In Kabul and other places international staff used to go on foot from offices to home. This is no longer possible. People drive now in cars even if the distance is two or three minutes to avoid the harassment by these guests.

Those people, there is no doubt, don't seem to like the fact that NGOs (non-governmental organizations) and U.N. agencies operate in Afghanistan.

I hope it is resolved soon. We hope the Indian delegation will stay here until this is solved.

If we can see (the damage), we can have some ideas about it for when we get home.

I'm tempted to say we hit another home run in hiring a coach. In this case, though, it's probably more appropriate to say we just scored a ton of bonus points.

We need a home in the psychological sense as much as we need one in the physical: to compensate for a vulnerability. We need a refuge to shore up our states of mind, because so much of the world is opposed to our allegiances. We need our rooms to align us to desirable versions of ourselves and to keep alive the important, evanescent sides of us.