Ian in Afghanistan

[ipounds]

"The whirling belongs to you," wrote the sufi poet Rumi, who was born in northern Afghanistan in the Thirteenth Century, "and you belong to the whirling."

On Tuesday, April 14th I will arrive in Kabul, where thanks to the support of Omprakash and all who sponsored me on my "Passages" tour, I will be living and working in an orphanage.

During the five months I will be there, I will teach English, counsel, as well as develop ways to improve the lives of the children through study and expression of Persian poetry and the use of photography as a means of communication. In addition it is my hope together we will get our hands dirty creating a vegetable and flower garden. (Kabul was once considered the Paris of Asia, full of trees, songbirds, and wild roses.)

If you are especially interested in Afghanistan, I suggest the following books. Most of you have heard of Greg Mortenson's book Three Cups of Tea, but there are four amazing books that are helping me to truly get close to what has gone on over there. All of these authors are women who I hope and pray our President or his advisors have heard of.

The Storyteller’s Daughter by Saira Shah
The Punishment of Virtue by Sarah Chayes
The Sewing Circles of Heart by Christine Lamb
A Bed of Red Flowers by Nelofer Pazira

For further reading, to understand the heart of Afghan spirituality (which is traditionally mystical, not the radical fundamentalism imported with the Taliban), might I suggest Rumi: Selected Poems translated by Coleman Barks

Finally, if you believe it is at least as important to examine ourselves as a country in relation to others, as it is to know the country with which we wish to involve ourselves, I suggest you read The Irony of American History by Reinhold Niebuhr.

I will add to this narrative weekly beginning Saturday, April 18th from Kabul. Just return to this posting and scroll down for the latest installment. You will find journal entries, photos and links to video footage, including examples of the children's own work. Feel free to participate, send a message, or post a question/comment of your own. I welcome you to join me on this journey.

There are no doubt a thousand ways to walk into the vortex that is Afghanistan. As I proceed, my intuition tells me to go with humility hand in hand with determination. Listening to those women whose books I've recommended above, it seems having an agenda ends up being more a fuel without navigation. Important for movement, but not a means toward some destination. Destiny is, I think to the average Afghan, a matter out of our hands.

Thank you for keeping in touch.

Ian

[mac.caputi]

I am Mac Caputi, a junior from Brunswick High School in ME, and with the help of Omprakash, I connected Ian with my former 4th grade teacher, (Mrs.) Susan Bean, who teaches at Longfellow School. I initially gave her class of 18 a survey to identify any prejudices they may hold against Muslims and/or Arabs, specifically the "terrorist stereotype." A few days later, I returned to the class to discuss these stereotypes and other stereotypes in general. I talked to a student's mother the next day, and she told me that this class discussion had actually sparked an extensive conversation at the dinner table about all stereotypes!

It just so happened that Ian would be heading overseas to Afghanistan around the same time as I was "administering" this survey. Omprakash connected me to Ian and we came up with the idea that our kids could become pen pals. As you know from the video, Ian visited the class the other day and told them a bit about what he was planning on doing in Kabul and why.

I will try to post a few pictures of Ian presenting and of the kids writing their letters.

Best of luck to you Ian!

[Storyteller]

Ian, You are in our thoughts and we wish you safe travel. I read The Storyteller's Daughter and am always surprised at how many people have never heard of it. It is a good read and gives a taste of past melding into the present. Good luck, we look forward to your posts.

V. Duffy

[Denevius]

good luck over there, ian. it sounds like it'd be quite an experience. and if there is ever a moment of boredom (which i somehow doubt), then lets get a game of chess in.

be well always,

todd

[Kip214]

"The future is no more uncertain than the present." -- Uncle Walt
(Especially if you live in the House that Time Forgot!)


