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July 24, 2010
Winding along the edge of a cliff that plummets a thousand feet, I gave a silent prayer of thanks to the Chinese company that built the road from Kabul to Jalalabad, for doing the impossible and doing it well. I also prayed that now was not the time for one of the frequent rockslides to whisk away hapless travelers. Jamshid pushed an old cassette tape into the dashboard. “I used to listen to this a long time ago,” he said, “when I was in school in the refugee camp.” This is all that I knew ahead of my first road trip in Afghanistan: we would go to Jalalabad, which is at the foot of Taliban country, to visit our two orphanages there. It would take about 2 ½ hours to get there, and it would be 102 degrees and humid once we did. As recently as a year ago Afghan ministers postulated that Osama bin Laden was hiding in the mountains in Kunar Province to the north of the city. Many of the outposts of NATO soldiers had left the more remote East in favor of operations in the south. The area is predominantly Pashto country, where fierce villagers dug in against the Soviets and confounded them for many years. To get to this region you must cut through an almost impenetrable mountain range. That is all I knew. As we crept upward and the Kabul river sank lower and farther away I began to understand how a tough landscape for centuries kept Buddhism out of central Asia so long after it had been planted in China, Nepal and India. Sheer, towering mountains, desert dry and brown, loose footing and stones, everywhere stones of all sizes, as big as a house leaning on an angle, teetering against gravity. Every once in a while we passed a Kuchi nomad. Oddly, where women everywhere else in Afghan society are not often seen (and if at all cloaked in the ghostly burqa), with the Kuchi it is the opposite. Never do I see the men, only the women, gypsy-like with nose rings and brightly colored skirts and vests, so gay a color as to contradict the harsh life they seem to lead, oranges and violets and pinks and purples and yellows all thrown together. Their tents could be seen along the river or on a small plateau, and they would be ushering a few donkeys or goats along the road, or sometimes carrying huge bundles of sticks or grass on their backs. They are, I think, the original gypsies who migrated to India, then west clear to Spain and north into the heart of Europe, all the way to Ireland. They are the pariahs of Afghanistan, and yet they live freely. Other then the Kuchi we passed only periodic checkpoints and water stands. It wasn’t until we got to the top of the pass that signs of war dotted the landscape. We stopped to inspect the first burned out Soviet tank, but after a while it was as common to see such armored, twisted remnants as it was to encounter a switchback on the road. Over the top we went and then down, down through a chasm along a new river, this one rushing in class 5 rapids, bright green against the drab brown of its environs. Jamshid noted it was at this singular entry and exit point that in the early 90’s as the civil war commenced a notorious warlord named Zardan terrorized all who tried to pass through. How surreal time can be, all these images drifting, lingering in my mind’s eye as we descended into the floodplain of the river opening up toward the rice fields and orange groves of Jalalabad listening to Jamshid’s tape, a collage of top-forty sentimental hits from my childhood, including Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head, Those Were the Days (My Friend), Me and You and a Dog Named Boo, John Denver singing Country Roads, Frank Sinatra singing Strangers in the Night, Neil Sedaka singing Laughter in the Rain and Karen Carpenter singing Yesterday Once More. Most compelling was Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazelwood singing Summer Wine, wherein the man, imbibing himself on her “summer wine” loses his silver spurs. I laughed; and then I cried. Jalalabad is not Kabul; though the streets are equally devastated, busy, dirty, overflowing with humanity trying to pinch a dollar out of its day, I saw not one westerner. No business suits. Every man was dressed in a shalwar kameez outfit, the pajama-like pants and long overshirt, white or blue, and every single woman over the age of 14 (except for Kuchi) wore a blue burqa. It is difficult to understand, difficult to look at these blue ghosts. There is no way of knowing how many wear the burqa out of fear, how many out of convenience and habit; women who grew up with it, activists under cover or others avoiding hassles or simply wanting the anonymity, or how many wear it because they have been beaten into it. One thing for certain, it is not natural. It is not Afghan. It is not any more cultural than the yellow star was for Jews. Nine and a half years after their “liberation”, the Afghan woman’s life that so incensed the west and even played a part in the fever for all-out invasion and occupation (Hillary Clinton, Laura Bush, a covey of celebrities all added fire to the flame) has not changed significantly. (It is legal to rape your wife, and a woman who flees an abusive husband is thrown in jail, where she is often raped.) These harsh realities, though, do not give the whole picture. There is another Afghanistan, beneath the surface, one that is secular, free-loving, and striving to make real change from the ground up. Mostly made up of 18 to 35 year old educated Afghans, this movement I have seen with my own eyes is supported by a vast majority of older people who, though they may be conservative, illiterate, they were among those fighting the Soviets you don’t hear about, the democratic mujahidin. (What we know as “mujahidin” is the extreme fundamentalist