Normalcy has returned, after Ramadan, Summer Break for schools, Eid holidays, then the monumental undertaking of the Talent Show, and then the Rabbani assassination upsetting all schedules, I am back to doing what I have done from the beginning, teaching my classes. All the 9 – 11 grade boys and girls, and the 8^th grade girls. The reduction is difficult, in that my younger students look at me with question marks in their eyes. But I needed to increase classes for each group to three days a week to be more effective.

This week also marks a bittersweet hallmark, as I am losing my first class of students who I have been teaching for two and a half years. All 12^th graders are focused on preparing for college entrance exams, so they no longer take my class. Along with newer students Mursal and Ali Seena, there is Dariush, who once had his camera from photography class taken by a soldier and was threatened to be thrown into jail, Omid who loves to dance and always hoodwinked me with straight faced stories, Sosan who survived the massacre of Bamyan, sister to Farzana who consoled me when first I left, Nida who always asks so many questions, who blew everyone away when she became a fierce lioness (from the happy go lucky smiling girl) when it came to debating class, Sitiza who I’ve watched grow into a confident, intelligent and expressive young woman from the timid girl I knew, and Pashtana, who accompanied me all over the U.S. and joined me in at least thirty presentations last winter. It is time for them to step out, to make that bridge into adulthood. They will of course remain in my life and the life of AFCECO, but like Manizha before them they must bravely blaze that trail that we simply never have seen before at AFCECO. How will they do? What will befall them? What can we do to help them along their path? Just like sending your children off to college, certainly, but with some added twists. Like Manizha they mostly will stay in Kabul, work for AFCECO in exchange for certain living needs, remain involved with their beloved orphanages but now in official capacity as adults. Getting as many into Kabul University as possible is our goal. Otherwise, we only have so much scholarship money to get them into private schools here. I look at the nineteen 9^th grade girls I teach now and look ahead, oh boy!

It is so difficult to say goodbye to these students, even though I see them regularly. Class was always a sanctuary of a sorts, now our relationships have graduated and we all must adjust for healthy transition.

Now I have a somewhat reconfigured leadership class. It is not officially leadership class, which I program for a three month term in the spring. This is focused solely on language skills. They are reading Anne Frank’s diary, and they are hooked. I think it is perfect for them at this point. They relate to so much of what Anne describes. Every class includes twenty minutes grammar and ten minutes journal / biography work and thirty minutes reading out loud from the book. I have five (or is it six) new students in the class, girls from Pakistan orphanages. There are two Shazias, Hajira, Masuda, Zarintaj, Zarmina, and Benazir. Oh dear, that makes seven new girls. It is interesting to watch them get used to this new and crazy teacher. Some are terribly shy, a few are jumping right in. I think the very first thing they learned is a sense of liberation in the classroom, as permeates because of all the other girls who have been through two leadership classes. They smile a lot.

This is a crucial time for AFCECO. It is a time of transition for us all. I look around and see new children of every age bounding up the steps to the New Learning Center, off to learn piano, carve a wooden mural, learn computer, review chemistry. It is a house of hope, every day, day after day.

First, everyone here is okay. The series of attacks this year are highlighted and little else, so I know that from outside it is magnified. We at AFCECO are moving along with all our programs. The children are fine, happy, thriving.

We have been consumed with preparations for a talent show next Thursday, the 22nd. There will be poetry, dance, drama, songs, and the audience will be full of notable dignitaries. I promise to report on this event here.

I have 22 children in the original drama, entitled The Heart of Asia. It is a play about an orphan girl who is cast away along with her donkey, and travels Afghanistan looking for a new life. We had a stage built in the New Learning Center, and we are very excited about this our first major event there.

As many of you heard, the girls won the all-Kabul soccer tournament. It was fabulous. Tears of joy, and all the staff and children celebrating the entire AFCECO family, because when one succeeds, we all succeed.

Leadership workshop finished, and a new program focussed on journal writing has begun. The girls are reading Anne Frank’s diary. Three leaders have been chosen as candidates to go to America this winter, Maria, Hala and Lida. The program this year is still in the making. It will be different from last year, because of different needs, different grant, etc. News of the program will go out to everyone in time to plan.

My excuse for not writing here has been a new manuscript I work on in the cracks of time available. It is flooding, it is a new approach to the book. I am hopeful a draft of the book, around 300 pages, will be complete by the end of the year. When I get into a manuscript, I become possessed, and this one is very very important to me, to get it right. So many people write so many things about this place and these people. It is now two and a half years since I first arrived here. I only wish to somehow be true to my subject.

Here is something I wrote about the founding director of AFCECO. You should know that Andeisha has a second name, as most Afghans do. Zeba is a Persian word that means beautify.

… Even with these security concerns, even enduring the Spartan existence of refugees, even though she yearned to be with her mother and father, life for Andeisha inside the camp was comparatively blissful. The word beautify intimates action, and the more ugly the scenario, the more imperative the action, and the more imperative the action, even at the risk of failure, even if failure is deemed inevitable, the more blissful is the life lived. Just as there are two eyes, one that looks out into the world and one that is an open door to the individual soul, so the girl from Farah was given two appellations. For Andeisha there would be exams and volleyball and girl friends, university life, being a dutiful daughter and sister, eventual marriage and a son, but for Zibâ, from an early age a kind of deference inoculated her. The disappeared, the exiled, the buried alive and the starved, the tortured, the raped, the beheaded and the burned, those humiliated in death as much as in life, along with those imprisoned within cells, within poverty, within prejudice, within the burqa, within forced marriages, within slavery of sex, of servitude, of hopelessness, the ones imprisoned within their own lives, these were the souls that everywhere ignited Zibâ’s desire for action, souls about which she disparaged their perpetually becoming invisible, like a message written in marker pen or a watercolor on a piece of parchment fading away, day after day in the sun. Because of this, because it was all she knew, to Zibâ there would never be such a thing as her own sacrifice, only the sacrifice others have made.

To her, maybe a life can be undestroyed. And if a life, then a family, and if a family, a village, and if so, perhaps even a country. All she need do was stop this process of becoming invisible, those children and widows in the streets, to turn them around in a safe house, to have them rely upon one another, to give them the kind of education she enjoyed; and if this proved possible, if she could do this one simple thing, perhaps she could not only stop their disappearance, but reverse it, embolden their colors against the sun so they can express their selves to the world and lead it in ways small and large toward sustenance, toward equality, toward lasting peace.

