Hope for Afghan Children

24 December

“How would you like to learn how to drive?”

I had told the three girls many things about their journey through America, but it had not occurred to me this would be their first lesson. Pashtana, sitting beside me in the passenger seat registered the full meaning of my suggestion first. Her eyes widened the way they do every time she smiles. “Yes,” she answered simply with understated modesty, matter of factly. Then she turned in her seat and clarified for Sahar and Manizha in the back that their teacher had in fact meant what he said.

“Here, Pashtana, take the wheel.”

This is how I myself learned to drive, my older sister letting go of the wheel and suggesting I take hold of it before the car drove off the road. Pashtana grabbed hold of the steering wheel and after a few wobbles left and right she steadied and piloted us around a bend and into a large school parking lot.

The three girls drive three different ways. Pashtana is careful, attentive to every direction, determined and unafraid. Manizha is one of those super smart girls who is impatient with details and wants to forge right ahead. She likes speed. Sahar is fifteen and bravely follows the example of her two older AFCECO sisters, but her legs are short and even with two pillows behind her and the seat jacked forward she can barely push the clutch all the way to the floor. Still, she did it, though steering without overcompensating took her quite some getting used to.

The girls are learning to drive a 1997 Saab 900 with a standard five-speed transmission. It is arguably the most difficult car to learn with, because the gears are touchy, the cockpit deep, and the dashboard high. You must practically push the clutch into the floor to make a clean shift into reverse. But the girls are driving it. We visit a deserted car dealership every day, and every day they learn something new. They start the car, move forward, shift to second, to third, drive around the building, park, go in reverse, turn the car around and start again. At the end of their first lesson, each of the girls having had two turns at the wheel, I told them they are my sitaras (stars). Pashtana’s eyes once again smiled. “I am very happy,” she said.

I tell the girls this: in today’s world driving is one of the great symbols of freedom, especially in America. But of course my students are teenagers, and there is little need to philosophize about something so omnipresent and visceral to just about every sixteen year old in the world. For them to drive is to go, to move, to be.

Everywhere we go people turn their heads. One man stopped us in a grocery store and asked where it was my friends had come from. He had seen us standing in front of the lobster tank, the girls giggling and aghast over the notion of eating one of those scorpion, spider-like things. The curious man could not place the girls, they didn’t fit any mold. He couldn’t even venture a guess. I deferred to the girls and they unanimously, simultaneously answered the man’s question, “We come from Afghanistan.”

As the world unfolds for the three emissaries from what may as well be a corner of the moon, it is impossible to predict what will impress them and to what degree. The ocean, the cinema, a supermarket, a highway.  One or the other of them ask me a question every now and then. The other night Pashtana asked me why Americans put lights everywhere, around their houses, their trees, their windows and railings and shrubs. I thought for a minute. It was winter solstice. I told Pashtana we wish to remember the light when it is most dark. We wish to share this light with one another, with strangers passing in the street, with the purple sky full of stars. Pashtana seemed satisfied with this answer.  “Cards?” she then asked. I nodded. That day I’d explained Spades, a card game for four that had succeeded in bringing out the girls’ competitiveness I know so well. Pashtana called up the stairs of my brother’s colonial New Hampshire home, “Manizha, Sahar! Bia!” Outside, flurrying snow glittered as it fell through the lights. Everywhere else was black under a heavy, settled sky. Inside, the house smelled of blue spruce. A fire of cedar logs we’d just collected from the forest now crackled in the hearth. Stockings hung above it and ornaments sat in the corner waiting to find their unique place from which to preside over yet another New England Christmas. Camels and bears and diamonds and kings, silver teardrops and crystal orchids, each a specific memory of a chapter in the life of a family. This year three new ornaments will take their place in this history, fragile yet eternal. I have asked the girls each to write their story down, something to share when their incubation here is finished, when I deliver them to their host families and they begin their journey separate from one another and apart from their overprotective teacher. We worked for some time just feeling free to indulge in this way. I explained that Americans want to hear these stories, that many people will be deeply affected by an orphan girl’s tale. Now they are practicing their speeches, and will test themselves first with my family on Christmas Day. I have an inkling this is what impresses them most, more than the Atlantic, the shopping mall, the 3D movie, the meals upon meals of rich and overdressed food, even I might say driving a car; the prospect of standing before two hundred people in the most powerful country in the world and calling these people to action in a different sort of way, the way of love and the way of nurturing and the way of trust, convincing them by virtue of their own existence that such a thing is universal and can work, is working even in a homeland so torn asunder as theirs.