muj who received the bulk of support such as Stinger Missiles from Pakistan, and by proxy America back in the 80’s.) This other Afghanistan is the one I know through my association with AFCECO. Though it had filtered through the orphanages from time to time, I was about to venture into its many facetted heartbeat outside the anomaly that is Kabul. We drove straightaway to Spogmay Orphanage, the new program housing around 30 boys and 40 girls, ages 6 to 12. “Spogmay” is Pashto for “moon”. The place put a spell on me equal to its appellation. A spectacular house, three-stories tall with columns to great you, ornately dolloped with glittering tile and glass of many colors, and on top a crow’s nest to look out over the city. The owner is a diplomat who leases the building for $1,600 a month, at least a thousand less than he could otherwise garner. There are those who might question the investment in such an abode over a simple concrete institutional-like structure, but environment is the first and most vital step in affecting the lives of these children, creating the space in which to infuse them with a philosophy of equality, education, tolerance, reaching for individual aspirations while working for the greater whole. Watch the children stand in chorus formation to greet you as you enter the orphanage, and survey the confidence, the calm and serenity on their faces as they sing a song in Pashto about the days when Afghanistan was peaceful in the 60’s. Watch every one of them come forward, stick out her or his hand to shake and say “Salam”. Especially watch the 7 year old Nuristani girl about 3 feet tall, how utterly confident she is, self directed and determined. Watch the children skip in and out of the house with donated toys. Walk downstairs and see them in class with their tutor, finding common ground and unifying their various languages. Step outside and see the boys together with girls, standing in a circle in the grassy courtyard. See the instructor who is a woman and an expert soccer player lead the children in a series of physical exercises as the once blazing sun settles down behind the outer wall of the compound. Witness these things and you will connect them to the environment they live in. Clean, spacious, organized, beautiful, safe. Of course, it is still an orphanage. The rooms are packed with bunk-beds, the children eat simple meals of nan, rice, beans and fresh fruit, some tomato and cucumber and pepper. They all must do chores constantly. They all must be disciplined, and they have to share the attention of the adults and be satisfied with what amount of loving they get. But these elements are not such a bad thing absent of the depravities we think of when we hear the word “orphanage”. That is why we must come up with a new way to describe Spogmay and Mehan and Sitara. In Persian the word is parwarishga, literally “foster haven”. This works for me. The children of Spogmay do not speak Dari. They are Pashai, Nuristani or Arab Afghans, all ancient minorities of this region. It was strange for me to try out my hard-won Dari and be received with absent stares. Once again I had to resort to my eyes, my hands, my tone of voice to communicate. I had almost forgotten how. I mostly observed their behavior, interactions, mannerisms. I wanted to detect if this experiment was working. After all, many of the children in our Kabul homes had already been raised in the Pakistan programs. These Spogmay children were all fresh from the world of remote villages, sharing little language, having had no indoctrination into the AFCECO way of doing things. It was only a matter of a few hours before I walked up to Jamshid, smiling from ear to ear. “Jamshid, I know what I came here to see: it’s working! What we do in Kabul is replicable, even here in the bedrock of Pashtun conservatism and Taliban stronghold.” What I need to stress here, and words won’t do it because you must see for yourself, is that this goes far beyond humanitarian aspirations. Helping poor children get educated, giving them love is all well and good, but it is completely unremarkable. What we are talking about here is a silent, powerful revolution on a scale of the historic non-violence movements in India and the U.S. You will think I am overstating. I will tell you about the rest of my road-trip, and perhaps then you will agree. We left Spogmay to visit the second, smaller orphanage in Jalalabad. Naseema is named for Naseema Shaheed High School, which was the Afghan-run school in Khewa refugee camp in Pakistan, the camp where Andeisha grew up and the very school she attended. The school was named for a young woman who was killed helping the democratic mujahidin resistance during Soviet times. When the camp and school were shut down by the Pakistani government, Andeisha had it in her mind to keep her beloved school alive in spirit and name. Right now the orphanage is undergoing a major face-lift. Cabinetry, plumbing, painting primarily. The work will be finished in time for the school year that unlike Kabul begins in September. While visiting Naseema, we met a variety of men, the kooky, limping white haired landlord with an infectious smile, the head carpenter and his workers, and various staff and older children. The carpenter insisted we come to visit his village up in the mountains, where many of AFCECO’s children come from. This decision, going or not going, would not be made quickly. Especially with a pink faced American in tote. We had other things to do in the meantime. After delivering a new (old) car that is much needed by the Jalalabad staff, we drove to a clinic at the edge of the city that is in desperate need of support. The people of AFCECO are involved in networking other Afghan grassroots organizations that help people in