I am sitting in an eight-foot square eleven-dollar room on a narrow street called the Main Bazaar in the heart of New Delhi. I have left one capital city for another, the most corrupted, war beaten in the world for the seat of the most populace democracy in the world. I am free for the first time in five months to walk the streets alone and without fear. Instead I sit in my dingy room. There will not be a knock on my door, “Ian-jan, I come in?” I am so used to it happening my body expects it. There is no knock on my door. Freedom is nothing compared to love.
On Monday Anwar and Aziz who work in the office, kawka Ryan, kawka Yasin, the two house parents from Sitaras one and two, myself and a woman named Nadia who works with the women’s center drove to the refugee camp on the outskirts of Kabul where an estimated one thousand families fleeing the war in Helmand Province have built a mud walled shanty town. Our mission was to distribute tickets, each for to claim one can of ghee, one bag of rice and one bag of sugar. This was tricky business. Firstly, a thousand families constitute seven thousand mouths to feed. Sheer numbers meant a fifteen thousand dollar price tag, three trucks and police approval (which costs). Then there is the culture. These people are Pashtun, very conservative and very proud. We had to deal with their customs and power structure. Ten or so different elders vying for the sake of their respective villagers, some of them corrupt enough to amass the handout in order to sell rather than distribute. Then there are the five thousand or so other starving people who just happen to live in the area. Our mandate was to help the displaced, not the residential poor. We’d have to prohibit the outsiders from our effort. RAWA raised the money. We’d figure out the rest.
The mud shanties are a testament to resourcefulness. Next to no wood. No money. No tools but a shovel. One well. The only expense was plastic tarps for many of the roofs, though even these I suspect were mostly found. The clay soil is optimal for such construction. As we wove our way through the camp I peaked into some of the huts. They were clean, orderly, a rug, a transistor radio, a cooking area, a sleeping area. Civilized. What overwhelmed this subtler quality was the emaciation of its people. A labyrinth, this camp. I found myself falling back and almost getting lost. This in the midst of a ground swell of desperation. People wanted tickets, and they would do anything to get them. There are stories of mothers lifting cars to save their children. The refugee women, especially the widows were a powerful force. In a male dominated society where such women come last, they are all the more fierce. Things escalated to the point we were mobbed. The three police who accompanied us broke out their retractable clubs. We used stalks of tall weeds. There was no other way to make certain the tickets went to the refugees and not the other assortment of homeless poor. We didn’t have the resources to feed them all, so we had to choose. It was just like in the movies. People, mostly women in blue burqas, some boys, a few old men hung on the pickup truck, even dragged a little behind it as we drove away. When we hit traffic, remarkably some of them caught up with us. Arms in windows, pleading screams. We found a few remaining tickets and tossed them out the window for the stragglers to collect.
Tuesday morning was distribution day, the day before I was to leave Afghanistan. By then the actuality of departure had hit home. The girls were following me around Mehan, hanging out in my room. But they had school and I had an important mission. I asked Zainab to join the crew, camera in hand. She is the last of the four finalists in running for the photography class prize. With all the disruptions of the election, this was the first chance for her to go out on an actual field study. I was to watch her, Jamshid’s brother was to watch me, Anwar was to watch him, and so on up the line to kawka Ryan. The buddy system, sort of. This time the police were there in force. A dozen of them with their rifles and sober stares stood and watched as Ryan masterfully, sometimes forcefully manipulated the village leaders to cooperate with the dispensation of the food. The police are men one step away from homeless themselves. They make a pittance and often go some months without pay. They are utterly corruptible. They would have to get their cut of the food. One eye on Zainab, one eye on the drama as it unfolded, I tried my best to immerse myself in all aspects of the intricate plot while making certain Zainab used her 24 shots wisely without straying too far. I was the only westerner there, and the only pale skin.
The village men wore deep olive green clothing and wraps, turbans, and sandals. They seemed relatively healthy; some of them were even fat. In their world they are fed first. Whatever is left goes to the eldest son, whatever is left from that goes to the women and girls. It was these women and young children who were frightfully starved. The elders, though revered, are also desperate. They too are hungry, but their plight has more to do with a lack of any sort of health care. Open sores, infected eyes attest to the remoteness of their lives and breadth of their sorrow. Pulling back the lens, surveying the sea of mud huts and gaping mouths, what struck me most was the sense of utter abandonment. These people have been encamped here since the surge of troops and ensuing invasion of the southern province. It is as if they don’t exist, as if they were dropped on the side of the main thoroughfare as litter from a car window. If the government has any intension of addressing the problem, its plan must be wrapped up in a seriously confused bird’s nest of bureaucracy.
