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May 27, 2011
Warning: It has been a few weeks and I’m thinking too much and I’m going to write a lot and I’m afraid it will be heavy on the editorial and opinion side and though I promise to include news about the children I can’t say how much or when in this expose I’ll get to it, so you can just skip it, or skip through if you are not inclined to hear lecturing volunteer excommunicated expatriated teacher voice mode. Additionally, though I have never mentioned this because it went without saying, I should say it now: everything I write here is completely independent of the views and opinions of AFCECO and any of the people associated with that organization. Here goes… I watched two documentaries this week, one about the Freedom Riders of 1961 (PBS American Experience) and one about the life of Benazir Bhutto (Bhutto: you can’t murder a legacy). In one we have people working together collectively, and in the other we have an individual placed in a certain position, both effecting historic revolutionary waves. These are stories of non-violence as a means to bringing positive change, though they are stories dotted with violence heinous in its blindness of rage and ideology and hunger for power. These are well-researched documentaries. Though to a certain degree they can’t help showing their hands, the films make a good effort at integrity, careful to skirt over-glorification of their subjects. In Freedom Riders, the establishment we so love to revere: Kennedy and in particular Bobby, and Dr. M. L. King are shown to have been more wary and even obstructive than supportive, until eventually they were forced to act due to international attention and the inherent disgrace. In Bhutto we find a sharp albeit brief nod to the view that she was corrupt or worse, had a hand in the bloodshed as well as complacency in dealing with the rising Taliban (which, by the way, originated in Pakistan, not Kandahar as news agencies persist in misinforming). One common thread in both films that intrigues me is that these people at various times felt and in fact were terribly alone in their endeavor to combat institutionalized injustice. Relief for their efforts eventually came in the form of ensuing waves of Freedom Riders filling up the jails of Mississippi, and for Bhutto the thousands upon thousands of supporters who came out to cheer their hopeful champion of civilian rule and democracy. But at the end of both films what stuck with me was the depth of solitude these people must have felt in their lives in the moments when they had to accept death as a cost of going forward and then later on, the Riders going forward with their lives and Bhutto in exile while her notorious husband was in jail. Among all Bhutto’s reasons for going back the last time in 2007 I wonder if there was also a certain level of guilt for having survived, perhaps something similar to what combat veterans feel upon their return from war. The latest full moon was one of those “bad moon a risin’” kind of moons that come once a year. You know it, the things out of kilter kind of moon. I’m relieved it has passed. Many students have battled a nasty cold that has made the rounds just as it does in school systems everywhere. I didn’t have a class where there wasn’t at least one student missing due to illness. Then Manizha broke a bone in her ankle playing football, which required the application of a small cast, and my knee got a bad twist that is rather painful. Most distressing is one of my best students who I’ve taught since I arrived in 2009 is fighting a degenerative eye disease. My understanding is that he may require a transplant of some sort, which of course is not available here. Meanwhile news is filtering in from all corners of Afghanistan, riots, more bombs, and building animosity toward occupation forces. The killing of O.B. Laden was initially welcomed, there was a kind of spontaneous impulse to think that this means some sort of shift will occur in the mission of NATO or reticence of Taliban, but after the revelry almost everyone underwent a soul search, a kind of deflation that comes with realizing that the death of Laden means nothing in regard to the war and the present government and the people who retain power and those who are well positioned to replace them. During that last moon phase I observed a brief but notable depression pass across the brows of many Afghans, young and old. It comes and goes quickly; these are the least self-pitying people I’ve ever known. Still, from time to time I detect a despondency, a silence, a shrug of the shoulder, a particular reaction to wind slamming a window or door, some bodily indication of the cumulative effect of an entire population that has known war, oppression, poverty, drought, marginalization, racism, sickness, injury, rape and/or death from the moment of birth. It was appropriate, I guess, that one of my classes was reading about the moon and that Maria wanted to borrow the telescope to look at that glowing, confounding satellite more intently. It seemed to me that damned moon was completely full three nights in a row. The degree to which the children and adults in the orphanages maintain a sense of humor, appreciate what they have in life and steadfastly apply themselves to what they understand is a quiet, peaceful yet nonetheless revolutionary undertaking is astounding. It picks me up and puts me in my place day after day. This is particularly astounding given we live in a