Love,
Kristen

[ipounds]

16 April

I awoke this morning just before dawn, Kabul time. 4am. The sound I awoke to was a far away siren, which I soon realized was the winding up of morning prayers broadcast through the air above this devastated city. The forlorn call to prayer was soon joined by a second call, singing in a kind of slow dance, and then a frog throated cock crowing, albeit for only a minute. Then came the birds, one and then a hundred, chirping so loud as to resemble wind squealing through a small crack in a car window while speeding down a highway. I am wrapped in blankets on a hard bed in a dingy tiny smelly fifty-dollar room in a guest house. I got up and washed, then stepped outside. The birds were actually green parrots, a hundred would be right, cloistered in a twenty-foot birdcage. Yesterday is something to spend some time with, sorting it out, coming to this place.

As I retrieved my cittern and duffel bag in Delhi airport, I felt a small panic in my chest. I was about to get on a plane to Kabul and all I felt like doing was crying. Try doing this on a 50 year old jet that looked to be a hand me down from some now defunct airline, confiscated by Kam Air for the hop over the mountains to Kabul. Weeping, surrounded on this plane by tough, seriously tough Afghan men of all ages, is not what I envisioned. One group of boys looked like a gang of thugs, scorpions not tattooed on their arms, but branded, their skin raised like a worm had dug its way through. There were three women, all khawa jans, ancient eyes, covered in thin embroidered cloth but for their faces from noses to brows. The plane lurched and suddenly we were in the worst turbulence I’ve ever experienced, but that just seemed to excite the men. They got louder, walked around the plane, laughed. The two next to me pushed some opium into their palms, rubbed it into little brown balls and stuck them into their cheeks. I was moving forward, whether I liked it or not. No turning back. Not now.

Then came the central Hindu Kush. Peaks reaching close to 20,000 feet. This jet could hardly rise above them. I felt like I was in one of those old stylized movies showing the prop plane weaving through a pass and dropping into Shangri-la. White and jagged are these, like the young Olympics or Tetons, but the sheer immensity of them took my breath completely. Something about their spacing, as if the earth had grown so huge as to afford extra space for them to be scattered here and there, not squashed so tightly as to be there and then gone. There was Pagham mountain, most prominent of Kabul, the sentinel, I couldn't stop staring. We dropped quickly into the city, one of the highest capitals at 5,800 feet. Ancient Kabul, surrounded by natural walls, like the sheer walls of mountains in Hawaii, but again, dwarfing the likes of those volcanic dollops of earth. And so it finally began.

We waited in a spring rain for a bus to drive us to customs. Nothing seemed foreboding, not yet. Inside, as I waited in line, one of the police wandered up to me. They were everywhere, these police, a dozen in this small entryway. Their uniforms are almost caricatures, like fake ones worn on Halloween. They are a strange greenish gray, not the color of anything smacking of police, ill fitting, baggy. The bearded policeman now courting me asked what my work was. I immediately broke every rule I had warned myself against, like a stupid tourist, as if I was in London. “Oh, I’m going to teach in and orphanage for five months!” He smiled. “Come,” he said. He led me to the special booth for business class, where there was no line. As he processed my visa and passport, he kept smiling. “My friend,” he said to his colleague sitting in the booth. “My new friend.”
The other man caught the joke, “Yes, I can see. So you have a new friend…” I didn't like the implication.

This new friend of mine followed me into the baggage collection. I was so overjoyed my bag and my cittern actually made it, I didn’t notice him follow me outside. He of course was a spy, for which faction of which element in the police, the army or the government, with allegiance to which tribe or former warlord and war criminal who now walked around in a suit and tie, I could never know, but one thing is for certain: he wanted to know where it was I would be working, and with whom. I had stupidly raised the worst possible red flag, a foreigner, American no less, and a man coming to “teach” and live with children in Kabul, this was something straight out of the Taliban top ten people to look out for list.

I hauled my 57 pound red firefighter’s duffel bag and my 20 five pound hand bag and my cittern across the parking lot and out the gate, and still the man followed. I called Andeisha, my host, and she said frantically to keep walking. “Follow the people,” she said. “Now.”