This eve my brother and his daughter played a special song for their guests, he on guitar and she on flute, their rendition of J.S. Bach’s classical seasonal tune Jesus, Joy of Man’s Desiring. Though its title engenders religious overtones, in present company we feel a universality. It is a time we remember that to give is the anecdote for desire, like the time during Eid a widow cloaked in her blue burqa knocked upon the door of the orphanage, asked from the orphans a single piece of meat for her own children. The joy that comes with giving is like the notes in the music that seem to roll on without interruption, perpetual in their liveliness and unfolding. I watch Pashtana, Manizha and Sahar as they absorb this world of ours, and remarkably it is I who makes the discovery. We are one on this Earth.

Merry Christmas.

Pashtana driving for first time.

The girls making Mantu for my birthday dinner.

A walk in the woods.

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This post rightfully is not a platform from which to proselytize. I must almost always keep to the story of AFCECO and the children and my direct experience, but while the children have been taking their final exams, and while I prepare for the journey home to America with three of my students in tote, I have time to read and to think, and I must anticipate the scores of questions I will be fielding as I move about my country once again drumming up support for AFCECO and sharing my perspective on Afghanistan and its people and this war. So please bear with me and forgive my indulgence as I try to formulate some of my broader, philosophical opinions as regards the opinions expressed by experts in American newspapers. Invariably this gets me into trouble and I will regret it. Always, the truth is to be found in the voices of the children. But I am idle this week, I have not seen the children, and idleness can be a bit corrosive. One week from today we will be on a plane west, and this journal will take another turn in describing the unimaginable experience Pashtana, Manizha and Sahar are about to have. For today, I am compelled to respond to the op-ed piece in the Washington Post 12/3/2010, written by Robert Kaplan.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/03/AR2010120303448.html?hpid=opinionsbox1

This opinion piece written by Mr. Kaplan is very well composed and convincing in its language, but it suffers from an initial devotion to a simple premise that the Cold War in an odd sort of way kept the world safer and more stable than the lack of empire that exists today. It also presupposes, between the lines, that the United States has a moral responsibility to maintain its control of the seas and geopolitical developments. (The writer also insinuates that the U.S. historically has been guided by moral truths.) A quick glance at the history of the latter half of the 20th Century does not quite bolster this stance. Here is a list of wars and in parenthesis the number of people killed:

1946-54: France-Vietnam war (600,000)

1947: Partition of India and Pakistan (1 million)

1947: Taiwan’s uprising against the Kuomintang (30,000)

1948-1958: Colombian civil war (250,000)

1948-1973: Arab-Israeli wars (70,000)

1949-: Indian Muslims vs Hindus (20,000)

1949-50: Mainland China vs Tibet (1,200,000)

1950-53: Korean war (3 million)

1952-59: Kenya’s Mau Mau insurrection (20,000)

1954-62: French-Algerian war (368,000)

1958-61: Mao’s “Great Leap Forward” (38 million)

1960-90: South Africa vs Africa National Congress (?)

1960-96: Guatemala’s civil war (200,000)

1961-98: Indonesia vs West Papua/Irian (100,000)

1961-2003: Kurds vs Iraq (180,000)

1962-75: Mozambique Frelimo vs Portugal (?)

1964-73: USA-Vietnam war (3 million)

1965: second India-Pakistan war over Kashmir

1965-66: Indonesian civil war (250,000)

1966-69: Mao’s “Cultural Revolution” (11 million)

1966-: Colombia’s civil war (31,000)

1967-70: Nigeria-Biafra civil war (800,000)

1968-80: Rhodesia’s civil war (?)

1969-: Philippines vs New People’s Army (40,000)

1969-79: Idi Amin, Uganda (300,000)

1969-02: IRA – Norther Ireland’s civil war (2,000)

1969-79: Francisco Macias Nguema, Equatorial Guinea (50,000)

1971: Pakistan-Bangladesh civil war (500,000)

1972-: Philippines vs Muslim separatists (Moro Islamic Liberation Front, etc) (120,000)

1972: Burundi’s civil war (300,000)

1972-79: Rhodesia/Zimbabwe’s civil war (30,000)

1974-91: Ethiopian civil war (1,000,000)

1975-78: Menghitsu, Ethiopia (1.5 million)

1975-79: Khmer Rouge, Cambodia (1.7 million)

1975-89: Boat people, Vietnam (250,000)

1975-90: civil war in Lebanon (40,000)