This is the matter from which the Parwarishga was born.

Maria celebrates on bus home with soccer trophy

Zainab celebrating victory

Two more days of exams, and then for the younger children Ramadan vacation time. After a short break the older children will start their programs again at the New Learning Center, as well as their sports programs. I will start up a new semester of Leadership Workshop, along with all my other humanities / language classes.

I have been working on my Dari, reading, and filling my own cup these past few weeks while not teaching. Jamshid entered the room one day and out of the blue asked, “What about that book you were going to write?” We talked for quite a while about it. I believe I have over 500 pages of journal material, but I have made many false starts at writing “the book”. Two problems: every westerner and their uncle is writing a book about Afghanistan, many “experts” who have only seen one isolated dimension of this country or others who came here for a month and are suddenly experts. I did not want to write a book that falls into either category. Other problem is letting go of all that raw material, starting fresh, from scratch. What would I say, what would be the thread? It came to me and I began.

In addition to these projects, I wrote a new song, which I posted. It is intended to be an anthem for AFCECO children. Last night I attended a concert we hosted at the NLC. I had not seen the children for two weeks. Alone I descended the stairs into the basement performance hall and there they were, 200 of them. They all looked up, saw me and spontaneously erupted into an applause. It was so unexpected and impulsive, and it so matched the applause in my heart for them. The feeling that filled my heart was so overwhelming this cup will be overflowing for quite some time. I often talk about relationship, what it is, especially in regards to the teacher and student. It is important to understand the relationship that has grown, as I have watched these children grow, is building strength, not dependency, but every once in a while the love and appreciation is right there at the fore, and as much as they give I deflect and try my best to give it right back, because I am truly the luckier recipient. I went around the room and shook hands with everyone and checked in. Most are happy with how exams have gone, except for Islamic Studies, which I understand to be quite difficult.

A classical Afghan vocalist and classically trained opera singer performed, accompanied by rebob and tabla. The woman’s father was one of the most famous of Afghan singers, and she is carrying on. The room was electric. One of the youngest children, Mercel who is daughter to Ahmad Shaw who works for AFCECO got up and danced, then a music professor, master violinist got up and danced. Everyone clapped to the popular traditional songs. It was a celebration of Afghanistan, and of AFCECO, and I think a great letting go as exam time is almost finished. I realized this would be the time to share my new anthem, and asked Jamshid if this was appropriate. “Of course, why not?” he said in typical Afghan fashion. He translated as I recited the lyrics. Most of the children there were capable of understanding the English, but there were many younger ones as well as guests. I sang the anthem as Shogufa held the microphone. When I got to the final line, I let myself look into the eyes of one of my students. It was Khalida, from Nuristan. She is in my 9^th grade class that studied The Miracle Worker, who is the keeper on the football team. “After the darkness, there is a light.”

When I get the opportunity to show my respect and admiration and love for these people, I am fulfilled. Gifting that anthem to them was just such an occasion, and the response was tremendous. They already started singing the refrain, as the children informed me they will learn it and we will all sing it together.

I met with a large group of activists from the U.S. who came to Kabul to get information. We talked for over two hours. We covered many of the usual topics, should the troops stay or go, what about making deals with Taliban, and what about the plight of women and their rights… Two of the activists are veterans of the two wars, and are doing amazing things to push for peace. I wish I had invited them to the concert. It was a terrible shortfall not to. If only we could open ten more AFCECO orphanages, I swear that the light will once again return to this country.

In The Heart of Asia

From the battlefield of Maiwand

To Ghorid’s Minaret of Jam

Rabia Balkhi’s song of love

To the Hindu Kush and far beyond

Del ba del rah darat

I speak to the open doorway,

But I want every wall to hear

Lords of war I will not obey

Your blood for blood, your tear for tear

Del ba del rah darat

I’m the child of Afghanistan,

Of a thousand wars and the night,

The only one left to believe in this land

After the darkness there is light

I’ve seen it rain fire from the sky

More pain than snow on the hill

The dove that forgets how to fly

And dogs that only know how to kill

Don’t think there is no way to stop it

An orphan is not so alone

I have the truth here in my pocket

And soon it will shake to the bone

Del ba del rah darat

I live in a Parwarishga where free and equal from the start

Sisters and brothers together dare to find the way from heart to heart

Del ba del rah darat  There’s a way from heart to heart… (repeat)

I’m the child of Afghanistan,

Of a thousand wars and the night,

The only one left to believe in this land

After the darkness there is light

Here I am, very much alive six years beyond the life expectancy of the average Afghan man, seven beyond that of an Afghan woman. I may live another thirty years. How much does it affect a collective consciousness, this thing called life expectancy? I think of George B. Shaw’s play Back to Methuselah, in which his characters discover that the key to immortality is the abolishment of life expectancy. I wonder if longer lives are required, as Shaw’s play suggests, in order for individuals to develop wisdom enough to manage and lead our complex modern civilization. Certainly social evolution as a conscious approach to changing the course of history has had its stops and starts for both evil and good. Regardless, none of this concerted effort to extend the life of man, from the dawning of Christian Scientists and the 2^nd Industrial Revolution, to control nature as if nature is God’s gift to man, to use, manipulate, rubberize and pulverize as we see fit so long as it gives us more and more time is even remotely about making way for wisdom. Rather it is a strange elixir, a perfect storm of compulsion that combines the sanctification of human life, the pursuit of comfort, fear of the unknown and the aesthetics and therefore attachment of love.

Here in Afghanistan, here in ancient Ariana there is no growing old. In fact there are only a handful of elderly (unless you count the 40 year olds who look 70). More than half of the people are under the age of 18. How is it, I wonder, to be 22 years old and know you are statistically half way through life? I look at my own youth and confess I squandered most of it. All I cared about was experience, experience, experience, try this, try that until I just knew what I wanted, the luxury of empire to treat life like a carnival ride, an all-you-can eat buffet. Why not? I had plenty of time. Here in Kabul there is not time, and yet the shroud of drought, war and the stagnating rules of fundamentalism coalesce to resist any moving forward. As Ahmad Zahir suggested in his song, God must be the most patient of all, sitting by as He does, watching this lack of unfolding, this smoldering, this stunted world where those who march in His name ironically conspire with those who anointed themselves God to make certain nothing in Paradise is threatened with Change. What is this Paradise they refer to? I warrant thee not one, but twin sons of different fathers are they, across the world, across the sky.