country where placing any amount of energy into hope has for so many for so long been as much a waste of time and even laughable as expecting the dust to leave Kabul for good. But it would be equally ridiculous to imagine the children and widows and all the struggling students and husbands have been miraculously inoculated from ever lapsing into despair. What they have seen and experienced is behind their eyes and though it has built unparalleled character it has also taken its toll. On top of this is a calling from which it is impossible to turn away. Every one of these children, even the youngest at some unconscious level understands what they are embarking upon; they are in a sense Freedom Riders in their own right, and quite possibly a few of them will one day even be thrust onto the national stage to stand up for human decency and the rights to food, shelter, health, education and equality under the law. I work primarily with the 12 to 19 year olds now, and I can see clearly their growing realization of not only the privilege they’ve enjoyed, but also the responsibility they more than anyone have placed upon their shoulders. There is a moment when a Freedom Rider in the film is asked why he is getting on the bus, and he answers quite simply it is his responsibility as an American citizen aware of the injustice. I watched that video twice and nowhere did I detect bravado or a sense of heroics or even rebelliousness. In fact later when the National Guard came in to handle the buses, I think the Riders were more embarrassed than anything else. Of course the children of AFCECO are not so clearly targeting their lives on some specific mission, but the oldest ones do remind me of the faces, voices and convictions captured in the fifty-year old footage of those students journeying to Alabama and Mississippi. The Freedom Riders did not fit some movie script caricature. There is the naïveté, the youthful belief in ideals, and yes a certain amount of the lonesome dove, but there is also a unique overarching and almost serene maturity as illustrated by the “lesson” given Kennedy’s envoy over the phone by one of the 18 year-old organizers when the envoy was trying to get her to call the whole thing off. You’ll have to see the documentary to hear what this lesson was. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/freedomriders/ I admit I am hyper critical of my country, my culture, and I struggle with being judgmental, as it creates conflict in my heart. But entering my third year here in Kabul and being privy to a different Afghanistan than is reported to the world, I cannot help but see my country through a different lens. The degree to which idealism is infantilized and fear (and therefore denial) of failure permeates and pollutes imagination feeds the recklessness, consolidation of power, and old-world downward spiraling of what stands to be just another in a long line of has-been empires. I am of the opinion that poets are benevolent liars, that when we point in one direction we are actually trying to get people to move in another. If we point to the center we would like people to work their way to the edge, and when we point to the outer limits we want voyagers to find their way home. We have an inkling this is how we learn about truth. Unfortunately poetry has been marginalized as useless, and propaganda has been so refined and widespread as to seem as sure fired and acceptable a source of useful information as a weather report. When the machine starts malfunctioning, when we press the button for steak and get Mozart as in E.M. Forster’s story The Machine Stops, the machine somehow is able to spin these symptoms as profound examples of its supremacy and adaptability. I do not believe Forster’s story is so much a treatise on the dangers of technology as on the dangers of complacency. That is why it meant so much for me to see the PBS film about those Freedom Riders, to go back to 1961, my first year of life and see a small group of young people reject complacency to the point of risking and even giving up the golden opportunities laid before them, to instead “get on the bus”. Contrary to my own rancor, from my experience speaking to several thousand Americans over the course of two winter tours, I firmly understand that we are not simple minded, and we do care. When China's Vice-Premier Wang Qishan remarked about Americans being “simple”, he got away with the insult because, whether accurate or not plenty of people around the world see Americans similarly, both critically and admirably. Foreigners believe Americans are full of gumption. They believe we see the world in black and white more than shades of gray, and most importantly that we can “get things done”. But foreigners also see America as the juvenile that likes to get into trouble. We are the cowboys. Even though Americans are of every shade and every temperament, our persona as a collective people gets re-cast into this simplified caricature. It may be we have a weakness and fondness for this image. (Why the immensely popular re-visiting last year of True Grit of all things?) Well, who can blame us? It is the cowboy and the youthful upstart that are secretly envied by all. But Rooster Cogburn and James Dean were never equipped nor even wanted to be in charge, and being in charge is something America, since the collapse of the Soviet Union has been about as inept at acceding as that drunken loner on his horse or that boy with his fast car and his cigarettes rolled up into his T-shirt