For Life And Death

 For those of you who have never been, let me describe Afghanistan for you from my point of view.

Each day you wake up is a gift, a beautiful present from above. After the long, dark night, any daylight is a blessing. Here, night is not a comfort. The stars and the moon are brighter than someone in a developed country could ever imagine, even around these small cities. The darkness, and the silence, are both so profound that you lose yourself in their very emptiness. Finally, after what seems like eternity in a confined space, you wake up to the dawn. You walk across the sandy desert, which exists everywhere, feeling the air against your skin. Each season has a different mood, a different texture. The summer air is lazy, enveloping you and smothering you, making you think longingly of some place to lie down and drink cool water. Unlike other deserts, the heat permeates throughout the night, making you never forget that the sun rules the valleys you live in. Very few live in the mountains, and all here try to simply survive during the summer months. In the winter, you are much more aware that you are simply a flesh and bone being living in a vast stretch of the elements, completely subject to nature's will. You feel lucky to have the comfort of man-made structures and clothing, because if you were to be cast out into the expansive wasteland, the cold air would strip the meat from your skeleton. In winter you are much more keen on survival, because the cold can seep into your bones and it takes a very, very long time to get warm again.

If Afghanistan were a building, sand would be its foundation. Everything in the country shifts, turns with the wind, and seems to have a mind of its own to the outsider. Afghans can tell how the sandstorms will blow in, can read the weather as words off a page, but a foreigner could live here for 20 years and still not grasp the totality of the place. Its people shift as well, moving from place to place, alliance to alliance, job to job. It is all in Allah's will, they say; whatever He wants done shall be done. Their goal in the meantime is just to stay alive. Funnily enough, however, many Afghans have no fear of death. Like the sand, they realize it is their lot in life to shift and blow from life into death, a natural course, and all they need have happen in the meantime is to live as they choose (always subject, of course, to the will of God). The Afghan people are dunes, mountains, valleys, all shaped by an unimaginable span of time to their present condition. Left to their own devices, little would change. They exist, they cease to exist, and no matter what the seasons turn. Life and death are the arbitrators of decisions here, not whimsical ideals or profit margins. The uneducated are tumbleweeds, doing whatever the environments dictate. The educated are more firm, stones and pillars which stand firm to their principles. Not Western principles, not embodiments of what Americans would define as moral, but stone pillars of survival. The words "dog-eat-dog" have an extremely literal meaning here, so much so that to an outsider it would seem a barbaric country (and does, to many). However, to me Afghans simply have held true to a way of life that has existed for milennia, right or wrong: do what it takes to survive. Good Afghans, which are the majority, would find it reprehensible to steal from or hurt another good Afghan, because that deprives him of a right which is innately his. However, if a corrupted man comes along, he has broken the code: Allah will dictate his future, and the police or village elders who order his execution are simply His executioners.

This is a desert, where the most important thing is survival. If you do not belong here, it is not a sin to lie to you or try to gain a profit from you. You are a traveler in a strange land, and as such you should be aware that you are on the turf of the native. Be wary, be cautious, and most importantly be hospitable, for Afghans will be a brother to you if you show them small kindness. Harming you is not in their best interest; you bring them money and things they could not have. Do not ask them to change their homes or their way of thinking; they will decide that within their tribes and do so when they are ready. Afghanistan has been at war literally since its inception, which is a Westerner cannot even consider (remember, our country is barely over 200 years old while theirs is over 2,000). The Afghans will make their own choices, regardless of your influence; they are not backwards monkeys, they just have a different way of thinking. This life means little compared to God, He who is eternal and glorious. And as for the Taliban and other terrorists, well... they are foriegners. Men from Pakistan who want to come and change things, and who have destroyed and warped a good culture. They deserve the most heinous punishment for their crimes; unfortunately, it is a battle which must be fought person to person, life for life, brother for brother. Family, tradition, pride, these are the wheels of the Afghan culture. Western money and ideals have only fueled the motivation for a man to be free, given hope to a culture which knows that as soon as the "Pakistani dogs" have been run out of the country and been restored, the Western forces which remain will either leave or suffer the same fate as the British in the 1800s. The Afghan says this is His Country, His Way of Life. If you do not like it, that is your problem, not his. He will deal with the corrupt and the foolish in his own way and on his own time. For now, he asks your help, as he has little power. But you are not his hero or his savior. God will save him, or kill him, and only when He wants to do so.

Fatalist, I guess, is a good way to describe Afghanistan. Just like the desert, it changes from season to season, but the endless cycle of life and death are really the only measure of time in this place. Its people have made something from nothing, farmers in fields where the soil is unforgiving but where pure determination will aid in their survival. Governments, corruption, and danger are rampant throughout the country, and in order to restore the order one may very well have to kill a man. But such things are not for a foreigner to understand; Afghanistan is not a country looking for eternal glory or for heroes. This is not America, and the people know it. Anyone who surmises otherwise is a fool, a simpleton, who can't understand the complexity of history and the simplicity of Afghan life and death.

Coming to Afghanistan has changed my way of thinking. Perhaps, as some have claimed, the sand has penetrated its way to my head and filled it up with nonsense. But I do not think so. My ideals have not changed, but if you come to this country and look with an open eye at its people, you realize they are not backwards. "Savage," in the term of the Westerner, yes. Primitive, as well. But that is only due to resources, war, and (in many ways choice). After all, there is no purpose in trying to build a skyscraper on a bed of sand. It will topple and fall. Its outside will chip away from the sandstorms. You can try to plow down a mountain, but you cannot chop it down like a tree (if you want to understand Afghanistan, study its geography and geology). Time passes slowly here, for a very good reason: hasty change will be met with force. Each small valley, each tribe, each family has its own history, its own culture, and its own ideals. Trying to change it quickly without the permission of the people will be like trying to dig a deep hole in the sweltering desert with no life-giving water from the land to keep you breathing. Very quickly, you will fall into your own pit and the natural sand will cover you. All of it ties back to survival. Coming here is a lesson in life and death, and I think many people caught up in their own lives would do well to come and see for themselves what these people have to teach an "educated man." Life is much simpler than we can guess, and more complex than we can imagine, but as long as you survive and do what it takes to keep breathing, you will do well. Change comes with time, just as the winds do not hurry the sand across the desert, but do it slowly, for life and death are the codes to live by, and to be free means to embrace and respect both.