Meanwhile millions of people live out their long seconds and years, awaiting the quickness of death. I look to the 22 year olds for some omens of the future. In Afghanistan, university students have grown emphatic, increasingly intolerant, ripe for action if only action could be unearthed from the lorry loads of agendas set aloft by all the powerful players in this the greatest round in the Great Game of Central Asia that seems never to have ended and may never will. The students are restless because they realize that they are being forced to compose change in ways that have never been construed. They are forced to keep their nerve, to work diligently, the antithesis of their impulsive nature; they must go deeper, build change from within the very fiber of Afghanistan like seedpods awaiting that once in a hundred years fire. The earth in Kabul shakes frequently; it too is impatient. When I speak of students, I am not referring to those poor and frustrated young men who are easily rounded up to attack an outpost or center, nor those who care only to fill out the super-class wicking an Afghan fortune from the wax economy of war and occupation. Here I refer to the thousands who eagerly grasp at whatever education or society-building livelihood they can get. Most are fermenting through the public universities, but also certain private institutions, businesses and social activist centers are breading a generation of Afghan Hamlets and Antigones, youth who believe there are higher laws than those concocted by man, tradition, and God (or rather those purporting to speak for God); laws guided solely by truth, in the face of which all universal injustices are exposed and all perpetrators of injustice must by proxy be removed. The youth I speak of do not think of death and therefore will die if that is the consequence, but they are not the kind to strap bomb to chest. A true martyr does not yearn to be a martyr; these students want life, love, children, picnics, careers, but in the meantime their people suffer at the hands of greed and ideology, and they must be assuaged. These students will do what they do because they must, no differently than whatever air there is, be it hazy be it smoggy be it dusty be it thin, must be breathed.

I have never been much of a revolutionary. Ultimately I would save my own life before I willingly lay myself down upon the sacrificial, patriotic sword. I have always fancied myself a poet who belongs to no country, who therefore would not die for any country. I have seen and studied revolutions of various sorts, and they all leave me scratching my head wondering if there has been a step taken forward, or if these well meaning revolutions are doomed to be hijacked by opportunists. Is it true that all revolutions “eat their children”, as a Polish journalist once told me? Nevertheless here I am. For some reason I choose to live in this heart of Asia, one poised for revolution. Perhaps my brief year and a half as a volunteer firefighter still simmers in my blood. Ney, that was more a role I played, a rush of sorts ennobled by my society. The reason for the children of the parwarishga, for Manila, Maria, Sorab, Ali, Farzana, Alina I would walk into any flame is because I could not bear to outlive them if there were something in my power I could do to save them. And as I contemplate this condition, I notice there is now also such a stirring in my blood for the people of Afghanistan, traumatized, homeless Afghanistan.

There is a sense washing over the West and the agents of their operations (civilian and military) that goes beyond simple fatigue. The soldiers are on their fifth tour of duty, the civilians are counting the days until their six-month contracts are up and another temporary supervisor moves in. Between the lines, across their faces I perceive the shadow of too much money spent, lives lost, years gone by, and too little to show for it. This in tandem with an acute prohibition against admission of failure, let alone egregious mistakes, (after all, thousands of lives and trillions of dollars must have been for something) has fostered an attitude that sees itself left with no recourse but to place the blame on the Afghan people. Soon you will see this sentiment slipping into conversations, speeches, opinion columns, essays, and broadcasts. The “Afghans” are corrupt, illiterate, medieval, and can’t be helped because they cannot help themselves. Thus, adding insult to injury, the experts will have burdened the Afghan people with this stigma belonging solely to those warlords and drug lords and jihadis and former Soviet do-gooders and even Taliban who were empowered to run the country, who were the West’s hired guns in the beginning and still are to this day, all of whom have shifted allegiances repeatedly over the years depending on how the winds have blown. This tiny minority will have co-opted the Afghan identity, thugs who garner and retain power, and whose modus operandi is fear. Fear of getting killed, certainly, or family members kidnapped and raped, or your business attacked, your television station shut down or losing your job. The price for “protection” is complete obedience, and “honor” is the moral code used to justify all actions. If this reminds you of Goodfellas, you’re on the right track. Why the people in greater numbers join the insurgency, why they scream out against the West should not be mystifying. Who is responsible, Dr. Frankenstein or his Monster? Not only that but rather than go back into the laboratory the good doctor persists in propping the Monster up and proclaiming him a success. The Monster has become savvy, and knows now that his Master has waded too deep into Ol’ Muddy and can no longer afford to nullify his creation. He knows he can even blackmail the doctor into making more monsters to keep it company. He will shave his beard, don a suit and tie if that’s all it takes to placate the doc. But the Monster will always be a monster, because in the beginning the doctor used the wrong brain for his creation, the brain of a tireless murderer.

It was Mr. Gates who admitted as he left his post that reconstruction in Afghanistan had mistakenly not been on the agenda. Reconstruction, as illustrated by the Marshall Plan or the Tennessee Valley Authority, used to be a euphemism for the establishment and securing of democracy. That is why I believe here we have an admission that it was actually democracy that had never been a priority. Instead what we have is a modern version of post-Civil War America, whereupon the South was strapped with utter devastation, zero infrastructure, corruption, carpetbaggers, continued hit-and-run guerrilla warfare, occupation by “foreign” forces, and the supplanting of one form of slavery with another.

The difference here is the victors need not take responsibility. And who are the victors anyway? Forty-six nations with boots on the ground, anyone can point his finger in any direction. No matter, the world can always say that Afghanistan belongs to Afghanistan; the fact this is true only on paper is incidental. Thus, tiring and debt-ridden the world will move on. With a nod and a wink from the U.S. it will start the long and laborious process of packing it in. The four soldiers from Iceland, seven from Ireland, eighty from Slovenia, the five hundred Swedes, the Ukrainians, Canadians, Italians and Latvians— all will go home. The occupiers that remain will withdraw into their island fortress-cities awaiting the next call to action, and will remain as a thorn in the small of Asia’s back, just in case. The journalists will lose interest and the money will dry up and the thousand NGO’s will move on to some other gainful employment, and the Afghan people will be left to sort it out. The sharks will be swimming, still, across every border, but things will be different this time. Millions of refugees have returned, and the attention of millions of expatriated Afghans has been pulled back toward their homeland. And there are the children.