1975-87: Laos’ civil war (184,000)

1975-2002: Angolan civil war (500,000)

1976-83: Argentina’s military regime (20,000)

1976-93: Mozambique’s civil war (900,000)

1976-98: Indonesia-East Timor civil war (600,000)

1976-2005: Indonesia-Aceh (GAM) civil war (12,000)

1977-92: El Salvador’s civil war (75,000)

1979: Vietnam-China war (30,000)

1979-88: the Soviet Union invades Afghanistan (1.3 million)

1980-88: Iraq-Iran war (1 million)

1980-92: Sendero Luminoso – Peru’s civil war (69,000)

1980-99: Kurds vs Turkey (35,000)

1981-90: Nicaragua vs Contras (60,000)

1982-90: Hissene Habre, Chad (40,000)

1983-: Sri Lanka’s civil war (70,000)

1983-2002: Sudanese civil war (2 million)

1986-: Indian Kashmir’s civil war (60,000)

1987-: Palestinian Intifada (4,500)

1988-2001: Afghanistan civil war (400,000)

1988-2004: Somalia’s civil war (550,000)

1989-: Liberian civil war (220,000)

1989-: Uganda vs Lord’s Resistance Army (30,000)

Other than the obvious cold war wars in bold (with, by the way deflated numbers of people who actually died in those wars) there are many wars listed as civil wars that were anything but. In fact they were proxy wars pumped with arms by the Soviets or the U.S., or they were pendulum swing, radicalized wars against U.S. or Soviet backed tyrants. This history, along with the ever-present imminent prospect of all-out nuclear war was not pretty, and it astounds me Mr. Kaplan seems to be almost nostalgic about it. In reality what he and most of us are nostalgic for is the era when we were the good guys, notably World War II. It was the Cold War and our penultimate rise to sole superpower, preemptive invader, torturer and ultimately hypocrite proclaiming all ends justify means wherein we find our good-guy status eroded, reduced to a cardboard cutout akin to the promotional cutouts of heroes we see in the lobbies of movie theaters.

Regarding America’s moral compass, I can only shrug and refer to the arrogant concept of Manifest Destiny, that we are in fact God’s chosen ones. This article smugly talks about China as immoral and self-interested and getting a free ride on the rest of the world’s resources, sweat and blood. I firmly agree. But it is important to understand that this is not unlike what a very large portion of the world has said about us. This article also contradicts itself by saying on one hand nobody will compare militarily with us for decades, but that we must keep pace and maintain our power: ie continue to build on our military might or we lose pace with the world. In a previous entry I highlighted the discrepancy between what we spend and what the rest of the world spends on military. More to the point, thus far this year the United States and its NATO partners dropped 4,615 Hellfire missiles in Afghanistan. Each costs $58,000. That comes to $267,670,000. What geopolitical stability did we get for this investment? An air strike is called in simply because we can, even though the target is merely two to a dozen supposed hostiles in a mud hut on a mountainside. Aside from dealing with the remoteness of the hut, taking it out reduces any chance of our own casualties, but is this reason enough to drop a bomb on it?  The official body count this year of insurgents killed in the entire field, ground assault and air assault runs at 4,437. What have over 4,600 bombs (precision bombs no less) accomplished? Is it morally right to spend this kind of money on this kind of war? While one in four Americans are unable to put food on their table tonight? With close to 10% of Americans out of work? Not to mention the fact that civilians are killed by these strikes, and just about every Afghan will tell you that we are creating the perceived Taliban monster and making it stronger with every bomb we drop.

The Wikileaks incident merely illustrates what we have all known in our hearts, that we rarely if ever get the truth. What kind of democracy is populated with people who have no bearing on the truth? What kind of power is wielded in the world by such a country?

Mr. Kaplan’s article comes out of itself in the end, saying that we must not shirk our responsibilities abroad. There is a serious problem with this cart before the horse attitude, not the least of which is skipping over the debate about what it means to act responsibly in the world. To do this we must first cleanse ourselves of presupposing our moral high ground as a shining light, a Camelot that does not nor ever existed. It is people who demand morality, as they did when they demanded the end of slavery, the end of child labor, the vote for women, civil rights, the end of the Vietnam war, environmental protection and equality for all, regardless of sexual preference. I am not intimating that we as a country have never done anything good in the world. What I am intimating is that what good we do as a country only comes with self-reflection, which does not by necessity mean isolationism, but to know the truth about ourselves before we march across the human landscape with our supreme power and righteousness.