I continued from one parking lot to another, when suddenly a scrawny Afghan civilian came up beside me and grabbed the ridiculously heavy duffel, lifted it onto his shoulder and carried it for me all the way to the third parking lot. It did not occur to me at the time he was out for anything, not even a tip. Perhaps the police, who could not leave the inner sanctum of his post, had sent this man to spy. I’ll never know. Finally, Andeisha appeared. A beautiful woman, modestly dressed with shawl about her head. She placed her right hand over her chest, as I did in greeting a woman properly in Afghanistan, but then she stuck out her hand, and I accepted the offer. She had her little son with her, and was accompanied by my other host, Jamshid, who was smiles and enthusiasm. He is equally beautiful, both of them slim, but strong.

I paid my strange luggage carrier a u.s. dollar, and he left like a shadow after a cloud appears. We loaded up in a mid size station wagon, one that I wondered if it had ever seen better days. The driver, Yasim, was big and kind faced. I would later learn he is husband in the couple who live in the orphanage. We drove out of the airport parking and immediately picked up a security guard, a man named Hakim who I soon learned goes wherever my hosts go, his Russian rifle in hand. It was a heavy load on that poor white car, and the streets here are a minefield of giant potholes. It is the end of rainy season. With no shocks left, the wheels ground against their wells more often than not, and puddles so deep as to drown the muffler. We made some very small talk, but I accepted that it was not the time or place to talk, better to pay attention. So I watched out my window as Kabul passed by. I’ve been in Manila, Bangkok, Madras… I’ve never seen anything like this. It is, first of all, a post thirty-years war zone. Everywhere there are police armed to the teeth, but there are so many different kinds. This army and that, security forces, regular police, there didn’t seem to be any order to who was posted where. They peek inside the cars and trucks, stop some without apparent reason. I was amazed to see even a few brave bicycles jammed into the few passable streets. All the way, miles through the city, was devastation, single story buildings held up by faith, others simply left collapsed. Shops were miraculously being wielded from the rubble. Women are the beggars here, in their blue burkhas, standing dangerously in the middle of traffic, how could they see? Many didn’t seem to have the strength to stand, so they just sat by the side. A truck could run over one, easily, and who would notice? Then came the shiny new buildings, fresh modern towers built with aide money. The contrast was outright confusing to me. As we made our way to the orphanage, the idea crystallized in my mind, most certainly what Sarah Chayes meant in her book when she wrote that this is a nation suffering, in its very fabric, from PTSD. The citizens, the warriors, the government, the doctors, the institutions, everything suffering from this condition. Imagine, if you will, the symptoms of one who suffers from PTSD. Now expand it to include a nation.

Then, finally we turned down a side street, bumping over a series of holes in the pavement, and there it was, the orphanage, brightly painted almost a quiet pastel peach, the color of skin. Yasim tooted the horn and the gate opened. We pulled into the drive, parked, and as I lifted myself out of the car, I was immediately awash in hope. Twenty or so of the children, standing there in the courtyard garden, smiling, curious beyond belief, expectant and, in their faces, every single one of them, hope.

“Salaam!” I said. And they answered with such immediacy, as if I’d said Guess what everyone, you are going to be happy for the rest of your lives! My heart felt it had found a home.

“Salaam!” they said in unison.

They are all girls, ages 7 to 10 to 16, from all over the country. Andeisha informed me there are now sixty in just this orphanage. We hiked up some steps and removed our shoes, and I was given a tour of the facility. Clean, organized, healthy. Room enough for the children to learn and be safe. One dorm room contains at least ten double bunk beds. There is a game room, a large classroom, and dining. I was shown the guest room, which is luxurious compared to most living conditions in such cities as Kabul. I’d even have my own bathroom.

But I was to discover layer by layer that all is not well, and I learned first hand, again Chayes' book on my mind, the Afghan propensity to get to some points circuitously, like a spiral getting closer and closer to its mark. Certain elements here are under siege, and the government has become vehemently against them. These are the elements that are simply refusing to be silent about the one major issue that is destroying the country once again, the empowerment of warlords, their place in government, men who had participated and even orchestrated massacres of civilians during the years of civil war. This orphanage is accused of being a cover for such an element.