Is this good, is it bad? What should we do or not do? I have received numerous inquiries from Americans who, since bin Laden’s assassination and Obama’s announcement of military withdrawal are interested in my reaction. Historically I’ve tried, most of the time, not to respond because truthfully I’m not as much of a political animal as I might sometimes seem, and too often I merely reveal my own ignorance. It is usually better to keep to simple, personal life stories. But I believe I am changing, or I have been changed, or whatever my nature is, this part of it has been awakened. Twice in the winter months I toured my country, giving talks about my experiences in Afghanistan. I believe in all I spoke 90 times wherein close to five thousand individual Americans listened to my story. Almost never did I speak of the things I reveal here. I spoke only of hope, only of the sound philosophy of AFCECO and the true impact it is making. I shared the world of the orphans and their spirit of trust, love and solidarity. People could not get enough of it. They nodded their heads, and tears fell. They hugged me, shook my hand and looked deeply into my eyes. They were eighth graders and they were octogenarians, they were retired generals and pastors and carpenters and anarchists and ivy leaguers. Though oftentimes they could not believe their own ears, they were relieved to hear something positive. More than this I believe they were thrilled to learn something about Afghanistan that felt real. Americans know they have been kept in the dark, they know that they are spoon fed specific information that either is meant to please their own desires, those of corporate owners, sell the news or regurgitate and otherwise perpetuate the propaganda of those in power. They shrug their shoulders when news of another fraud comes to light, or even when the one shining lantern held up by millions as a banner of goodwill and wisdom by the West toward the East, Greg Mortenson, turns out to be more than an unbelievable story. While visiting with Americans I again had hope for America, because they yearn the truth. That is why I kept moving, kept scheduling engagements. I never said no, because on every occasion that I was not engaged in discourse with people, a great suffocation would creep into my chest and my throat, the suffocation that comes from the sense that at every turn, at the gas pump, in the grocery store, walking the streets, at the theater and even driving alone in my car I am being groomed, like a sheep, to see the world a certain way, to focus on insidious things, to blur the truth and feed my habits. I do not believe I am resilient enough to live in America anymore. I’d become an alcoholic so fast I’d be in jail or a treatment center or dead inside of a year. There is no boss I’d be able to tolerate, no system, because it would seem to me the same system that produced Dr. Frankenstein. I would only survive by travelling around and around the country, standing up on a box, playing a simple tune on my cittern, telling a few stories and listening to the stories of others.

Ultimately, for me to comment on bin Laden and the drawdown of forces, for me to focus on only these relatively miniscule and most politically motivated of actions as if they mean something to the average Afghan would be disingenuous. I write these words because to be silent about the truth is to contribute to the lies. So what can be done? Here I may answer:

The forces for real change, for true democracy and secularism within Afghanistan must be recognized, not ostracized, trivialized and otherwise treated like naïve children because they don’t always say what we want to hear. They must be supported and empowered. Simultaneously, we (poets, journalists, state departments, business people, celebrities, and dare I say political leaders) must hold the spotlight of truth upon the criminals in power, a light so unflinching and so bright as to force them to cower, to cease and desist. It must be held repeatedly over time, as if it will never retire, and every lie launched to repel this light must also be de-masked. Then would the criminals eventually step aside, maybe sooner than we think, because ultimately their survival depends upon foreign money, foreign rulers, and in the final analysis they must abide by the pretense of “democracy” that supposedly laid their foundation and is even written into their checkered and contradictory Constitution. There are not many different ways to interpret “The citizens of Afghanistan – whether man or woman – have equal rights and duties before the law” (Article 22) and “The state shall abide by the UN charter, international treaties, international conventions that Afghanistan has signed, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights” (Article 7). Not to worry that it is all erased by those who presently define Islamic Law (Article 3 says: “In Afghanistan, no law can be contrary to the beliefs and provisions of the sacred religion of Islam.”) Eventually, the Light would demand that real justices be placed on the bench, whereupon an analysis by true scholars of Islamic Law would not find contradiction with the laws of equality repeatedly entered into the Constitution, thereby forcing extreme fundamentalists to either reform their religion or disburse into obscurity. Eventually, the mullahs will beg for secularism, to be unencumbered by government. This achieved, because their entire façade is based on their hijacking of Islam, the exposed warlords would then run for the hills to save their skins, and some would even be plucked to stand before a tribunal, and answer to the survivors of their murderous, sadistic deeds. Then, finally, law and order can be achieved.

The way toward peace and prosperity exists. Most everyone agrees it begins with security, but the fact is there will be no security while the house of power is rotten, and this rotten house will remain as long as the world continues to prop it up in order to avoid the embarrassment of looking beneath the paint. It does not have to be complete demolition, though there are those who say the rot is too extensive. Whatever the case, demolition or extraction, what follows will be true reconstruction; a hydroelectric plant, an agricultural revitalization program, and a coat factory using cotton that once grew like poppies do today. Then will come the real nation builders, extraction of oil, iron and copper in the north, uranium in the south, lithium and gems in the east. There is no other way out, unless the world once again can live with deserting this house, as if it were only a dark memory, a place we would just as soon forget, like an old plantation collapsing into the dust. The story can be turned around and the house saved, but there is one first step to be taken if we are to win success, and that is the illumination of the truth.

And who are we to ultimately place our trust and resources in, to usher and supervise this way toward peace and prosperity? Take a look around. The children are growing up fast, and they represent the majority by a tremendously wide margin. If we stop killing them, stop condemning them to homelessness and angry, narrow-minded ideologues, if we give them love, community, education and equip them properly, they will lead the way.

This is what the world can do for Afghanistan, and Afghans will take care of the rest.

To them (women) this government has no just powers derived from the consent of the governed. To them this government is not a democracy. It is not a republic. It is an odious aristocracy; a hateful oligarchy of sex; the most hateful aristocracy ever established on the face of the globe; an oligarchy of wealth, where the rich govern the poor, an oligarchy of learning, where the educated govern the ignorant, or even an oligarchy of race, where the Saxon rules the African, might be endured; but this oligarchy of sex, which makes father, brothers, husband, sons, the oligarchs over the mother and sisters, the wife and daughters, of every household – which ordains all men sovereigns, all women subjects, carries dissension, discord, and rebellion into every home of the nation.

Hala had determined to memorize the speech, even though I did not require it. By the time she stood up in class on Wednesday afternoon she had even developed a good ehsâs, or feeling for what could be esteemed as one of the top five speeches ever given by an American.