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First cabin I built, the "Pagoda", Washington State, 1988. Cost:$150.

Dear Friend,

It is Thanksgiving Day here, but not there. I will not be eating and drinking, but in a way observing. There is a birthday party for some of the girls at Mehan this afternoon.

You exclaimed how much you are looking forward to spending this holiday in your cabin away from the city. Before Afghanistan I spent my life living in the woods. Over the years I built three cabins, one in Washington, one in Alaska and one in Vermont. I listened to the wind and the rain, the song of whales, and watched eagles mating high in the air, as they tumbled with talons locked in a freefall toward the ocean. I sometimes think I could have stayed in any one of those cabins forever, but relationships, weariness, wanderlust pulled me along. I wonder now what is so damned important about these things, that in some sense I gave up other things that were vitally important to me almost every step of the way, again and again, to keep intimacy, to keep love, to keep a sense of purpose. Oh, I know, moments of sheer beauty, whispered words, touch… Once in a while in the middle of a dark night I miss it terribly, but when the aching passes missing it is like missing my father reading to me in bed or my mother cutting my morning fruit, driving fast on the highway with my best friend egging me on in the passenger seat, or strolling across a campus and talking heatedly with classmates about the state of the world. I am profoundly alone now, and yet eternally linked to the past and the future every moment I commit myself further to these children. There are passing pleasantries, such as when the children express their love for me, but even this is not what holds me still. There is love, and then there is something I cannot quite identify, words such as purpose, God, responsibility, guilt, meaning, duty, need, commitment… these all fall short as much as the word “love”. It is as if I have already died. This is a very loaded statement, and most anyone will think I’m losing grasp of reality. I have not detached from life, in fact I celebrate and adore its every facet more than ever before. To a degree I’ve not been I have detached from fear of death. Oddly, this is not akin to the adolescent jumping from a bridge forty feet into a shallow river. It is more akin to my revelation in my last entry about the word “hope”.

There is enough of life in the world to keep me afloat until I am finished, or it is finished with me. I know that you, my dear friend, understand many things regarding life and death, plenty I have yet to learn. You will understand this much of what I say: that I have lived life as if it matters, even though it does not. When I listen to music that is a synthesis of East and West tradition, such as the track from “Dead Man Walking” in which Eddie Vedder collaborates with Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, (in particular The Long Road), I am close to this understanding. The words, yes to a degree, but also the feel of it. It is a kind of lament, a letting go and also an embracing. It is full of love for life, so much love it will, if necessary let go of it. There are memories, but the speaker does not get caught up in them even as he is, commenting as he does from a place outside memories how they simply go round, round, round. Perhaps it is the commonality that endears me to this song, that we are in this together and that in the end, we all walk the long road.

Thanksgiving is a time when we celebrate this commonality. The native gives food to the starving invader. There is no gesture in the world of human history that is more noble than this. The native forgives the invader, and the invader lets go at least for one day fear and consequently hatred of the native. On this day, think of yourself. Think how interchangeable the invader and native are. Think of them within you. Embrace that native and forgive the invader. Then, when this has been settled think of your family, your friends. Do the same for them. And if you can, maybe after the turkey and before the pie, think of the people at the center of this war being waged in Afghanistan. Then, in a moment, even if only for a flash that is here and gone think of the Earth itself, the ultimate native that humanity, the ultimate invader suddenly must turn to in the cold dawn of winter for nourishment and strength. Please raise your glass, look into the eyes that love, even if you are alone, even if in all probability we are Godless and there is nothing when we die, the stranger next to you, the mockingbird and the raven perched on the barren branch of a sycamore, one randomly singing its catalogue of songs and one settling upon a simple, throaty croak, these at least are real. It requires no faith to see them, to hear them. Fear them not, accept what they have to give or feed them if you can. Forgive them their strangeness. They are going down the same road as you.

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Writer Rebecca Solnit gives a lecture about darkness, or less metaphorically the unknown, using Virginia Woolf as a touchstone for the discussion. In it she proposes a reexamination of hope. Most people I presume regard hope as having something to look forward to. But Ms. Solnit suggests that the opposite is true, that authentic hope comes when we embrace the unknown future and accept that it is unknowable and that it will in the end reveal itself regardless. This may seem absurd or insignificant, but the more I sit with it I see far reaching implications. There is nothing new about “inhabiting the void”, mystics have been talking this way forever, but to call it hope?