The police didn’t help. They watched. At first the task of managing an orderly exchange of tickets for provisions looked to escalate into a small riot. But kawka Ryan is a strong man, convincing when he has to be. He handled the village leaders like a drill sergeant. The men formed a human barrier in a half-circle facing the three trucks. One by one the families worked their way through, carrying their tins of oil and bags of rice and sugar in folded wraps like giant bindles over their shoulders. I watched Zainab get bolder and bolder with her camera. She instructed some people to pose, took different angles, caught a unique and heartbreaking moment when a small girl tried to creep beneath a truck to steal one bag of sugar. For her final shots she jumped up into the truck to capture the event from the perspective of the men tossing the bags. She may be short, but she sure isn’t shy. She was like a little war correspondent the way she scuttled about.
The job was done in four hours. We loaded into the pickup and drove back to Mehan for lunch and to exchange stories. Things had gone remarkably well, considering how tense it had been. Though the men all carried small scabbards beneath their wraps, it was the mothers I had most feared. They would do anything to feed their children. I prayed they would somehow hold steadily so as not to provoke the police. The retractable clubs would have come out and there would have been no holding back. Thankfully the clubs were never needed.
It was one in the afternoon and I could delay no longer. Time to start packing my bags. I turned the corner of the stairs going down to my room and there they were, waiting for me, around twenty of the girls, Frishta at the fore. Their beautiful little faces all had the same expression of disbelief. “Ian-jan, you not go to America.” I tried very hard to be strong, but the moment I opened the first cupboard and began to collect all the little trinkets and cards the children had made for me over the months, my eyes welled up. Frishta fell apart immediately. She couldn’t breathe, so deeply did she start to cry. And then the others, and before I could even pull my bag from the closet I gave up the pretence. I sat down on my bed, resigned to this grieving together. Then, one by one the cards came, little bunnies, Christmas scenes, pieces of folded paper, whatever could be found. Little gifts went along with them, a flower from the garden wrapped in a little ribbon, a handkerchief, a color by number map of Afghanistan, a stuffed Santa, little plastic braids, anything the girls could muster from their meager possessions. I gave a little talk about where I was going and why I had to go there. I tried to make them laugh with little anecdotal references to inside running jokes. I instructed them how I expected them to behave after I left. The flooding of tears deepened. Desperate to keep things moving I collected the girls in my arms and ushered them out of my room. It didn’t last. First one, then two, then three at a time drifted back like little birds. I resigned to the fact I’d have to pack sometime late in the evening after everyone had gone to bed.
A few hours later Jamshid indicated it was time to go to Sitaras I to say good-bye. I wouldn’t have a chance in the morning. It just so happened that Razia was at Mehan to visit with her sponsor on the Internet. She sat in my lap as we made the journey down Khota Sengi one last time. I thought of how far she had come from when I first met her. She was practically a little stray cat then. Now she was as acclimated to life in the orphanage as any of the others. I envisioned in three or four years she’d graduate to the big girl’s house. She led me into Sitara I where the rest of the seventy little ones had collected on the floor. My mind flashed back to April, trying to recall my first meeting these children. Then I had been agile, eager, determined. I was no longer that man. A kind of submissiveness overcame me, to the stream of nature, to an evolving history I would not feign to control.
“I am?” I asked the kids, rubbing my tummy.
“HUNGRY!” they yelled.
“I am?” I asked again with a parched voice.
“THIRSTY!”
“I am?” I smiled, arms outstretched.
“HAPPY!”
We went through the days of the week, the numbers to ten, the sun and the moon. I pointed to my toe, to my knee, to my nose, to my eyes. We recollected the rain and the wind, the snow and mountains. They remembered them all. He’s got the whole world, I called. In his hands! came the response. I led them in their favorite activity, an improvisation where we all become seeds in the ground, then saplings, then trees then birds. We did the actor’s cheer, and collapsed on the carpet in a giant heap of little bodies. When I had exhausted all of our games, finally I had to tell them the purpose of my visit. Jamshid translated as I explained one sentence at a time in various ways that I had to go.
