Hope for Afghan Children

I listen to music that brings me back, as particular tunes always will, to a time in my life, a specific event, or even a conversation or singular human act.  In times gone by it would only have been a concert, listening to a stereo in my bedroom or driving down the highway in a car.  As music became more mobile it began to attach to moments such as sitting in the forest betwixt three great grandmother trees, a Sitka spruce, a yellow cedar, a hemlock, or walking through Times Square late afternoon on a Friday in early March, the light hitting one sliver of sidewalk, people huddled for warmth in a sudden brisk wind.  Time and the River, what I listen to as I type these words, brings me to the morning of my wedding on a beach in Hawaii, the dawn hour, a marriage that would be as fledgling and beautiful as the hibiscus flower, but just as fleeting.  This music also takes me to hours upon days upon weeks upon months writing a novel about a boy searching for life and meaning in the wilds of southeast Alaska, or hitching rides across America, or in the love of a mysterious woman who only speaks with her eyes.  I have chosen this music to listen to this morning because love and writing are the two great efforts of my life.  Time and the River embraces the flow of life, as river becomes ocean becomes sky becomes rain.  I listen because now I am engaged in what occurs to me to be the third great effort of my life.

As you read these words, you may happen to be listening to your own memory song.  Stop reading then, pour a cup of tea or a glass of wine.  Remember a time when everything was right, maybe only one hour of a day when death could come and the final note would be joy that, although it is slipping away, would not otherwise be joy.

Last night I felt such a joy as a little Hazara man in rough, plain white pants and shirt adorned only at the collar with the colors of his country, reached out to me, and as we walked up the steps to Mehan orphanage hand in hand, the realization spreading across his face as he looked up into mine that this American was strange, and as I watched him take the time to shake the hand and address every single child, every adult, to see every room and stand there, appreciative, inquisitive, in no hurry to get his photo opportunity and move on as any politician would.  Mister Bashardost had come without hesitation, without grilling me with questions, without even knowing a single person other than this curly haired, freckle faced man who had chased him down in the chaotic traffic of Kabul.  He had arrived only with his young driver in a car that has the dimensions of a sheet of plywood.  (His excuse for not attending the peace jirga, populated as it was with war criminals, drug lords and thieves, was that he did not want to waste the gas in his car.)  When he saw the children, when he saw the orphanage, his face lit up so bright, his eyes twinkled so softly I could tell it had happened to him as it had happened to so many others.  Though he’d arrived late for his appointment on a Thursday evening he would not so quickly leave.  He turned to me.  ”They are so happy, so clean!”

I was anxious for him to sit with my students and answer questions.  I tried to hurry him along, but he would have none of that.  He practically visited every closet of the orphanage, all the while talking to the younger children and khala Nasifa, our house mother who Ramazan had chosen to be his guide.  I stepped into the library where thirty of my oldest students waited with such great anticipation the energy in the room tumbled into laughter just to let loose an excess of giddiness their bodies could no longer contain.  They also knew how excited I was.  This was Ian’s event, and they could tell he so wanted it to be a success.  I had chosen the Doffie Library as a venue.  I had chosen the very end of the week, the night before Juma when all were tired but relieved.  I had chosen to have the boys and girls sit together, something they had not done since my photography class a year ago.  I’d coached them all on the importance of bringing intelligent questions, that this too was a classroom experience and may never come again.  But as much as I had set the stage I could not control time.  The children had been waiting an hour.  Their patience was melting.  Sometimes a clown is all you can hope for.  A large stuffed pink octopus dangled from the ceiling of the library.  I stood beneath it so its tentacles just reached the top of my head, and raising one foot off the ground I pretended to be balancing the toy in defiance of gravity.  The kids uproariously cheered.  And that is when Bashardost chose to finally enter the library.  I stumbled out of my contorted stance.  My face turned pink.  The Member of Parliament and former Presidential candidate cocked his head sideways.  “You are American, but your spirit is here” he said, his right hand over his heart.  I do not know what he meant by here, Afghanistan or his heart.  He sat on a small couch that had been brought for him.  Then he patted the cushion next to him.  “Please,” he said.

I do not know if Mister Bashardost is a Great Man, as we think of people like Gandhi and M. L. King.  But then, a part of me imagines that those two legendary peacemakers were only men, and that they too merely shifted themselves one small step askew of normal, to simply live as they believed and as they professed the world should behave, regardless of religion or race.  I played referee and selected who would ask each question.  Neda was first.  She sat in the front like a reporter at an Obama press conference with notebook full of notes in her lap, pencil poised.  She asked her question.  Ramazan’s eybrows raised, and then he launched into a ten minute response.  Then came a question from Ekram, then Farzana, Pashtana, Dariush, Farid Gul, and so on.  Each sparked a ten to fifteen minute response from their guest.  I did not understand but every fifth word that was spoken.  Once in a while Bashardost patted my knee and said my name, or “America”.  I watched his face, sipped my tea, and watched the faces of the children.  They were so rapt, inquisitive, challenging, mature.  At one point the entire room erupted in applause for something Bashardost had said.  I would later learn the children had asked astute and challenging questions, that they were not simple groupies like me, but had pushed issues such as comments Bashardost had made in public, the status of women, laws that have been ratified, the Taliban, NATO, and racism.  Two hours is a long time to be squashed into that hot library with seventy people on their night off, past the dinner hour.  Not one child squirmed to leave early.  Every now and then I looked for the eyes of a student and she or he looked for mine, and we smiled. I wanted every minute to last.  Inevitably the spell began to ebb, the last question was asked and given its lengthy answer.  I turned to Bashardost and inquired what he thought of the children, of their questions.  He turned to me and took my hand once again.  “In this room could be a future president of Afghanistan.”

Before he left he had business he wanted to attend to.  First, a man in Germany had given him a thousand euros that belonged to the man’s daughter who had died and bequeathed the money.  That money would now go to the orphanage.  Then, Bashardost asked if I thought it would be okay for him to give some pocket money to each of the children.  “Saes…” I squeeked.  Okay. He then stood at the door to the library and for each child leaving the room he peeled 500 afghanis from a small stack of mint bills, about $11.  Times seventy children.

I lingered in the hallway as the staff of Mehan accompanied Bashardost down the dark stairway of the orphanage.  I checked in with Farid Gul, with Sosan.  With the smaller ones who Bashardost had insisted be allowed to sit in on the library conference.  The kids hung onto me, and I onto them.  Joy, once again, slipping away.

I will see you Shambay, Manila.

“Exam?”

No, this time no exam.

I caught up with the others just outside the front door.  I said good-bye to the little Hazara man as Afghans do, cheek to cheek while shaking hands.  The crescent moon just barely peaked above the courtyard wall.  The shadows of sunflowers and roses mottled the garden in a kind of half remembered dream.  Bashardost got into his tiny black and red and green car and waved.  Here is a man who is loved by all, but who at any moment could be killed by those in power and those seeking it.  He gives almost all his money away.  He lives in a tent.  No bodyguards.  No tinted windows.  Just before letting go my hand he had whispered into my ear.  “Today I am happy.”

I close my eyes and listen to Time and the River once again.  I see Leema, Fawad, little Frishta, and Sahar.  I see all their faces like little moons themselves, and something new that is written in their smiles, their brows.  A little pride, perhaps.

I am so very proud of them.