Then came Yasamin, my quiet, demure student from Nuristan who is gradually developing a strength of conviction, a courage to stand up for the acute intelligence she possesses, who until that day had never stood alone before an audience. She recited the words of the very woman who had addressed the Congress of the United States this week, Aung San Suu Kyi:

The last six years in prison gave me much time for thought. I came to the conclusion that the human race is not divided into good and evil. It is made up of those who are capable of learning and those who are incapable of doing so. Here I am not talking of learning in the narrow sense of acquiring an academic education, but of learning as the process of absorbing those lessons of life that enable us to increase peace and happiness in our world…

Then there was Sosan, Farida, Shagofa, and all the others taking each their turn in the stead of three trumpeters of human rights from three corners of history, the third being Benazir Bhutto, whose words almost half the girls chose to recite:

When I get up to speak I usually start slowly, and then I build up. I like to come up with arguments and I talk of the contrast. I talk of what we did, the Pakistan we inherited. Then I come to how we built it up and we built it up because we had your strength, your support, your confidence, the importance of the people in developing a society. I look at the people because when I look at them, then I can feel that strength just run into my body. I feel strong, I feel more determined and I feel that when I have this strength with me then I can move any mountain. It just seemed to me as I looked out and just saw a sea of humanity, that the fight for the truth is important because the day does come when you see the response to your struggle.

It has been a good week with the children of AFCECO orphanages. Spectacular, really. The girls of Leadership didn’t have to put so much effort into their speeches, but they did, and each excelled in her own way. The award would nevertheless have to go to Hala, loud, happy, animated, humerous Hala, a girl from the north, Mazar, who I have nicknamed Hala mandala for the balanced, symmetrical spiraling circles found in every religious tradition.

Another of my students, Manila, who I have been encouraging through up and down times, who is pictured on the porch of Mehan in that now familiar photo of the girls greeting me in April two years ago, got 100% on a particularly difficult quiz. She is in 8^th grade, daughter of Shahima, one of the many widows who help keep the orphanages afloat. Manila was so happy as she was first to hand her paper in. She refused to show her pride, only in her motions and her eyes. “I failed. Zero!” she said, and started to pack her book bag. But she couldn’t stand it, and walked all the way around the table and to my side. “Correct it!” she ordered. And so I did. I muttered khoob twenty times as I marked each correct word in the text. The other girls in the room strained their necks to see, then dove into their own papers, doubly determined to do well in the wake of Manila’s performance.

I share the quiz here, so you can estimate for yourselves Manila’s achievement. Consider also that the students had no previous idea which words I would extract from the text for the exam.

In a remote ________ in Ghor province stands one of the most famous ________ of Afghanistan, the ________ of Jam. The Hari Rud River ________ rapidly by the lonely tower which is ________ by barren mountains. The tower lies 215 km east of Herat. It was only ________ fifty years ago. Built in the 12th century, it is the only well-preserved monument of the ________ empire. It is 65 meters tall, second ________ in the Islamic world.

The tower ________ on top of a low octagonal base some 8m across. The tower is made of three cylindrical stages. A wide band of blue tiles with a Kufi ________ runs around the top. The inscription includes the complete Sura 19 of the Holy ________ called Maryam. The minaret’s beauty is not its only ________ . It is also important for understanding the ________ of Islamic civilization. Much of its mystery has yet to be solved. ________ do not know why the tower was built.

For years, the unguarded site has been the target of ________ . Experts say many items have ________ . Sections of the minaret have been ________ out and stones have been removed from the wall and taken away. The minaret is also in danger of ________ . Built at the junction of two ________ the minaret is also threatened by water. Finally, another problem is a planned ________ that would cross the site.

torn / valley / monuments / disappeared / sits / Minaret / attraction / Archaeologists / flows / surrounded / inscription / history / discovered / rivers / collapsing / road / looting / Ghorid / tallest / Quran

Though I do list the missing words, this exercise circumvents rote memorization because it is suddenly very confusing to see twenty random words missing and then scattered about on the table out of context. It takes the faster students around thirty minutes to complete this kind of exam. For the girls of my 8^th grade class this was a particularly difficult passage to comprehend. We do a variety of games to learn the meaning of each word, including pantomime, synonyms, drawn pictures, team competitions and even song. Manila had chosen to shine this week. There have been times in the past when she would cut herself down, become depressed even. There is so much for such young spirits to rise above, to grow through, and they do it without an army of specialists poking and prodding them for symptoms of textbook afflictions. Yes, AFCECO provides the environment, the opportunities, the ripe conditions to not only survive the past but to flourish. Still, these children do what they do with the arms of their fellow orphans around them and that is, when we get down to it, everything.

There have been times this semester when I had doubts about my teaching ability. It was doubly difficult given that you’d think after two years of doing this I’d have developed a strategy, a confidence of my own. But there comes a time in the classroom and I suppose in life when you’ve exhausted all your “gifts”, your tricks and smoke and mirrors and all the other goodies we use to make ourselves attractive to other human beings. Under it all I believe we do, even the perceived stern and strict among us, want to be liked or even loved. But in my particular situation, unlike most teachers I do not get a new crop of children each autumn with which I can re-run my tricks. Sure, a smattering of new faces pop up each year, but for the most part I have been teaching the same children approaching the end of a fifth semester in a row. This is exciting, challenging and it has its unique benefits. I know these children so well, I know their learning styles, and I also know their tricks! But it also has its dangers. Manila has seen me on my worst days. She knows every string I pull. She knows every button she can push and she knows that she doesn’t have to perform well in my class if she doesn’t care to. There is no leverage, no grade, no decisive consequence other than not learning what I decide to teach. I am no longer exotic, mysterious, or even particularly interesting, given that the orphanage is always introducing new and wonderful things, ideas, activities and people to discover. I am just Moma Aziz, whose hair needs a good cut and who goes on incessantly about Ahmad Zahir’s songs, a love of dogh and distaste for shola. I am, in the end, forced to choose: either grow along with the children or give up. It may seem like a simple choice, growth over failure, but we must never underestimate the allure of giving up. I believe for anyone it can seem the most attractive of options. But as with that long foot race I ran three years ago, the Marine Corps Marathon, I’d sooner die than give up. A young man that I helped raise from the time he was two to the time he was sixteen recently told me about a latest lesson in psychotherapy as part of his masters program in San Francisco. “Since experience is so subjective,” he wrote, “tolerance of experience is the only constant which we can aspire towards when trying to become healthier.” I agree, but I contend that more is required than a sort of stoic equanimity, at least here in Kabul, in the orphanage, in my classroom. I cannot escape nor abandon relationship, even though it inherently involves risk, a risk that is exasperated if supposed authority is a part of the equation. My students excelled this week, and consequently I am a rejuvenated, happy teacher.