Watching a favorite team the Skins play football, I see they are down 45 to 6 in the first half. I don’t know about you, but my hope goes out the window. I pop another beer and watch another episode of 24. Now, slow it down a bit. Say the Red Sox are down three games to none in the best out of seven series against the Yankees. Do I watch the next game? Of course, even if it goes to the bottom of the 9^th inning and Rivera is on the mound. Hope sticks to the end, even though in this case the odds are not any better for the Sox than for the Skins. Slow it down another notch and we come to “there’s always next year”.

Now let’s look at a different kind of hope, one that is so illogical it should make us laugh at ourselves. Reading a novel, any novel, we turn the pages full of hope the hero somehow transcends his enemy’s shenanigans. We watch Jack Bauer as if he could die, as if the nuclear bomb could go off in L.A.

We hope our child is born healthy, she grows up to be happy in life. We hope we get a pay raise. We hope the professor gets sick so the exam is delayed. Some people patriotically hope a president makes huge mistakes so he can be knocked off his pedestal, which is truly paradoxical, given that such a sentiment is synonymous with hoping the country flounders or even suffers. What does a person on death-row hope for, or Prince William’s bride to be? Sometimes it is hard to tell if we are hoping or praying.

How is it that oftentimes, if not all the time, when we get what we hope for there is a sort of letdown in the heart, almost an embarrassment? I remember a writer describing how strong was his hope to get published, and that as soon as this happened he felt a sort of emptiness and immediately began hoping for a book deal. This continued from book deal to getting reviewed by the New York Times, from that to winning an award, from that to winning a Pulitzer Prize. He said jokingly, though honestly in a sly sort of way that he was presently hoping to win the Nobel.

When we claim that hope is a good thing, that it is a key to happiness, what exactly do we mean? What did we think when we voted for Obama and his slogans of hope, that the country would undergo some sort of fairy tale Renaissance? What did he mean by it? Nobody asked. Not exactly. As we get older hope changes. We approach the ninth inning and begin to evaluate the game. For many people their hope transfers to the hereafter, they are still able to look forward. For others there is only regret or at best a quiet reconciliation with life. What this perusing suggests to me is that hope, in the end, reveals itself to be a kind of delusion.

This is not news. The entire existentialist movement was onto it. The problem was it was so occupied with debunking hope it neglected to come up with an alternative other than its opposite, hopelessness. That is where Rebecca’s (and Virginia’s) musings on darkness pick up the pieces and head us toward a cosmology that frankly makes more sense than either hope or hopelessness. I found something akin to it the year I delved so far inside Edgar Allan Poe’s mind a kind of alchemic regeneration out of dark, dark matter opened a new insight into this subject. From nightmares to the big bang theory Poe unflinchingly worked to create meaning out of a world where hope is illusory. He never lost his thirst for life, or his passion and excitement about the unknown. In other words it was the unknown that contained meaning for him, and it was inside this meaning that he found reason to live and in a strange sort of way, (I’m going to get clobbered by Poe scholars for saying this) happiness.

Which brings me to Afghanistan.

I think it is safe to say the people here have a particularly devastating relationship with hope. Arguably, it is cruel to come here and once again offer it to them. Bombing the hell out of the country in 2001 did not silence their newfound hope (after it had been deafened by terror and violence for twenty years). America was coming. Now it is difficult to talk to any Afghan citizen in the street about hope. You will get a quizzical look, a shrug of the shoulders. “We will see what happens,” she or he will say not from a place of distrust or even doubt, but as a matter of fact; eventually we will see what happens. In other words, hope as a force has little to no bearing on life here. It is beside the point. To be sure this is not the same as despair. Remember, the absence of hope by definition means the absence of hopelessness. Nor is it a form of denial; only the crudest most pompous turd would accuse an Afghan of that. With this reality in mind how exactly do we go about winning the hearts and minds of the people?

Actions.

Not merely the textbook action, such as printing a million schoolbooks or building twenty schools, but how these things are done, and what happens after they are done. There are volunteers around the world discussing whether or not it is damaging to volunteer, damaging to the host and damaging to the individual trying to give service. This is a valid debate to have. In early September of 2009, to see Frishta shuddering and weeping in my arms, to feel the level of pain in my heart for leaving her and for all practical purposes, forever, I’d agree. Damaging. Why bring such love and hope and then take it away? When I go back and read my journal from that time I can pinpoint the moment I came to realize the last shred of the concept of hope and hopelessness being eradicated from my spirit. On the roof, sipping whiskey with Kaka Ryan, watching the moon come up on my last night in Kabul. There was absolutely no way for me to devise any semblance of a game plan to even hope for. In one respect my hands were tied to forces out of my control, and in another sense I had total freedom. I did not know what I would or even could do, not that month, not that fall, and certainly not into the future beyond that. The children asked, Jamshid asked, why are you leaving? “I… don’t… know,” was my answer. And yet… everything seemed perfectly aligned and, that word again, happiness crept into me, a happiness I didn’t even recognize as happiness because of its divorce from hope and despair. Best not even to call it happiness.

