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November, 2001 Afg 5: Soul-Music I've been in Pakistan for the last week, flirting with depression. But tease that I am, I now giggle, waggle my fingers goodbye at the soul-numbing deadening escapism of blanket-over-the-head fearfulness, and dance on. Sorry - I'll back up (and yes, try to make some sense): I have come to Peshawar, Pakistan, with my friend (beautiful gentle man) Norm to be with Afghan friends for a while and find out what they think we can do to help them. Some snippets of life in this land follow. -- On the first night that we're in Peshawar (we stay with Orzala, an Afghan friend), the sound of gunfire and bombs echo shatter the midnight quiet. This is unusual - gunfire is occasionally heard from outbreaks of violence between tribes in the no-man's land around the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, but explosions have not been heard until now. We switch on the TV to see what CNN has to say about this (odd that people in Pakistan have to get their local news from North America...). CNN, BBC, local channels say nothing. The night sky shows moving lights in the direction of the border, and rat-a-tat-a- tat...boom!...BOOM! causes squeals and smothered murmurs from the teenage girls lying in the darkness of the other room. Someone returns from the roof and reports that there are rockets firing into the night. Oh great, I think. As soon as I reach Pakistan, it goes to war. My mom is going to kill me. The next morning breaks bright and sunny, however, and we hear that the violence of the night originated from warring tribal factions shooting and firing missiles on each other. I'm not entirely sure how I feel about tribes killing each other with rockets, but this news is a relief for the new refugee families who were sleeping in the room next to us - they had come illegally through the mountains to reach here from Kabul, and had been afraid that they had left war only to find more bombings here. -- Talk with any Pakistani - taxi driver/hotel receptionist/phone kiosk operator/bus passenger - and they will tell you that the US is the real terrorist and that they are angry that innocent fellow muslims in Afghanistan are being killed. They themselves may not be rioting in the streets of Pakistan, but in their hearts they might as well be. -- The third day we are here, Orzala receives horrible news: her relatives who were fleeing Kabul to reach Pakistan have been in a terrible accident. A mother (nine months pregnant) is killed along with her unborn child and her eight year old daughter, three others are in a coma (one dies of massive cerebral hemmorhaging in one day) and the ten year old daughter of the pregnant woman (she pulled the bloody bodies of her mother and sister from the car when it crashed) alternates between hysterical laughter and screaming/crying. More "collateral damage" of the war on terrorism, it seems. -- More hurt in the lives of Afghan friends I meet again: Elias' son is throwing up worms from his suffering bloated stomache (medicine is not working! We have no access to good doctors!!) Nadia (I am shocked when I first see her...can a few months bring about so much change?) is puffy and unhealthy looking, clearly exhausted, with bitterness and resentment simmering just beneath her skin. Too much load, too much powerlessness in the face of senseless suffering - she looks ready to explode with it all. Her two children, somber and silent, are not the giggling mischievous little terrors I once knew. Habiba jan's husband has left his business in Kabul to join his family in Pakistan. But now, without income, he feels his responsibility to his family heavily, and feels he must return to Kabul to earn money. (noooo! Not that lovely intelligent kind kind man in that horror!) I feel sick to my stomach. -- The TV is heartless. On the BBC, I watch the rich, pretty young widow of an American firefighter (in Western media, firefighter=good) talking about how her young boy asks where daddy has gone. Over here, of course, a 14 year old Afghan girl has lost 5 brothers and her mother, and has to take care of her two younger sisters and a father who sits in a corner, insane. I want to sympathize with the young widow and her son, but instead I find myself upset that she (along with the ‘success’ of the bombing campaign in Afghanistan) is being used to justify an unjustifiable war. -- I'm furious all this has happened and begin spending more and more time in my room, huddled under blankets to stop seeing and thinking (how self-indulgent!). Norm doesn't let me withdraw and shouts at me in my cowardice. I get back up (thank goodness for Norm!). Contrast: violence and love, fear-death and life-struggle, I am learning from heroes in Pakistan (quietly hardworking forgotten heros - Afghans who have struggled and will continue to struggle for years for their broken country) what courage means. Firefighters=good, yes, but Afghans=incredible indomitable inconceivable.
-- I'm probably too sensitive, and yes, I have a crazy fairy-vision for what the world should be like. Still, the US-led war on Afghanistan feels different from other atrocities and injustices to me. Perhaps that's why I react so strongly to it. I watch one government preying on fear and using pomp and nationalism to push through state-sponsored rape-violence (just take it, Afghans, and shut up)...and other nations joining, watching, or turning their eyes away, unable/unwilling to stop the violation...criminal acts are justified, dissent is silenced, a global caste system is perpetuated...and I think: surely we're better than this? The terrorist attacks on the US were the painful hurtful experience that was supposed to make the US stronger - flexible stronger, not this arrogant rigidity born of fear and insecurity, this brittle implacability and bullying wife-beating violence that spawns hate- filled children bent on destruction. Nobody's God. Maybe the US (like all countries) has made mistakes. Maybe that's okay. But continuing down the same unhealthy path is not. Meanwhile we, little ones who have no power, connect and comfort each other with little kindnesses. A Pakistani man runs after me to hand me my US dollar and passport purse when I drop it on the street (oh. Did I lose that? Oops). Women flock to support Norm when a doctor refuses to treat a dying Afghan baby he has taken to the hospital, and refuse to budge until the doctor treats the baby. Norm's taxi driver refuses payment for the frantic three hospital ordeal they have gone through. Phone kiosk operators wave away my attempts to pay for calls. I am delivered steaming tea unexpectedly by a warm-eyed stranger as I type this in the Karachi airport. I am warmed and gladdened, and reminded again that even if some are inhuman, others are still living breathing feeling giving. Ah! How wonderful!! The world is filled with music I sometimes forget to hear. I fling my arms open to moving eye-glistening soul-music and twirl away from the brink of depression without a backward glance. Sarah. |