Sweden Day

We had been drivng up and down the streets of Wazir Akhbar Khan--the Embassy Row of Kabul--for a while when I finaly saw it: the Swedish flag. The sight of the familiar blue and yellow against the brown backdrop of the afternoon dust storm was mesmerizing. Faroukh the driver smiled a toothless smile at my visible excitement.

The overwhelming sense of joy and belonging that strikes me every time I enter a Swedish embassy abroad is somewhat paradoxical given how lost I have come to feel in Sweden proper. Having been away for a few years, I now feel like a stranger among my fashionable, well-coiffed, and somewhat superficial countrymen. Indeed, I am not hard-pressed to criticize Sweden and the Swedes. But with Swedes abroad it's different--with them, I am in my element.

There are some real benefits that go along with being from a small country. Most notably, you never have to be lonely. Wherever you show up, provided it's big enough to house at least a couple of Swedes, you belong to a community. I came to Kabul a month ago not knowing a soul; tonight, at least a dozen people came up to me and said "hey, you must be the new girl working for the research organization!" The soldiers told me to come over for waffles on Sunday and the embassy women invited me over for a movie night. And they don't even know me.

All of this went through my head as I gazed up at the flag. Moments later, I was sitting at a table from IKEA, talking to people named Johan and Fredrik, and eating cured salmon that had traveled from Sweden to Kabul via Mazar-i-Sharif. And I felt at home. On the table were meatballs, smoked trout, and two kinds of pickled herring; waiting underneath it was a yellow cat named Svensson.

So it was that just off an unpaved street in a country far from the motherland, the Swedes of Kabul celebrated National Day with a feast fit for royalty. But the soldier who suggested that we cheer the king was quickly silenced.