various ways. This particular clinic has for twenty years served over 40,000 refugees who otherwise have nowhere to go for care. We aimed to introduce a large NGO called Morningstar, (that we have come to know through their interest in helping provide volunteers), to the clinicians running the operation. What we found was heartening and heartbreaking. The doctor and her staff are heroic in their dedication and passion, but the facility has collapsed into near ruin. Literally, roofs have caved in, there is little sanitation, the operating room is open air and dusty. The faces of the medical team were just this side of tears, forlorn as they were, yet their strength and courage bore them up. The doctor spoke frankly, honestly, open eyed to the Morningstar investigator. They had plenty of human resources, and thousands of patients. They charge only fifty Afghanis per visitation, that’s a dollar. They administer inoculations, treat malaria, provide a midwife, prenatal and postpartum care, and otherwise attend to the business of healing. They have been deserted by corporate NGOs and the Afghan government primarily because refugees are a population that seems everywhere in and around Afghanistan to be left to its own devices. We have treaded carefully with Morningstar; they too are big, and anything big can be a great disturbance or even destruction as much as it can be a godsend. They have thus far proven to be most sensitive, responsive, and committed. Their representative asked a slew of appropriate and professional questions, taking detailed notes. It was terribly hot. The trees and even the grass were blistering. Everyone at the end of the hour still maintained a demeanor of hope and a rolled up sleeves, get work done approach to the situation. Meanwhile, I watched several burqa-clad women arrive with children, meet with a nurse and leave. They were receiving their last series of shots for hepatitis B. I wandered into the courtyard that had once been a lush garden. Random flowers mixed with weeds. I closed my eyes and imagined medicinal herbs, some fruit trees, sunflowers. The visit over, we drove to a spot on the Khost river where it comes tumbling through a hydro plant. Not long ago this water was glacier. Afghanistan is a perfect candidate for hydro power (and solar and wind and even geothermal), as there is a continuous supply of snow-melt on rivers and streams for production both large and micro. We ate a kabob feast for a late lunch, and settled into a mug full of dokh (nowadays a yogurt drink but as I’ve described in the past, true dokh is completely different). As we leaned into our pillows on a rooftop carpet in the trees, I tried to think of a time I hung out with such a large group of men. Out in the real world of Afghanistan I felt new and naïve. I have been around women and girls primarily most of my time in this country, but normally this would be my life, among men. I’d have to go back to an all male sweat lodge I did in Vermont ten years ago to recall anything similar, or way back to my years playing high school football. The men here are different. They do not waste a lot of energy competing with one another for one thing, verbally or physically. There is a certain amount of femininity, gentleness, even hand holding. No battle to be alpha. This in direct contrast to what I know of their history, men who walked through mountains in snow with a jammed AK-47 to battle an empire, who keep their families alive under the worst of circumstances, and who would give their lives in one flash to honor the life of their friend or relative. As I relaxed on my elbow I looked around at all the posters of candidates running for parliament. How did these men compare with the men whose company I now kept? We drove to another house situated by the river where we all jumped in to shed the heat. It was one of those days where the wind felt like a hairdryer. Afghans are not avid swimmers, and the current was strong. I took the lead and crossed over to a large sand bar, not thinking that this was showing off or inviting a challenge. It is what any New England boy would do. The other men hesitated, but one by one they made their way, albeit with a certain amount of effort akin to half drowning, half paddling. The sun (finally!) descended and it was time to return to Spogmay and the children. Yet another feast awaited us, and with stomachs achingly full we pulled beds out under early evening sky to be cooler and to watch the first quarter moon drop from sight. Jamshid brought a portable radio out and tuned into the Voice of America, a network aired specifically for an Afghan audience. We’d gotten word our fearless director Andeisha was to be interviewed, along with the deputy minister of work and cultural affairs. As I lay there on my orphan’s cot, staring at the purple night and listening to the conversation in Dari while children flitted about speaking Pashto, Nuristani, Pashai or Arabic, I felt isolated in a dream wherein I was supremely alone while at the same time connected to something much larger than I’d imagined before. I drifted off to sleep this way, exhausted and content. Still, the night was not over; Jamshid’s voice summoned me back. A treat had been planned, and I know now it was on my behalf. Three classical musicians sat in a corner of the orphanage. One on rubab, one on tabla and one, the singer, on harmonium. I sat with the children and staff on pillows that had been scattered across the floor. I have often played classical Afghan music while I worked in the orphanage and now at the office. I turn it up loud and fill the house, only because it seems to please the natives. These musicians where mesmerizing, the singer penetrating. They performed one love song that lasted almost an hour. The rhythm