Tedesco
Yeah, yeah.

21:19

George Gavrilis
So how are you feeling about the past 10 plus years of work that you've done?

21:22

Laura Tedesco

And as I started to delve into the question and what I thought about it and what I thought the answer was, I said the following to myself, for Christ's sake, get off it, just move on. Your work is what it was. Stop trying to evaluate whether it was in vain or not in vain, and just keep driving.

21:44

George Gavrilis

Keep driving, Laura-jan, just keep driving.

21:46

Laura Tedesco
Just keep driving. I got a little frustrated with oh, just like the navel gazing that I'm doing. Just quit it, and just keep doing your work. So that's what I thought.

21:59

George Gavrilis

Yeah. When you look at all of the projects that you did around Afghanistan, what gives you a sense of happiness, just to have been part of preserving that history?

22:11

Laura Tedesco

Okay, George, let me clarify—

22:14

George Gavrilis
Yeah.

22:15

Laura Tedesco
—everything was collaborative. I didn't do anything singularly, so—

22:22

George Gavrilis
Correct.

22:23

Laura Tedesco
—I just—

22:24

George Gavrilis

You were a part of it.

22:25

Laura Tedesco
I was part of many projects. I was one facet in multifaceted projects that were underway, completed, started, whatever. So okay, I just have to say that.

22:38

George Gavrilis

Well, let me put it that way before you continue.

22:40

Laura Tedesco
Okay.

22:41

George Gavrilis
Let me say something. You are incredibly humble. You constantly remind us that everything was collaborative.

22:50

Laura Tedesco
Yes.

22:51

George Gavrilis
So we get it. But just like I told you, that being a small part of your story was one of the most meaningful experiences of my life. I want you to tell me how what you did was meaningful for you as well. Even if you were just a small part of it. See where I'm going with this?

23:10

Laura Tedesco
Yes. Yes. Okay. Okay. So I got to think, I got to think, because you put me on the spot a little bit. I think if I had to pick one thing, it's got to be work at the National Museum. That was maybe the mainstay project. And it was not a singular project. Helping to organize the exhibition on Mes Aynak, I felt like that was like a moment. That was kind of a big deal at the time. Or I thought it was a big deal.

23:41

Laura Tedesco
There was an exhibition at the National Museum in Kabul that focused exclusively on the site of Mes Aynak, which is, for the most part, an enormous Buddhist city. Okay, so archeological excavations had been taking place at Mes Aynak for a couple of years. And the result of those excavations, they were finding incredible, incredible artifacts like 20 Buddha sculptures a day coming out of the ground, new architecture styles that had never been discovered before, Buddhas gilded in gold, caches of jewelry, like I mean, we could just go on and on.

24:20

Laura Tedesco

So, a museum exhibition was planned, a very modest museum exhibition that just was in two gallery spaces, was planned in order to focus and feature some of what was currently being excavated at Mes Aynak and to bring attention to the site and to the richness of the country's heritage. And we could all comfortably accept that centuries of Buddhist history were part of Afghanistan's historical record, and could be celebrated without threatening anyone or anyone's ideas.

24:58

Laura Tedesco

Putting that exhibition together, again, was collaborative. I've already said that like a gazillion times. The U.S. Embassy in Kabul was really behind that, the financing and a standard that was expected in that exhibition. And a book was produced about it. And it was really done meaningfully and with a lot of thought. And to invoke Mr. Massoudi again, just the hours and hours spent drinking tea, and talking through how to do these things, because he was, you know, walking with me on all of this.

25:39
George Gavrilis
Yeah. And hey, now with the Taliban in power, and the U.S. currently not funding this kind of work in Afghanistan actively—

25:49

Laura Tedesco
Yeah.

25:50
George Gavrilis

—an international community generally not funding this work in Afghanistan for the foreseeable future, even as the danger for the time being has receded of the Taliban going after non-Islamic art, I still worry about the price of neglect, the passage of time, when you're not actively preserving something that is 1000, 2000 years old. Mes Aynak is on my mind. The site is a vast site, it has canopies over the stuff, but there are heavy snows that fall, it's very easy for the site to suffer damage—

26:26

Laura Tedesco
Yeah.

26:27
George Gavrilis
—if it's not actively being preserved and protected. But I'm also thinking of the minarets, just outside of the city of Ghazni. And that imaging project that you supported, where you brought the National Park Service people to do the super precise 3D imaging of the minarets. And now, the prospect of some sort of destruction has become real, when it comes to those two lonely minarets. So if something, God forbid, in the next year or two should happen to those minarets, because of an earthquake, or because of the ground shifting or because of some accident, did the work you do collect enough data where they can be faithfully reconstructed?