The people of Afghanistan have something to teach us westerners. It is the age-old story wherein the hero is enlightened (ie: saved) by the very one he is trying to rescue. He isn’t aware of it, may never be. That will determine if this ends in tragedy or not. I believe the lesson we are being taught has to do with hope, and I believe this lesson, like a planted idea in our dream as illustrated in the movie Inception, has far reaching implications.

Thirteen girls in my leadership workshop dared to hope they would be chosen to go to America with me this winter. Three were chosen, and ten had to varying degrees depending on expectations negotiate their loss of hope. We had to manage this process carefully. These students at times can seem fragile, emotionally wounded from deeply impoverished memories. There were two or three who were not chosen who had a viable argument for their candidacy, in particular Hala who got 96% on her final exam, a hundred questions that the next best in the class got an 80% on. We assuaged disappointments with promises of more opportunities coming next year, but we still feared the worst. Then, only one day after the announcement went out we held a graduation celebration at the resource center. Not a single somber face, not a hint of self-pity or resentment. All were happy for Manizha, Pashtana and Sahar. The level of acceptance without despair was astounding to me. Try imagining you are a sixteen year old girl in Afghanistan, that you have been raised in an orphanage. Try imagining suddenly getting the opportunity to go to America for three months with your teacher and two of your sisters. Imagine that deep down you expect this is/was the only time in your entire life such a chance will come, and that the chance has been lost. You might expect some level of despair. Yet in these girls is something akin to that strange form of happiness I am talking about, the one absent of hope. The same could be said about the winners, as they too exhibited a poise I have rarely witnessed. When Jamshid asked Pashtana in English if she would give her position on the America trip to Hala or Lida or another one of her friends given one of them so dearly deserves and wants to go, Pashtana unflinchingly answered, “Yes, she goes.” Meaning, of course, her friend. Don’t think for a millisecond Pashtana cares not if she goes to America. She and her co-awardees are so excited they cannot wipe the smiles from their faces, and when they look at me there is a kind of openness, a seeing through to a far horizon, through me. I am not even there. It is so infectious we just start laughing. And yet Pashtana, and I venture to say Manizha and Sahar would give it all away. It has nothing to do with hope, everything to do with what happens, an embracement of the unknown or even the darkness we fear.

This week we celebrated Eid al-Adha. It is a good time to be a shepherd. This is the day when Moslem people remember the story of Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his son Ishmael as an act of devotion to God, and God’s ensuing intervention wherein He told Abraham that a ram would suffice. Thousands of goats and sheep are slaughtered on this day, following morning prayer. We purchased two billy goats for the occasion, and dispatched them in the courtyard of Mehan orphanage. Manizha was an active participant, and Farida, and Hala. They helped in the slitting, the pumping up of the cavity, the skinning and butchering. I’d experienced the slaughtering of a large animal before, pigs, deer. But this affair still affected my domesticated sense of propriety. Within two hours two living goats were transformed into kababs on the grill, and I evolved from being a curious onlooker to salivating over a choicely cooked section of heart. These are things that happen in Afghanistan. You cannot see them coming. You cannot hope against or for them, or they will or will not come. Each day, something does happen. Of this much I am certain. I still do not know if I will be around for a while, if I will be living here or there, if I will fall in love or not, if I will ever write another song. If I were told I must leave Afghanistan today, I would leave, and something else would happen, but unless that happens I celebrate the “hope” I have conceived from embracing the darkness. Becoming teacher to these orphans is about as blessed a life as I can imagine. In such a state it is not so difficult for me to understand how happy Pashtana is, and how equally she would sacrifice her future so her friend Hala might have one.

Malalai, Sadaf, Farida and Parwana. What hope is.

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The Leadership Workshop inaugural class of 2010, graduation ceremony and the giving of certificates of achievement. Front row, L to R: Sahar, Sadiqa, Mursal, Hala, Shogofa (behind Hala), Pashtana, Yasamin, Nida. Second row L to R: Lida, Farida, Manizha, Sitiza, Sosan. I have never been so proud.

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