We talked for two hours. It was serious and terribly sober talk. I would have to spend the night in a guest house, security is just too scary right now, even though the school is gated and armed by guards. A man living among girls who in this country are of marrying age may incite a row, but more than that the government suddenly believing this orphanage to be some sort of cover for what it considers to be a radical group. If we cannot convince parents of my role and trustworthiness, if we cannot find a way to get government official approval, to convince them this orphanage is an open book, that there are no radicals here, for security reasons I may have to find other living arrangements. But I can’t afford to pay the supremely inflated cost of housing in this ramshackled city, and how safe would it be for me to commute to the orphanage? Worst-case scenario: I go to Pakistan and work in an orphanage there. My lovely, brave, gracious hosts were heartbroken to even entertain the thought. They dearly want me to stay, they see the faces of the children already. For kids to learn English and computer would empower them to get real jobs. To teach them music would empower their hearts. How could this be a threat to the government? It all comes down to perception. I am infidel. I am here to steal a girl, to spread Christianity, a spy for Israel, all of it.

So we ate a meal of potatoes and fruit and yogurt, and we loaded with Yasim and our Kalashnikov totting Hakim, and made the drive back into the heart of the city, into the night and glowing generator powered lights to this guest house where I’d pass my very first night in Afghanistan, the crossroads of Asia.

[ipounds]

April 18

The world has turned, and the drama of that first day has subsided into English lessons, drama classes, music, song, and the children teaching me Dari. The orphanage runs a smooth operation, everyone taking their role in keeping things clean, friendly, and orderly. I have met so many people of all walks of life, children from terrible situations from every corner of the country, and they are all so polite, sensitive, inclusive. There is so much to be done every day, but still plenty of time for play.

This is the solution for a future in Afghanistan. It’s right here. I’m living under its very roof. No troops, no cabinet ministers, no United Nations or NGOs or bombs or spies or fundamentalism or checkpoints or laws or billion of dollars. The solution is quiet, patient. It is very spacious. The ceilings are high, the windows wide. There are four floors to it, including a basement with space to dance, or perform a tragedy, serve a feast of bread and rice and chick peas and water, in silence, only the sound of spoons clinking on plates, not heavily, but voluntarily, a contentment filling the room, children serving children, glad to do so, the others sitting on the floor facing one another, an ovoid circle, not unlike the earth. What is there to say when filling oneself with the nourishment of peace? Strange there is no feeling of regimentation. There are schedules, chores meted out, respect for the youngest by the oldest, therefore respect for the oldest. This solution is brewing, and when it is ripe, change will come in a day, maybe even an hour, and not a drop of blood will be spilled.

The kids have latched onto me and I must manage that, must be careful not to be sapped, to cause too much disruption among their ranks, or too much expectation. They are so open and funny and trusting and cheerful it is hard to believe, but please believe it. You can imagine the world they come from, I don't need to ever mention a single detail. Yet here they are, dare I say happy.

I've had many lengthy conversations with Jamshid about his country, the goal of these orphanages, and what works and doesn't work. The security fears have gone to sleep. We talk of gardening, now. I am safe, and I am needed. As long as those two items are in place, I will move forward. The organization behind the orphanage sponsorship program is AFCECO http://www.afceco.org/. I am spending some of my time writing for their newsletters, one for Afghan audience, the other for the sponsors. It is difficult sometimes, because one of the kids, Fatimah say, comes up to ask about how to write BEAUTIFUL. One comes and immediately four, then six. I spend some time, always, but if I do have pressing prep work or writing to do, I send them away and they oblige without a fuss.

This is the best job I have ever had.

[Steve]

Ian,

This is Steve Le. I just read your first entries and thought that they were insightful and beautifully-written, considering you were probably still jet-lagged. Others and I are looking forward to reading more about your experience at the Mehan Orphanage.

