Afghanistan--Vignettes of Life

Afghanistan. That word alone evokes many emotions. It is a name. A name of a place. And Afghans--a name of its people, ALL its people. And that includes the Hazaras, the people living for centuries in the country's north in the Bamiyan province where the Buddha statue once stood; the Uzbek origin Afghans further north in the Balkh (Mazar-e-Sharif) region mostly; the Afghan Sikhs and Afghan Hindus mostly in Kabul who attend their temple in what is known in Afghanistan as the Dharamsaal (sic); and of course the majority which is Pashtoons currently concentrated in the South, a minority of whom are engaged in fighting as part of or alongside the Taliban. I state it to state the obvious again and again as I have to all I speak to--"Afghans" does not mean "Taliban" even though some Taliban members are indeed Afghan.

I left for Afghanistan from New York after finishing my Master's in International Affairs in 2004. In my first few months, several interesting vignettes of daily life immediately showed me the great beauty of Afghan culture and also its stark difficulties that make an indelible impression on my mind. Once while working at the Prime Minister's Compound on secondment for the World Bank, a young Afghan who served tea and largely kept duties as a cleaner, came in and asked me if I would like tea. I consented, and upon serving me a cup, he served himself one as well and sat down right next to me on the couch and started to sip the tea. I was astounded as this marked my first introduction to a "class-less" society--not a society without class but one without its ugly, overt, discriminatory distinctions that I was used to from growing up in India. When I politely asked him what he was doing, he replied ever so politely that he was sipping tea :) It was an extraordinary moment in which I realized that he felt his job was that of a tea maker and cleaner, that in no way made him inferior or less worthy of the couch (as it very well shouldn't). During meal times, everyone from the Director to the managers to the cleaning staff to the drivers all sat together at the same table, in the same manner and ate the very same food.

Another time, my friend who was heading a French NGO and who I lived with in the house that Ahmad Shah Maasood grew up in, and I, were invited to the house of Ahmad Shah Masood's brother's dinner. In addition to being part of the family of the father of the new nation, he was also our landlord so we were really just simply accepting the invitation to dine at our landlord's house. We were aware of who were going to for dinner though--at the designated hour, my friend's driver dropped us off to Mr Maasood's house and we gave him some money for dinner somewhere and told him we will call him when we are close to being done with our dinner. Inside the house, Mr. Maasood greeted us warmly and we had beautiful pyalas or little cups of green tea and some lovely dry fruits. As he sipped tea, he asked where is our driver. We said we had sent him to eat dinner. He got so upset and asked us to call him. We were really quite surprised and sheepishly said we had sent him to have dinner. He took out his own cellphone, asked for his number from us, and called him directly asking him to come back and join us at the table for dinner. He reprimanded him (I understand Dari) saying do you not know what is the Afghan way and they are our foreign guests and if they didn't ask you, you should know who you came to. It was an extraordinary lesson in human dignity, one I will never forget, and one that informs all my interactions with all my colleagues of all levels ever since.

My last that I will narrate for now is the trip to Bamiyan. On the ten hour drive to Bamiyan from Kabul, we saw mountains with colors that if one saw them on a painter's canvas, one would imagine that the painter's imagination had gotten the better of him and yet the natural vista betrayed all of the madness of their maker. On the streets near the UNESCO sites of the Buddhas, many returning families lived in caves. So many of the policymakers struggled with limited resources to house and rehabilitate the returning families and the cultural preservation desire on the other hand. In the bazaar, I remember one wonderful hakeem or medicine man listening to all my stories of stomach illnesses and ailments I have suffered and offering me understanding as the cure. It was incredible that he didn't try to cheat me or sell me the store's hundred potions. A last memory of that trip is awaking at 4 am and seeing the Buddha's from atop the hill and seeing beauty in the hollows where eyes were, and seeing beauty that really makes one cry not out of sadness but simply out of the grandness of their maker's plans.

This and many more experiences like these in Afghanistan kept me in this profession of international affairs since then. I have been in Liberia, in Kosovo, in New York and many parts since then but Afghanistan, and Afghans, still have my heart. I married someone from just north of there, from Uzbekistan, and together we are charting a way to come near to Afghanistan though perhaps now not quite just yet.

This image is that of a national staff officer, the driver, and I on a trip to Balkh through the Salang Pass where we stopped to eat a meal. I had recently taken over as country manager and was going into the field to see some sites of work. As one can see, we again naturally shared the meal together, sitting with no pecking order or difference. That is the gift of Afghanistan.