We drank a cup of chi while the kids had ice cream. One after another they came to sit in my lap and pose for a picture. They didn’t attach any form of solemnity to the event. Their understanding of time, like any young child was restricted to the here and now. My mind had begun to move forward. Even as I said good-bye to Razia I was anticipating our next stop, Sitara II. The children accompanied me to the front porch. I backed away, waving. Eighty tiny hands waved good-bye in return.
The sun was going down. Kites fluttered above the rooftops. Some clouds approached, pink and voluminous, the first sodden clouds I’d seen since the beginning of June. The boys were waiting for me in the garden. After our typical shaking of hands and greeting one another, we went inside. They sat at the long table where I had led all my classes, and I found myself standing in front of them, poised it seemed to give some sort of speech. I hadn’t thought what to say. Again, abandonment to the tide. I told them I wouldn’t cry or Farid Gul would tease me, and then I cried. I told them that I had to go now, and placed my hand over my heart the way an Afghan would greet an Afghan.
I will carry you with me, here. You must promise not to watch Jack Bower so often. You must read more books. You must do more than what your teacher asks you to do. Afghanistan does not need America, or Germany, or Pakistan or India or Japan. Afghanistan needs its boys to become gentlemen who have strength and wisdom and who know when to use their power and when not to. You will make your villages see what comes with education. I am sorry we never danced. I am sorry I was not able to spend even more time with each of you. We had some fun, didn’t we? We learned some things too. You must be kind to the girls. They have as important a job to do as you. They too will go to their villages. They too will be doctors and engineers. Don’t think I will forget you…
Every so often I paused as Jamshid translated to make certain the younger boys understood. When I ran out of words he brought out an embroidered cloth the women at the technical center had made for me. They had sewn a delicate floral design in a symmetry of deep crimson and green, as well as a tribute to my presence in the orphanage. Markers were handed out and each of the boys wrote a little note on it. I watched as they carefully formed words in English. Last to scribe was my “A” group. Tall and lanky Omid who years ago before coming to Sitara was a street urchin in Farah Province. Then quiet Ali who as a youngster accompanied his mother on her forced smuggling runs into Iran, the opiates repeatedly sewn into her stomach and then removed. Handsome Ghani and rock solid Farid Gul, bright eyed Ulfat and dream catcher Dariush. They took their turns. Nobody looked over shoulders or jostled or kidded around as they normally would have. The cloth was then neatly folded and chi was served. We sat round the table and made small talk. Our last cup of tea together. One of them I knew would ask the question I dreaded most. The only unknown was who would ask. Time was pressing in. Jamshid indicated we should start the process of leaving. As I stood up from the table and tucked my shirt in Sorab, the boy from drama group whose sight is slowly deteriorating asked in his high pitched voice, “Ian-jan, will you come back?”
Yes.
“When will you come back?”
I don’t know.
“One month?”
No.
“How long?”
I shook my head, put my hand over my heart. I don’t know.
Outside in the garden we posed for picture taking. It was important to me the boys remember me as I always was in class, silly, happy, spontaneous. And so those final minutes with them were a blur of ruffled hair, old jokes, kissed cheeks. As we backed away in the car, they spilled out into the road. “You come back,” Farid Gul yelled several times. I hung out the window. The Taliban be damned.
And so, unimaginable as it was to me, I arrived at my last night in Mehan.
I was in a dream-state. The girls were there as they had been that rainy day in April, waiting for my arrival. I climbed the steps to the porch, and they attached themselves to me. As a group we made our way up to my room. It was darkening outside, so we turned the lights on and pulled the curtains. Thirty-five, forty of the girls sat around me, some stretched out on the floor, some sitting on another’s lap, some crowded into a single chair. They wanted me to sing a song. Frishta retrieved my cittern. “How many roads!” I shook my head, thinking they had certainly heard enough of that song. They insisted, I obliged. As I sang the verses I looked at each of them, their eyes upon me, some crying, some content as a child at story time. I spoke as well with my own eyes, and I know they understood. I had lived as they had lived, 140 days together, mostly restricted to seeing the world from the rooftop, through cracks in the curtains, from beneath the shroud of a scarf. Our world was the world inside Mehan. Each time I came to the chorus they joined in. Everyone knew the words. We sang at a slow and easy tempo. Effortlessly.