This week was also special in that I shared a video with all the girls, a wonderful celebration of Afghanistan, of women, an empowering performance by a group of dancers from the Bay Area that call themselves Ballet Afsaneh. This particular performance features some tremendous choreography that is based on Central Asian traditions, in particular the Afghan Attan. It also features extraordinary rabab and tabla that are the mainstay of Afghan music. All my students were transfixed by the performance, applauding and cheering in the end. They are very much familiar with this long suppressed expression of woman-power. When some of the dancers removed their chardas and started throwing their long hair around, I could sense a great celebratory yes! in the room. There are just a few among AFCECO’s girls who still initially react according to the wiring they received from their earliest years, where a girl who dances is considered only one step short of a prostitute. But when I called their bluff, motioned to shut down my computer, they stopped me outright. They could not resist the liberating energy of the dance and the heartbeat of freedom from bondage and dependence. Here is the link:

YouTube – Afghan Dance: Ballet Afsaneh

This week culminated with the first concert performances by all the children enrolled in the music program at The Afghanistan National Institute of Music (ANIM). AFCECO has found a most dear companion in ANIM. Its director and founder Ahmad Sarmast is an Afghan with kindred spirit to Andeisha’s in terms of sacrifice and purpose. He too was there at the concert, offering his support to the children. Numerous instruments have been donated to fill out our own blossoming music program at the Center, all thanks to him. Last night the New Recourse Center was vibrant as ever, filled with children, staff and guests. Our budding musicians and singers took the stage with their teachers, aplomb as any veteran and yet exquisitely bursting with joy in this the first performance of their lives. There was Nasira on cello doing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, and then Mosan on clarinet, plucking out the at once forlorn, timeless and celebratory notes of ai saraban. Gulalai on sitar, Negin on sarod, and Muzhgan on gheychak. Piano, hand drum, and corno were also represented. In all about 15 children performed. Their instructors gave short recitals of their own, from Bach to Bassa nova. The concert concluded with a twelve-minute raga by sarod master Irfan Muhammad Khan accompanied by tabla.

In the meantime AFCECO’s staff and students had prepared a festive banquet in the beautiful rose garden courtyard in front of the Center, so we all strolled out to enjoy the beginning of summer as I can’t imagine it ever being matched. It was a celebration of hard work, of a stick-to-it attitude in both children and the AFCECO staff, the music instructors, the cooks and guards and organizers who somehow manage in the midst of one of the most dysfunctional cities in the world to make magic happen, the magic and happiness in reaching and achieving. Culture is returning to Afghanistan. It is rising up from the dust of 30 long years of suppression no differently than the fact that longing itself cannot be smothered. I sat with a woman from Mexico who teaches drum, the sarad master Irfan, a pianist from Italy and beside me a new instructor from Jalalabad who had come to teach the children computer skills. Across the green the children ate their kabali polao and sipped their white dogh, and up above us the lights of the “Pink House” glistened deeper and brighter as dusk descended upon Kabul. The air was hot, dry and yet refreshing. A slight breeze kicked up, but not enough to stir the khawk from the streets. It was Thursday night, and the city was finally at rest.

As we loaded up the mini bus to go home, children and faculty and staff, and as we bumped through the empty streets under the still solstice feel of the night, I could not imagine a better place in the world to be. The struggle we read about is raging everywhere around us, it is almost impossible to imagine how it will ever end, the children I see every day eating from garbage, the widows sun-baked and begging in their burqas, the men without limbs, without pride, sitting down in the middle of the street with outstretched hands, and the thievery, the bombs, the raping and the starvation. There are an estimated 43.7 million refugees in the world, and one third of them are Afghans. The Goliath that is the human disaster of this country can drive anyone away, even the most powerful and prosperous nation in the history of civilization. But this week I saw a crack in the armor of all that hopelessness. I saw something so beautiful in the heart of Afghanistan that is the heart of Asia, land of the conqueror’s conqueror, Alexander, Babur, and Khan, of dreamers who dream of heaven and riches, people the likes of Rumi and Marco Polo, of the Zoroastrians, the first people to believe in only one God, of caravans and emeralds and pistachios and olives and orange blossoms and plums, of the solitary Pashtun shepherd and his flock, singing his song to the stars and their night, learning the language of the Universe that has no words, feigning there are no wolves but fear of wolves, believing instead that the sustenance of life is not the purging of death, but within the belief that each moment is eternity, that I cannot imagine failure, that time is always on the side of love, and through the children the path to wisdom and a higher existence as if Earth itself matters will become clear, and steadfast, and ever present as songbirds that do not fail the morning, and the wind of seasons changing that never fails the setting of the sun.

Hala giving Susan B. Anthony speech

It is hard for me to believe we are coming to the end of our second Leadership Workshop. It has been my honor to stand here, to build upon all we have learned together. Each class only happens once. Take advantage of what you have.

We began this class talking about the power of words. We read a poem by Meena. The poem ends with these words:

Along with you I’ve stepped up to the path of my nation,

To break all these sufferings all these fetters of slavery,

Oh compatriot, Oh brother, I’m not what I was

I’m the woman who has awoken

I’ve found my path and will never return.

It is my hope that at the end of every Leadership Workshop we too have “awoken” in some small way. We’ve learned that words have the power to inform, educate, motivate, and inspire us to take action. We know that words also have the power to make us sheep, or worse, slaves. We have listened carefully to the words of George Orwell, to the dream of old Major that gave him the song, “Beasts of England”, a simple song that inspired all the animals to change their world. We listened to characters named Snowball and Napoleon at the same time that we learned about revolutionaries named Robespierre and Marat. We talked about revolution, and counter-revolution. We learned about something called the Rights of Man and how these words brought the end of tyranny. We also learned about something called propaganda, how it was used in the past and how it is used today, here in Afghanistan, how propaganda has become one of the most important weapons for all sides engaged in war, not only to fight a war but even more dangerously to lead people into war.