danced from lilting to pounding and back again, like a feverish heart. Often I turned and watched the faces of the boys and girls, to see if they were also transfixed. A few were certainly being polite, but most were agape. They, like I, had just discovered their cultural roots that for their lives and twenty years previous had been outlawed, even erased. I fell asleep well before the performance ended, and I believe in this way the music was fused with my own fiber. I was awakened an hour before the sun was to emerge. As I have learned, it is better not to be so concerned with agendas here, nor with balanced books, debts and favors, who is going to do what where and when, all those things that seem so paramount in western culture. What must be addressed is, in its time, addressed. I had no idea where we were off to, but wherever it was required a very prompt and early start. We drove north. Jamshid pushed a tape in. Save All Your Kisses for Me, by Brothershood of Man. My brain went into a spasm. I asked him to kindly put something else in, a collection of songs he’d shared once before by the most famous singer in modern Persian history, Googoosh. Slowly we curled our way into the Hindu Kush Mountains. After about two runs through the cassette our driver Han Agha pulled off toward a mud-walled village nestled beneath a grove of poplar trees and pines. Here I got my first glimpse of village life. Except for the architecture, clay walled labyrinth of huts, my mind immediately went back to the years living with hippies up in the mountains of Washington State. Children were everywhere, barefoot and doing chores, subsistence crops growing in a variety of plots, everyone a part of one big family. Homes are utilitarian, not spacious. Life is very, very simple. The primary difference is zero to limited access to education or health care. After walking through the village we sat for chi and nan. One indicator of opportunity for developing places like Afghanistan is the presence of solar panels and battery storage. Even the chi was warmed up in a solar collector. With energy for the masses so prohibitive in cost and delivery, it makes sense these villages jump over the 20th Century energy world, skip straight to the next. As we drank and ate one local man who seemed to be my age told a story about fighting against the Russians. He showed the scar where a bullet went through his arm just below the elbow. I imagine these stories abound. Everyone suddenly stood up. Time to go. I still didn’t know where we were going, for how long or why. The reason is simple; I hadn’t asked. Soon enough I figured it out. We were going to the very remote village high in the mountains where the carpenter had invited us to visit the day before. Janshegal is at the end of a two-hour hike at the end of a twenty-kilometer road that begins after an hour and a half drive north from Jalalabad. Janshegal is Pashai country. They fought the Soviets tooth and nail. I later read of a siege on their village that failed. 30 Russian soldiers killed, 28 of the villagers. These people are now in their second generation of warrior blood, against Taliban and Northern Alliance both. They are conservative, but not fundamentalist. Over twenty of their children are now living in AFCECO orphanages. At the end of the road we staggered out of our car and were immediately joined by ten or so men and one boy who had descended only to accompany us back up into the mountains. I have never seen so many Kalashnikovs in one place. Even the young boy carried one. I wore flipflops, but the path was smooth. I made my way up front with the henna red bearded man who seemed to be the captain of this platoon. The landscape grew more dramatic with every hundred meters. Gigantic stones, bleached white dotted small landings that had been transformed into an agricultural patchwork of verdure. Old crops had just been pulled. Then, higher up, corn only knee high but thick and dark green healthy. The air grew thin and I started to huff and puff. We stopped every so often under low lying trees that I could not identify, a kind of aspen leaf but a harder wood gnarly barked trunk like that of a hickory. Nobody knew what it is called in English. Every turn in the path I marveled at the stonework. Everywhere, bordering the plots of corn, buffering the stream, miles of stone walls built with such care. The boy saw me put my hand against one wall as if worshiping. “My grandfather built that,” he said, and walked on. Stories woven into the land. This was my kind of place. Of course, most of the stories are related to war. Here is the outcropping where they hid from the helicopters; there is the stone they battled over for two years. As we walked we seemed to accumulate more men. This was a major event, and I felt terribly self-conscious that it was not all for Jamshid’s benefit, that the American had come with a tag, and this tag could mean many things. What I saw up in those mountains that day is what people refer to disparagingly about Afghanistan, things that would place it firmly in the Middle Ages. True, I have seen a man using odd shaped, seemingly random stones to weigh out a price for two watermelons on a scale that Monty Python couldn’t have depicted any more backwardly. Janshegal conjures a time without internal combustion engines. Surrounded by stepped plots of corn all trimmed in stone, attached to the steep uplift of earth rising higher and higher beyond like they were always there, like the stones themselves are the houses. Not mud here, all stone. Women and children were scattered everywhere doing chores. A line of girls arrived from somewhere farther into the mountains with gigantic loads of feed for their cattle and goats they had picked that morning in some meadow far