At this point time as a force dissipated completely. The girls sang a rousing rendition of their favorite Afghan song, and then another, and another. They laughed and sang louder and louder. They were heard in the kitchen, they were heard in the streets. As if choreographed, just when it felt like we’d exhausted one phase of the evening, another presented itself. Dinner had been served. Again as one we floated down to the cellar. A new light had been installed above the center of the floor, soft and yellow. The red mat had been rolled out like a greeting card, and a feast had been neatly arranged at the head of it, for me. We ate our meal together in an atmosphere of ease, of quiet conversation, of comfort and contentedness. Two kinds of rice mixed with nuts and raisins, lamb layered with onions and peppers, peaches and apples and apricots. I looked to the other end of the mat. Nagina and Nabila waved, smiled. We exchanged funny faces. Some time went by. Sated, plates piled, again as a group we moved the evening to another place, this time the library.
It was time for me to talk to all of the children together. They filled the room and stared at me with such adorable, kind eyes, brown and blue and green. I began with a short poem I wrote a century ago when I first wandered onto the open road. Love is never where you found her last. She resides in what comes between you. Though the peasant may hoe a ditch, and the river may weave through terraced gardens, to begin with there will always be the waterfall. You, girls of Mehan, are my waterfall.
I do not remember what I went on to say. The embroidered cloth was spread upon the table and the kids added their thoughts to it. When that was done pictures were taken. I called each girl’s name, and one by one we posed together. It was late. The room was hot with tears. Then without warning the table was pushed aside. Masuda retrieved a big metal bowl. It was time to dance. Nafisa began to drum a rapid beat, and as she drummed on the upturned bowl one by one the girls swung their arms and twirled upon their feet. Sadaf! Sana! Sharifa! Madina! The laughter was balm to our contracting hearts. There would be no study time this night. Jamshid had orchestrated the evening as effortlessly as it seems the day turns to night and night deepens just before the coming of a new day. A pilgrim chooses a path but turns the way it turns. It was very late and half of the kids would need to leave for school early and I hadn’t even begun to pack. Softened and weary and happy we scattered to our rooms.
Kawka Ryan was staying the night at Mehan. He nodded to me. “Come,” he said. Together alone up in my room he pulled out a bottle of whiskey. Ramadan is a very difficult time to find liquor, especially difficult for an Afghan. Ryan and I had often joked that one day we would share a finger of scotch, look at the moon and muse about life. He is not one to make casual promises. We filled two cups, grabbed two chairs and made for the rooftop. An almost full moon glowed high in the purple-black sky. The air was still and warm. We sipped our brew, the first drink I’d had in five months. Silently we stared at the moon. In Afghanistan I have learned that it is not so important to speak. If something is to be said it will be said one way or another. Finally, Ryan cleared his throat. He told me of the path his life had taken, from revolution to occupation to jail and torture. From bombardments and civil war to tyranny to war once again. It is a hard life, he said. He told me this story, most of which I already knew, as a way of telling me the meaning of what he says when he says he will keep me in his heart, that he will never forget.
The rest was pain. I got up early, packed, shared nan and chi with the girls, and then it was time to go. I still feel their shaking bodies in my arms. I kissed sixty brows, wiped tears from sixty cheeks. I felt horrible. I felt like I was deserting them, throwing them to a war torn unknowable fate. What if the war spirals out of control? What if the government shuts the orphanage down? What if there aren’t enough sponsors, not enough money when the new lease is written? But these are tough children, and the people running and supporting this program are of such strength and integrity, I know no matter what happens the children will thrive. Their country, after all, awaits them.
The depth to which orphans bond is a secret. It cannot be uttered or written or even sung. If only the world could know. I look around this Delhi hotel, at the people touring the same world as the orphans, people from Israel, from China, from Canada and England and Australia, and I wonder who it is that really wears the veil. I close my eyes and try desperately to hang onto the girls, their braided hair, their hands. They already are slipping away. The veil is descending upon me. Then, just as I am about to open my eyes, to concede to this world I have not the strength to face, Farzana and her big sister Sosan appear beside me. “Ian-jan,” they seem to say, a crooked smile on both of their faces, their eyes squinting in half-laughter. “What is the matter? Why you cry? Come. Look. There you are. And here are we. And this? This is Afghanistan. You see?”
Yes. Now I see.