sleeve. We as a culture can ill-afford to cling to that identity, because it fogs our vision and distracts us from the increasing level of decay in our own heart. We can look at a variety of people and their actions since 1990, but I’ll stay current. First case in point: our Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner’s response to Wang’s remark about Americans being “simple” people. According to CNN, when asked for a response, Geithner said, “You know, the thing about America and the world is that our role in the world, we took on this huge role in the world well ahead of the understanding of Americans about what was happening in the world. And that’s changing now. When I went to China to study Chinese 30 years ago, it was a unique, exceptional thing,” Geithner continued. “And now, of course, there’s tens of thousands of Americans sitting in China all across the United States. And you’re starting to see a much greater investment by Americans in understanding – not just China – but all the countries that are so important to our interests.” Now, I know what he was getting at, and in many ways it is just about what I am saying here, but what on earth is cluttering his brain? There’s tens of thousands of Americans sitting in China all across the United States? Bad enough this and the rest of the quote is Sarah Palinesque, but what embarrasses me more are the first and last sentences. It hearkens back to the Wall Street criminals who were “too big to fail”. The first sentence insults our own people more than the Chinese dignitary did by insinuating we were incapable of fathoming the role our country was taking on in the world as it was happening, and are playing catch up. Even worse is the inherent hubris, the reveling once again in our role as “superpower” and in the last sentence revisiting that ever dangerous, selective and practically imperial euphemism: our interests. Along the way Geithner congratulated himself on having gone to China 30 years ago, by inference expressing how unique and exceptional he is. Anybody can flub up a live interview, but not people of his caliber and standing in society. He could have predicted this exchange and come up with a groomed statement. Thinking in terms of having to stand up for America while moving forward with relations, why couldn’t he have said, “There no doubt continues to be a schism between western and eastern thought, and it goes both ways, but here in the United States we have enormous communities of people from China, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Thailand and other east Asian nations. These people not only connect America to millions of relatives back in their own homelands, but of course add to the collective spirit of America, and contribute vitally to our understanding of the world. Simultaneously, thousands of Americans actually work in China, are learning languages and doing business and teaching. If anything, perhaps it is our respective governments that are lagging behind our own people in terms of understanding one another and working toward a better future for all.” If the King of England can overcome a speech impediment, Geithner (and the endless cast of characters before him) can learn how to do a live interview and think quickly and articulate those thoughts. Another case in point: The U.S. government hit the debt ceiling. Secretary Geithner had the unenviable task of telling Congress in person. He said he would have to suspend investments in federal retirement funds until August in order to create room for the government to continue borrowing in the debt markets. He went on to urge Congress once again to raise our country's legal borrowing limit soon "to protect the full faith and credit of the United States and avoid catastrophic economic consequences for citizens." Does this worry anyone? I don’t know, but if I have a maxed out credit card and the company simply raises my limit, I am not inclined to change my behavior. Case in point number three: President Obama and P.M. Cameron on stage assuring everyone in short the old world order is still in tact, that we in the west are not in decline. Their language reminded some observers of the good old days of Empire and Righteousness, while in the background the aged and beloved Monarch muddled about her pomp and ceremony, the Royal Wedding still glistening in our collective memory. Mixed in there was a co-opting of the “Arab Spring” as a shining example of our way of life and our love of freedom spreading democracy across the globe. In my limited understanding it was not American policy that sparked these revolutions, unless we acknowledge our involvement in supporting dictators such as Mubarak over the years. In fact I’ve read that it was pamphlets and books translating the words of Dr. Martin L. King and non-violent disobedience that spurred many of the organizers in Egypt and Tunisia, as well as video clips Arab students have hailed as inspirational, clips of among other things the Freedom Riders. In studying once again the French Revolution, I am reminded that the greater the distance between the people and the ones who rule them, the greater the risk of not only the removal of those in power, but in extreme cases outright revolution. It worries me how much those in power today exhibit symptoms of being out of touch. It haunts me— a very early interview with Obama at the White House, his expressed and singular frustration being that he was unable to simply sit at a counter with someone in a café