7 a.m. – Flight 006, Dubai to Kabul.

I have written this on a notepad I brought along, and will type it into a computer if I can find one to use when we land.

Lufthansa may have brought me here last night – Kam Air is a long way from the efficiency and luxury of last night’s flight. This Kam Air jet is an old, and I mean very old, 737. Kam Air must have purchased the plane used from Mexico or Spain, as the instructions on the seatback are written in Spanish. I don’t know much Spanish but the printed words bring me closer to home than anything else around me. Everything within miles is in Arabic.

A male Arab passenger stops to make goo goo eyes at the little toddler perched on his mom’s lap across the aisle from me. Smiles and laughter as the baby grins and giggles. I am reassured. When we get news at home from this part of the world it is generally about war and hate, grudges held onto and revenge carried out. But I am seeing love surrounding a baby boy. It is easy to feel, reading dispatches from the Middle East, that there will never be peace here. But I see they love their children. This gives me hope.

We are somewhere over the Persian Gulf heading north toward Iran and eventually Afghanistan. There is cloud cover below so I can’t see the Earth. Looking up I notice a bunch of wires hanging down from between big cracks in the ceiling of the cabin. Yes, this is a very old plane. This does not give me hope.
A thought races through my mind before I can stop it… “What in the world ever made me decide to come here?”

Just before I left the U.S. a friend reminded me to read Psalm 121. She calls it “the Travelers Psalm .”

I am, at this moment, nearing Iranian airspace at 500 miles per hour.