I took a taxi home from the airport. The taxi driver was kind of interesting. He was listening to a classical music station on the radio. I asked him about it. He told me he loved classical music. He said the key to understanding classical music is to listen to it everyday for a long time. It is heavy and rich. Only after you listen to it for long enough time then you can start to appreciate its beauty. His advice sounds reasonable to me. I had the sense that I often stopped liking some pieces of music if I liked it right away. But the pieces I like now, I usually didn't like it the first time.
Then we talked about politics and 9/11. I told him the news piece I saw a few days ago that most Afghans don't know what happened on 9/11. When told about the world trade center collapsing, they shrugged and said they saw their buildings being knocked down many times so what is the big deal? That really put things in perspective. We forget easily the wrongs we do to others and remember the ones done to us. He agreed and told me the sanctions in Sadam's era killed millions of Iraqis and the US secratary of state said it was worth it. There are still many people in this country that are outside of control of the main stream media.