and listen to what is being said, that he has to depend upon a select group of individuals to keep his finger on the pulse. It is likewise here in Kabul, where literally those in power, westerners and Afghans alike, live in fortresses and armed, tinted windowed convoys between fortresses. And so these are my musings and I reveal them here because ultimately I do care about America, and I care deeply about my country’s hand in the lives that have become my Afghan family. In contrast to these thoughts, the truth is my life has become very simple. In fact I feel as a person simpler and simpler. I am only sure of my commitment to the children of AFCECO. What I should be telling you is what I know, and what I know is this: I no longer bounce between orphanages, but merely commute to the New School in the morning, and commute back around 7pm. I play a game of chess on the computer, I think about tomorrow, I’m asleep by 9. I wake up at 4:00 and prepare for classes. Some days the progress is great, when one of the children suddenly realizes when to use present perfect tense, or past perfect continuous, or that an irregular verb has yet another spelling—eat, ate, eaten or see, saw, seen. Other days I am inclined to drop the lesson and simply have a conversation with the group of eight or so girls or boys in my class, because they crave it, because there is something on their minds, or simply because they just want to wander with their thoughts. Sometimes the talk is serious, sometimes light. We talk about proverbs such as, When elephants fight it is the grass that suffers or A friend is someone who remembers the song in your heart and can sing it back to you. We tell jokes. “A horse walks into a café and the waiter asks, ‘Why the long face?’” The Leadership girls thought this was absolutely hilarious. Once in a while the older children are sparked into a debate about their country, about the future, about Taliban and NATO and Karzai. Sometimes they are tired, they may be sick. They do not see family, if there is family at all, and they shudder when a pair of choppers fly low overhead. They have exams at school, exams at the New School, sports programs, special training in music, art and medicine, and they have very large households to manage. And… They are happy. I see them dance to a special tune on the radio. I see them tease one another and I revel in their freedom to sometimes tease me. There are moments I am weak. I do not know how or where to ask for help and I don’t want to anyway. But the children see right through me, right into my very essence. During that last bad moon I became a little reflective, about my own family and things they are going through, about my own life. I too felt a sudden deflation, maybe a weariness. One by one the girls of Leadership Workshop came up to me throughout that day. They don’t ever ask me if I am okay, they cut straight to the mark. “Why are you sad, Ian-jan?” It horrifies me to think that they might feel they must take care of me, on top of everything else. “I’m fine,” I lie, and then I tell the truth, and then we pick ourselves up, and soon we are all laughing again. One of the girls confided in me this week, that at times in her life she had contemplated “giving up”. These children are so resilient and so full of strength of character and so pure of spirit it is easy to forget they are children, that they have fears and heavy memories that most of us don’t carry until mid life. I worked for years with actively suicidal adolescents. In my view this girl was not intimating a suicidal impulse, and interestingly she was not remotely blaming the world. Instead, aside from that ever brief moment of Afghan exhaustion I mentioned earlier, I think it was her way of learning to emote in a land where women still by and large don’t have the luxury of contemplating emotions and giving others the chance to empathize with them. This week I asked my Leadership girls to give presentations on Civil Disobedience and Afghanistan. This girl who confided in me was chosen by her group to speak for them. She was professional, thorough, informational, logical, articulate and passionate. She spoke about women’s rights, and she did it all in English. Afterwards, quite a bit later she could no longer contain herself and whispered across the table to me. “How did I do?” she asked. “Ian-jan,” she added, “It is the first time I ever give speech by myself, before people.” These are the moments that make up the bulk of my life. I don’t drive to visit friends or family, or go to the movies, or the bank, or even the grocery store. I don’t spend time on the phone, nor do I plan for my future. I just stand in front of these children six days a week, eleven different classes, and I try not to blow it. I fail, frequently. Except for the grammar lessons, I do my best to give each group something different from the others. They are all that special. Oftentimes I tell stories. Stories from my own life, or stories from history as if they too are a part of my life. As far back as I can remember I have wanted to become a storyteller. Perhaps selfishly most of the time this is what I do as a teacher. I am happy and fortunate to have stories to tell, and the only thing that gives me greater joy is to see my students develop into storytellers themselves. “Yes,” I answered that brave student who stood up and gave her first and perhaps the most important speech of her life. “You did very, very well.”
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