We learned how words can be changed from doing good to doing bad, how all of us are equal, while some can be more equal than others.

Then we learned about another kind of revolution, that of non-violence. We learned about Civil Disobedience and how the words of a man named Thoreau were read by a man named Gandhi and then by a man named Dr. Martin Luther King. We learned about a group of young students who put Civil Disobedience into action by getting on buses and taking “Freedom Rides” into the heart of segregation in the deep south of America. We saw in the beginning how alone the students were, abandoned even by the leaders of change, and we saw how their solidarity and the media gave them the momentum they needed to change the most powerful country in the world.

We didn’t stop there. We followed the words of Thoreau as they arrived in Egypt, how organizers of a peaceful revolution have pointed toward the Freedom Riders and Dr. King as guiding lights. We watched as these young people managed to remove a dictator named Mubarak. There was violence, but nothing compared to some of the other revolutions in this “Arab Spring”. We watch all of these revolutions now, and we see how so much of what we learned in this class plays out like a movie before our eyes.

And through it all we asked the question, “What about the women?” There was Marie Antoinette, and then there were the peasant women who stormed her palace. There was a woman named Charlotte who changed history by killing Marat. There were the women who took those Freedom Rides, and the women who have been martyred in revolutions from Iran to Libya. We were introduced to four women who each in her own way devoted her life to the inalienable rights of all people. First a slave named Sojourner Truth, then a woman born into privilege named Benazir Bhutto. We met a little woman named Suu Kye who was compelled to honor the death of her hero-father and turned a military coup upside down. Finally we listened to an American named Susan B. Anthony, how her words demanding the right to vote ring loud and clear even today, a hundred and forty years later.

We learned that not all revolutions must occur from the outside. We looked at the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan. There in Article 7 we found a full endorsement of the International Declaration of Human Rights. We read all 30 Articles of that Declaration, and we could not believe our eyes and our ears. We discussed if it is possible to make such words come true in Afghanistan, to seat Judges and Members of Parliament who are scholars of Islamic Law that can point to these words and enforce them, who understand that the Islam of 1,400 years ago established that woman is equal to man, that she has the right to work, to independence, to choose a husband and own property. We discussed how these Islamic scholars would need to be joined by scholars of Civil Law who promote the ideas of secularism. But these new judges and MPs would have to battle contradictions within the very same Constitution, where it still says that two women are required to equal the testimony of one man.

At the beginning of this workshop I asked you what percent of your life you believe is destiny, and what percent is self determination, what percent of you is the Idealist, and what percent the Realist. Mostly you say you are realists, but none of you give destiny more than fifty percent. In fact most of you said that 70 to 90 percent of your life is self-determined. I watch you on the football field, I watch you in karate class, I watch you in the library, and I watch you in class. I believe you. The determination I see makes me proud to know you, and proud to have the chance to be your teacher.

As always, I am compelled to leave you with a story.

A long time ago I was in Scotland, a country north of England where my ancestors came from. I had just finished the last exam of my semester at Oxford. My professor had given me a 95%. That was the first time I ever scored such a high mark. I was very happy and proud, so I decided I would climb the highest mountain in Scotland, a mountain called Ben Nevis. I was only half way to the top of the mountain when a very old lady passed me on the trail. She had white hair and used a crooked walking stick. I could not keep up with her, though I tried very hard. An hour later I reached the top of Ben Nevis and the old lady was just getting ready to walk back down the mountain. I nodded to her, breathing heavily. She smiled. Then she pointed her stick at me, and this is what she said:

“No matter where you go in the world, there you are.”

That was all, and she disappeared down the trail and I never saw her again. I believe within these eleven words are many lessons, but most of all they tell us we can never run away from our weaknesses, nor are we ever without our strengths. The struggle to find your path is not unlike the struggle for freedom. It is a great risk to take, but the fact is you are already on your way. You are no longer the same students who first walked into this class, just as you are no longer the girls who first stepped into the parwarishga. The question of whether you are living your life or life is living you is not so important, once you find your path. Like in Meena’s poem there is a moment of great joy in finding this path, and without fear taking the next step, celebrating the realization that you will never return.

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.”

Dear Volunteer (and for that matter anyone of thousands of westerners writing about Afghanistan),

Once I get you, the long term volunteer settled in, I purposely do not look over your shoulder.  Your classroom is yours. I merely check in to make sure you are doing ok, otherwise this experience is what you make of it. If I’ve already “vetted” you then you are good enough for me. The same is true about blog writing. It is your experience, as a volunteer, and you share it in your unique way. I do not in any way wish to censor a volunteer. That said, as a writer and as a westerner with my feet planted on the ground here in Afghanistan, and as a man who has made some mistakes and who loves these people as dearly as he loves life, there are some guidelines I’d like you to seriously consider before placing an entry in your blog, and think about before every public speaking event.

First, when you arrive, take your time. Don’t rush into reporting everything you see or hear. Let things sink in, and read, and learn. Get to know what it is you are writing about and (unavoidably because it is the nature of any writing) what it is you are judging. There is much to judge upon arrival. Everything may seem different, even cruel or ugly. Wait. Look inside as much as you are looking outside.

You are now a member of a family. Some time during your months here you will feel a shift from being a tourist to being a witness. A witness reports very differently than a tourist. Think about two things: how will this blog, available to the world, affect the audience and how will it affect the people you are writing about? What is your goal with this entry or that? The audience by and large already thinks of Afghanistan as the Land of the Barbarians. Even the language supports this- Taliban, drug lords, war lords, tribal this and tribal that.  If at any time what you write down merely feeds this mythology, I suggest you consider another way to tell your story. Most everyone in Afghanistan, even the bad guys, for thirty years have been victims of outsiders and the games they have played with people’s lives. Who really are the Barbarians? (Actually, Afghanistan’s entire history is dotted with invasion, from Alexander to Khan to Babur to Tamerlane on through the ages. Pakistan, Iran, Italy, U.S., England, Germany, Russia, China, India are all presently playing their hands here.)

Thinking about how your entry might affect AFCECO’s family, consider if you were writing about your own sister or mother. What would you say? What would you never say? This is where the tourist in you needs to sit down (we are all tourists to one degree or another). Afghans are especially private people. If something personal about them, their family gets broadcast to the world, they become more like objects that we saw on one of our travels, another exotic thing on the side of the road. I have made this mistake, and when one girl found out from her sponsor I had written about something too personal, she was shocked and needed a lot of explanation. I’d lost a little trust. Worse would be if a sponsor mentions something she read in your blog to her child that is sensitive and not for the children’s ears, that an uncle, for example, is aiming to sell his daughter. A devastating ripple would race through the orphanage.