Be safe and be well,
Steve

[lindsay]

Hi E,
WOW is all I can say. I feel like I'm reading the next capter in Three Cups Of Tea. I think I have registered correctly and that you will actually recieve this reply from me. Dad is fine; both Jim and I have had Basil Cell skin cancers removed; requireing stitches. Spring has beautifully sprung. I'm planting tomatoes, beans, etc. this week, but life here is rather dull compared to what you are doing. I am excited for you and very pleased that you have found something that brings you such joy. I can't wait to see pictures of the children and the people you are involved with. I would have lost my cookies in that plane ride you described. Yikes!!!!! I have changed my plans on going to NH in Aug. to Sept. when you are back. That will be our Christmas together. Lot of LOVE

Lindsay

[ipounds]

23 April

It was the so-called "forgotten war". But really, as Amnesty International has suggested, what was forgotten is Afghanistan. Not the CNN reports, I mean the country, its people, what really goes on here, what really has happened. Conservative estimates are that 60% of Afghan children have lost at least one member of their family; over 600,000 children sleep on the streets and 60,000 are addicted to drugs. But this orphanage, and the eight others like it operating under the same model, is changing all of that, ten, twenty, fifty children at a time. If I could just show you what is done here, how it is different, how Tajik cares for Pashtun, Pashtun cares for Uzbek, Uzbek cares for Hazara, and Hazara then cares for Pashtun, you’d see much more than the orphanage existing in most minds; you’d see a school, a place of ideas that breathes, where someone like me can come to work side by side with Afghan educators and staff members, a place where that word tossed about so often of late: "hope" truly lives.

In the girl's orphanage I have dinner with the kids on the basement floor. The food is simple, rice and beans, some potato, squash or spring onions. Water. I usually sing some little song, we tell jokes. The kids are thoroughly involved in the running of things. They take shifts hauling water, serving, cleaning, laundry, and preparing for events such as birthdays. There is a housekeeper, Simaw, and she floats about the building serving all of us like an angel, soft spoken, always a hint of a smile. After dinner I help a few kids with homework or preparations for a performance. I make certain to say Shabeh ghai, good-night to all (Afghans come into a room and shake every hand, leaving is the same way). I close my door and take time for myself. It would be 8:30. Read, decompress, write in my journal. Sometimes this is the time the ghosts come alive, ghosts of lost loved ones, explosions, massacres witnessed, drugs. Night time is always the tough time for kids. A few of the girls get into a shouting match over chores, or some such thing. If it is bad enough the others come and settle it. There is actually a rotation of governance here, where different girls are in charge of different things. There's a "president" who has final word, after all has been explained. I get the feeling, listening to these arguements, that consensus is how things are decided upon. It is good, these conflicts. Learning to resolve them is vital. I settle under my sheets and stay out of it for now. I or the house parent, if it gets bad enough, will step in. This is truly a civilized place, here in the midst of Kabul, a place where that word has had its ups and downs, to say the least. The kids are an inspiration. Their desire for attention is palpable. At times I feel like I'm in a scene from Oliver or the King and I, with ten or twenty of them hemming me in, smiling, eager to hear me say something in Dari, make a silly face, to laugh, to share and to shine. Still somehow they are provided for. They more than anyone understand what is valuable in this world.

Many of the children here and at the other orphanages are sponsored through a networking provided by CharityHelp International. http://www.charityhelp.org/ You will see information there about these specific orphanages and how to get involved. If you are interested in becoming a sponsor of one of these children, or even one of the orphanages, you can go directly to the following link: https://www.charityhelp.org/afceco One of our 16 year olds, Mahbooba, is going to Italy for a year, to live with a couple who have sponsored her since she was a little girl in this very orphanage. It is a testament, I think, to the value of these orphanages, to see the older ones (and there are many) who came here at the age of four, and are positive, hopeful, speak four languages, are ambitious to make something of themselves, while still caring for the newer, younger ones. If you get involved, I can honestly say you will not be sorry, and unlike the notorious NGO industry where 80 cents on the dollar often goes into big salaries and bureaucracy, every penny goes directly into the child's life.

Arrival

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Farishta

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Nabila

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