away. The mosque was itself rustic, like a natural amphitheater you see in American national parks. Animals wandered at will. Where would they go? We were led to an outlook situated in a grove of trees looking back at the village. Rifles were piled in a corner and more children arrived. A carpet was rolled out, chi was served, lunch was already being prepared over a fire. Fresh meat kabab, onions and tomatoes direct from the garden, freshly baked nan… Afghans know how to have a picnic. They make our hot dog, burger with sand in it and rickety benches with ketchup smeared on the seats look more like the Middle Ages. The only thing the two have in common is a penchant to serve soda pop. An oriental magpie robin (I know it because one sits outside my window in Kabul) sang in a pine tree overhead, as if it had been commandeered for the job. A boy sat down beside me, and soon two more. It is always the children who come first, while the adults remain politely apart. One boy looked familiar, and to my surprise he began to speak English. “You know Fawad?” “Fawad? Yes, he is my student. And a good football player.” “He is my brother. I am good at football too. I am forward.” In a short while I discovered just how connected this village is with AFCECO. It is through his brother my new friend has been determined to learn and practice English. I looked around at all these warriors sitting on rocks stroking their beards and I realized that they every one of them were not proud, not angry, not jealous or hardened. They were hopeful. They have a direct link with opportunity, the education of their children, and they would die for it if necessary. And it is not just the boys, but many girls too have come from this place. One father has an 18-year old daughter he wants to save from being pressured to marry. She is ambitious and smart, he said, and asked Jamshid if he could have her join the orphanage. The link here is that everyone is part of the same community. In much of the world children leave a village and never return. This will be the case with some of ours, but many if not most are still proud of their people, their lifestyle, and they feel a responsibility to use their gifts to improve the village, rather than exchange it for a material life alone in a city. After a feast we walked upstream to wash in a small waterfall. Goats and dogs and shepherds were on their way down the path. One man led a dog that stunned me with its looks. It had all the markings of a cheetah, orange with black spots. It didn’t look real. The shepherd offered to sell it to me for two thousand dollars. I thought about breeding it and selling the one-of-a-kind animal in the west, quadrupling my money and using it for computers in the orphanages. Jamshid and I often joke about such opportunities that come and go. We rattled off expenses and profits and possible risks as we walked. It was 4:30 in the afternoon and shadows were getting long. One more cup of tea and then we’d make the long walk back to the car. Something had been brewing in my chest and I had been waiting for the right opportunity to let it loose. With all the men sitting together sipping chi, I asked Jamshid if he would translate my English into Dari, and one of the other men translate his Dari into Pashto. The elder of the group patted a pillow next to him and asked me to sit. His face had the lines of Father Time traveling up and down his cheeks and across his brow. His beard was long, straight and cotton white. Another elder refilled my cup with steaming green chi, and everyone waited patiently for me to speak. “I am not a soldier,” I said. “And I’m not a farmer.” This was translated and the men nodded and chuckled. “I am only a teacher…” I went on to tell them what I am here for, why I believe in it. I told them for many centuries others had come to Afghanistan only to take, that I would try and give, that I was honored by their trusting me with their children, and that I would do everything in my power to give them back teachers, midwives, engineers. With this speech I opened a door, and the men began to tell of their woes, the road that washes out and the school they need and the clinic. Their hopes attached to this one scraggly American were visceral. I bowed my head in almost shame that they would value me so. Each of the elders came up to me and touched my heart with his right hand, put his cheek to my cheek, and then thanked me three times, as if a prayer. These are men who fought the Soviets, the extremists, the warlords, and they will continue to fight as long as they must, not for ideology, not for money, not for power or vengeance. They fight to protect the lives of their children. Satisfied, almost jovial, we all said our good-byes. We walked down the winding path but this time through the village. One house after another was identified as home to children I teach in the orphanage. A few of the boys accompanied us as we descended into the valley. Every now and then I looked back. I had often hinted to Jamshid my desire to see a village. I know not to pester him. Sooner or later, he would oblige me. History has always been a part of my cosmology. Without it there are no stories, nor is there connection to some sort of meaning. When I begin my lessons again, I will look one student in the eyes and I will describe a stone where that child once hid from her brother, or the birdsong that once drifted through the window of his house. I will tell a story they know, and with that one singular story a stone will be put into place, and a foundation can be built. The last thing the elders told me is to please not forget them. It is the smallest thing they could have asked of me. It is the most vital thing that I do.
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