We met for coffee Wednesday afternoon, to size one another up. While a CV can open a door  only an in-person interview, proving one’s sanity, can keep it open.

It took a couple of days, but I got a nice follow-up note yesterday afternoon that included a lovely invitation to visit this week. We’d discussed my visit and I’d meant to schedule the trip last week. I would have traveled there early this morning, but as fate would have it, last week was a mess. I didn’t have room in my schedule to fit in one more thing…so arranging the trip fell to today. Just as I’d gotten permission to make flight arrangements – I heard the news. She’s been kidnapped.

She’s lived and worked in Afghanistan for years. A trip through an insecure district. Car doors open. Rescuers scouring the hillside. No trace.

Afghanistan is never easy, particularly when you know that you’re never more than a heartbeat away from having it take your breath away.

UPDATE

She is gone. A rescue attempt. A detonated suicide vest. Catastrophic injuries. She is gone.

Writing about this loss makes me feel selfish. Linda’s capture, confinement and ultimately her death touched so many of us, but at the same time was such a intensely personal experience that describing my feelings feels wrong.

I haven’t really spoken about this. I can’t. The tension in me is oppressive and omnipresent. My tempter is short and tears sting the back of my eyes as I fight to keep them from surfacing. Fortunately, or perhaps not so fortunately, few ask how I am processing this information.

Moving onto a project that has just lost it’s primary expat, and whose Director has just been sacked is unsettling. To say nothing of moving to a new job and a new city that is not know for being woman-friendly.

Perhaps all this is just my way of coping – of distancing myself from the reality that we are all separated from a similar fate by a thin veil. Though I can nearly guarantee that I would never be killed by an SBBIED in the US, the dangers there are equally real and equally deadly. The violent nature of the incident evokes a sense of helplessness – of senselessness. This I cannot deny, nor can I avoid. I can only make sound choices for my own security based firmly in risk-aversion and hope for the best.