27:17

Laura Tedesco

Excellent question. The answer is, in principle, yes. Then taking that into practice, that's where the hard part is. So, yeah, in principle, those monuments could be reconstructed based on the data collected in this 3D scanning that took place 11 years ago. But being a little bit of a pragmatist, also, the minarets at Ghazni, they can withstand some years of neglect. They'll be okay, barring, there's no earthquake, nobody's gonna be able to control an earthquake or anything, but they'll be okay.

27:54

George Gavrilis
What about Noh Gumbad in the north?

27:56

Laura Tedesco
Um, it's gonna be, you know, I don't want to make a prediction and then be proved wrong by it. But, a few years, these things are going to be okay, as long as they just remain unbothered otherwise. More than a few years, they're going to start showing some wear and tear. And, like those minarets in Ghazni, if they fall, or if someone who's in a bad mood decides to destroy them, they're gone. We could even reconstruct them, but they're never going to be the same.

28:31

Laura Tedesco
Noh Gumbad, it's one of a kind. It is one of a kind in the world. It is the earliest Islamic structure in Afghanistan, and probably all of Central Asia. I know of one parallel in Turkmenistan. It's one of a kind in the world architecturally, for what it represents, for how the work has been done to preserve it, to document it. If something happens and it's destroyed, that's it. It's not renewable. That's the thing about heritage: it is non-renewable.

29:18

George Gavrilis

Laurie, everything that you've done has been on behalf of the U.S. government. And you've been doing this with the State Department. And that's kind of an underappreciated thing, because most people equate the State Department with standard diplomacy. But the State Department does some really cool stuff. For example, very few people know that there is an historian's office in the State Department, you know, recording stories for posterity about U.S. diplomacy. And then there's what you've done.

29:48

Laura Tedesco
Mm hm. Mm hm. Yeah, yeah. I mean, when I applied to work for the State Department, now it's exactly 12 years ago that I submitted an application. I remember thinking to myself, how utterly unlikely that there's an opening for an archeologist or a museum specialist at the State Department. And then, by happenstance, I was hired for that job for what I thought would be one year. It was billed as a one-year gig. And it's years and years later, and I'm still doing the work.

30:27

Laura Tedesco
And it would seem to the general public, like Well, we had no idea the State Department engages in this relatively low key diplomatic work in the sector of heritage. And again, I'm not the only one in the State Department who does this. But I am the main one focused on Afghanistan, the subject of our podcast. I feel quite lucky to be in this job, even in the moments where I feel a little beat up by it, or a little frustrated by bureaucracy or hierarchy or paperwork. But I don't think any job is without its frustrations. And so, and on the theme, George, of trying not to be cynical, I really do look at the work as it's a privilege to be involved in. So I hope that I'll get to keep my job for a while.

31:22

George Gavrilis

I hope so too. Because I love having this window into everything you're doing. Oh, thank you, friend.

31:29

Laura Tedesco
Thanks. Thanks to you, George, dear friend.

31:39

George Gavrilis

Now, you know that I have a lot of affection for Kabul. And I said this in the very first episode that, you know, I think Kabul, if you squint, looks like Los Angeles. I think I'm the only human being that believes that, but I'm gonna stick to it, right?

31:53
Laura Tedesco

I think you're the only one. But yeah, keep going, keep going.

31:57

George Gavrilis
You have a different way of thinking about Kabul, having spent so much time in Afghanistan doing this work, going there over 50 times, the city in particular. What is that?

32:09

Laura Tedesco

Yeah. I have, over the years, thought of Kabul, as sort of a lover with whom there's been some trouble.

32:22

George Gavrilis
I like that.

32:23

Laura Tedesco
And I think it's just one of the idiosyncrasies of maybe how I think about places I go, or, you know, just think about how I move through the world, I don't know. But it's an idea that I've been cultivating for about seven or eight years that I've been trying to write into a short story.

32:40

Laura Tedesco

When I first arrived in Afghanistan, I didn't really know what to expect, what my experience would be like there, or how to predict it, or shape it, really. And I kind of approached it like I was meeting somebody for the first time. Okay, how's this gonna go? How are we going to get along?

32:59

Laura Tedesco

And little by little, as I got to know Kabul through the feel of its streets, and the way people move about the sidewalks, and how people sort of walk and navigate traffic and the insane traffic that's there. And there's like one stoplight in the whole city, that doesn't even work. But there's one stoplight in a city of millions, just these little details as I got to know Kabul and visiting the zoo and Babur's Gardens.