Imagine your work is being read by a sponsor, a fundamentalist Moslem, Hillary Clinton, a blood red blue collar Republican from Texas and a San Francisco gay activist. And most of all, imagine your work is also being read by the people you are writing about.

The world thinks Afghanistan is a freak show. When the NY TImes did a huge article that focused solely on the trend of some families to dress their daughters up as boys because they don’t have a son was sensational. They couldn’t resist, it was too good a story. But what was the point? One little line in the middle was useful and meaningful: that a woman because of a college education was able to put all her abusers to rest because she became a wage earner and had respect. The rest of the lengthy piece merely added to the freak show.

I do not see a freak show in the streets of Kabul, or Jalalabad, or Mazar or Herat. I see people very much like us. The only significant difference is they are trying to create sanity after being squashed by 30 years of war. There is not a wide gap between us and the drug lord, or the woman hiding under her burqa. None of these things are “cultural”. They are scars and open wounds.

I leave you with this thought, and then the rest is in your hands:

Remember, less is more. Not every titillating story needs to be reported. The story, the real story, is what is in your own heart. Report that. Report the way one of your students gets all excited when there is an exam, as if it is the greatest gift, or the way you struggled trying to teach what the word “pride” means. Report a dream you had last night, or how you feel something changing, a strange shifting behind your eyes.

With sincere thanks, and utmost respect,

Ian

I asked the older boys the question I’d asked the girls, what percent of their lives they owe to destiny and what percent to self-determination. They answered unequivocally in favor of destiny, all eight of them 90% or above. This is paradoxical. Albeit some of the girls said fifty/fifty, they were primarily on the side of self-determination. How much this has to do with their unique AFCECO upbringing in a country where men rule like slave owners and two women are required as legal witnesses to equal one man’s testimony, I leave to your imagination. I can say that the boys are not simply espousing a religious fatalism that we in the west have come to stigmatize Moslems with, given the focus on vest bombers raised to believe they are doing God’s will on their way to Paradise. At least for the boys in my class, I think this nod toward destiny comes more from a place of humility. You can just sense it in the room. We’ve talked about religion before. To varying degrees, though they identify themselves to be Moslem, they are not ideologues. I do not think they would look at the one-legged man and say it was his destiny to be crippled.

Never before as an educator or a counselor have I been so inclined and able to compare boys and girls to such a degree. Having them in separate classes I do my best to be the same teacher, the same person. I’m sure I am different in certain ways, though I can’t pinpoint them exactly. Generally the girls are freer, the boys more disciplined, the girls exhibit more rounded wisdom, the boys an aura of service and purposefulness. When I set limits on the girls, they practically laugh, at first. The boys take me entirely seriously. The girls bond, the boys stand together but separately. In some ways I may as well be comparing south to north, tropical climate culture to cold. When we talk about equality, we know what we mean, not that we are all the same. What we mean is equal opportunity, equal rights, equal support. One group of girls is reading The Miracle Worker, the other group is reading Animal Farm. In one, a strange woman (culture) is gradually liberating a child and by proxy her entire family and perhaps an old social system from darkness, while in the other a society through revolution lifts the darkness but slowly allows the darkness to descend once again. In one there is apotheosis for all, in the other only a vicious cycle. I believe that the one is a model for just how the empowerment of women could and would break some of these vicious cycles of human history, and the latter is sadly still a relevant model for how things have continued in our patriarchal world. Though Orwell’s fable was specifically directed toward a fascist realm in the early 1940s and Stalin’s Soviet Union, we need not look far from our own back yard to find all the familiar characters, Napoleon and his Squealer, the revisionists and propagandists and the various methods of obtaining and retaining power at the expense of original ideals. When I go to class, when I converse with the girls and then the boys, back and forth over and over again, I begin to see a light, a balance that can exist even though they are artificially seperated. The more months I spend with AFCECO, the more I believe that the path to progress for civilization depends not so much on faith, on philosophical innovations, on invention and ideals, but on something so entirely basic it passes through the discerning sieve of academia, the media and the lawmakers without nary a serious and definitive nod: an end to the dominance by men, equality for women, and an ennoblement of women as go-to people for the affairs of civilized society.

Ok, here’s a highfalutin statement almost as bombastic as Tolstoy proclaiming the righteousness of celibacy after having 13 children: Freud needs to be put to rest. With almost seven billion people in the world and diminishing resources we (in particular men) as sentient beings, if that is indeed what we are, must transcend procreation and sexuality as the primary forces in the categories of survival, pleasure and self-worth. They will be there, they will always be there, but the liberation I experience in both boys and girls in my classes has to be considered as some sort of barometer. It is not as if they are suppressed and this separation results in their inability to work together. They are together on committees, in organizing events, in extracurriculars, and as I watch their mentors, college students who have graduated from this temporary cloistering, both young men and women working together, I see a mutual respect and collective spirit that is refreshing.

Even as I try to be decisive I don’t know what I believe. I think both groups would just as soon prefer to have co-educational classrooms. There is a stigma attached to separation that carries with it the aura of inequality on one level or another, that girls are somehow “different” and therefore should be treated differently. I can only say that from my perspective, I simply don’t see things so clear cut as I used to.

When I watch the girls compete on the soccer field, I see the same determination, the same ability to work as a team, the same rejoicing in victory and the same desire to get up off the grass and start again. When I see the boys dancing together at a wedding, holding hands, huddling around one another to tell secret stories I do not see them as weak. These juxtapositions dominate our discourse, still, about gender. I’m talking about something else, I hope. I remember Mahbooba, the first month I lived in Mehan orphanage, waiting with me to get a plate of shola for dinner. I waved her on, “You go first,” I said. She looked at me with such scorn. Why? she asked. Do you think I am so weak that I must be fed before you? My very own chivalry had been blown to pieces. I look around Kabul and I see men without legs, and women begging for food. I see children, girls as much as boys scampering through traffic like so many little blood cells swimming through arteries, looking for oxygen. War and the endless cycle of patriarchal decision making has yet to prove to this teacher the two can pave the way for a promised land. I would like to see what the Annie Sullivan’s of the world might make of it, if given their chance.