33:31

Laura Tedesco
It's like getting to know a person who's very complicated, and then you grow to maybe have an affection for that person, or for me, it was having an affection for Kabul. But there would be times where Kabul is this person for me, they, they sort of would mistreat me. The air quality was bad. And I took that as, oh, that's a bad personality trait. Like, that's not one I like. Or, there'd be an explosion. And, you know, a window on my shipping container would come flying in at me because of the blast force of the explosion. And I'd be like, Oh, I don't like that personality trait.

34:11

Laura Tedesco

As we've already said, I've made so many trips to Kabul. I would see it and all kinds of different seasons and times of year. Oh, the roses are blooming, and there's, you know, basil growing everywhere. It smells so lovely. So just in my imagination, this was a way I could fit my one-sided relationship I had with the city. I could fit it in my head and sort of think of Kabul as a lover who, yes, I grew to love, but I didn't love everything.

34:45

Laura Tedesco

And in some more creative moments, of how I've been thinking about writing this short story, I would even imagine, I could leave a trip to Afghanistan and come back. I'd just be exhausted and haggard and emotionally shattered. And a couple weeks later, I'd get a phone call from Kabul, and they'd be like, Hey, baby, come on back. I'm going to be different this time. Hey, would you bring me a six pack and some wings?

35:08

Laura Tedesco

And I'd be like, Yeah, I'd pack up my back and get on the airplane and fly the fucking 24 hours to get there and show up with a six pack and wings and you know, then the air quality would be bad or there'd be an explosion again, I'd be like, goddamnit. He said he would be different. He's not any different.

35:31

Laura Tedesco

And now in the absence of traveling there, and I see pictures of Kabul on the news or photos in the newspaper and you and I talk about it so frequently, and I feel this kind of you know, nostalgia for an old lover who you don't see anymore.

35:49

George Gavrilis

Like the Armenian and the Syrian?

35:51

Laura Tedesco

No! No, goddamnit, George. They're ancient history. And for the record, neither of them abused me.

36:04

George Gavrilis

But I love it that you're referring to actual human beings as ancient history, but a city is a plausible lover. But seriously, actually did you ever consider dating Kabul's cousin Zabul?

36:23

Laura Tedesco

No, definitely not. Not an option, not an option.

36:29

George Gavrilis

Are you seriously working on this story?

36:32

Laura Tedesco

Well, I mean, does drafting a short story for seven years qualify as seriously working on a story? I would say, I'm not seriously working on it. But it's an idea that has been percolating in my head for years. And with each successive trip I had made to Afghanistan, I would add, like a little, a little blurb to the story of like, oh, well, this time, it was really sweet. And the almond blossoms were blooming and it felt like we were back to good, and then the next time I would get the phone call going like hey, bitch, can you bring me some wings? I'm going to be different this time.

37:14

George Gavrilis

I love it.

37:15

Laura Tedesco

I have told a few people about my idea for writing this short story. And I remember I told an American colleague, an older woman, and she totally did not get the humor in it or any of the absurdity of my imaginary love affair with this problematic city. And she's like, Oh, well, if you have a bad boyfriend you just need to dump him. I was like, come on, work with me!

37:43

George Gavrilis

Yeah, that doesn't make for literature.

37:45

Laura Tedesco

Anyway— so yeah, maybe one day you can edit the story before I try to get it published.

37:53

George Gavrilis

Yeah, I would love to. I would love to.

38:02
George Gavrilis

You have listened to the final episode of Monuments Woman with Laura Tedesco. I've been your host George Gavrilis. We want to thank you wholeheartedly for joining us on this journey. To stay in touch, you can follow us on Instagram, at the_monuments_woman. This show has been produced by Christian D. Bruun and May Eleven Projects. It was recorded by Audivita Studios, and edited by Shaun Hettinger and Greg Williams. The theme song This Love was written by Ariana Delawari, featuring Salar Nader.

Ep 28: Kabul, Je T'Aime — Finale, Part 2 of 2

Topics Covered in this Episode
Faith in the government
Surviving Afghanistan, sticking to one's principles
Coming home
Afghanistan Adrenaline
Afghanistan state of mind
Prospect of working with the Taliban
Passion is good
The U.S. Embassy in Kabul has closed
The passage of time
Gratitude to the State Department
Kabul as Lover

Recorded on January 14, 2022