What Afghanistan Means to Me

um hello everybody

um i was asked to talk about something

something that is very familiar to all

of us

we all know that suddenly the world

changed and we entered the 21st century

me and like me millions of others we

entered the 21st century

with a hope with a smile we thought okay

time of war is over a time of

devastation is over a time of slashing

and beating and cutting hands is over

and so we can actually think right now

again within

as a human being of what to do

but there was also something else

happening that is still us

being naive as being

completely like living in afghanistan

had no idea

about it and don’t know how to deal with

it and it was for the first time in our

history

afghanistan and afghans in general

confronted with a new phenomenon and

that phenomenon was called

international community suddenly

thousands and thousands of

internationals from across the world

from europe america japan asia

everywhere

they poured into afghanistan and they

said we want to help you

and we want to help you build a new

country

built a most civilized society

and for us yes despite all devastations

i never thought that we are not

civilized

but we were still happy when i said all

right it’s a message of hope

and we embraced it with our heart the

only problem was that none of us

my generation and kabul

encouraged parliament where i grew up or

around in the larger kind of a

if you put in the larger context of all

afghanistan we do not know how to talk

with international we don’t know how to

even explain what we need

or what we want yes we were smiling we

were happy we were like going around

there was no sense of fear anymore

but we didn’t know how to communicate

with them we didn’t know

how to speak proper english or english

at all

we didn’t know how to even explain in

ourselves and

normal words and we didn’t know how to

connect with them more importantly

as human to human and explain ourselves

that was all right we didn’t know it in

the beginning

and decisions were made about

afghanistan

new constitution was established new

government was established

contrition was ratified

and we started to actually suddenly for

the first time in our history

on a massive scale on a massive scale

confront the whole world

and by confronting the whole well this

question of like who we are in this new

world

in the age of globalization in the age

of human rights

in the age of women rights and the age

that there is no borders actually and

you can

just go around and we were allowed to

travel even before that

it was almost impossible for the

africans to travel legally

unless they have to go and find some

safety in the refugee camps in iran or

pakistan

or some went to the west so

in that thing in that moment

i i that question started burning in me

and i was just graduated from the

medical

university as a young kind of a

practitioner of medicine

and i worked in the hospital for a while

but then in my mind that was burning we

were introduced for the for the first

time with a concept such as civil

society

are freedom of speech you have the right

to explain yourself without fear and it

was like wow that’s wonderful

and oh these women’s have right to be

they

they are not property they are human

beings they have the same

right as you so there was like exciting

moments we were like full of life

but also full of confusion in other

sense because we don’t know

how to even digest all that information

and all that

rights specifically because we didn’t

know

when we talked we sat down with the

friends we for the first time we started

to go for picnics we went to somalia to

saw land to pakeman to bombion

traveling around and just sitting with

people and talking and we were asking

these questions like

oh we have the freedom of speech

but what that mean i don’t know we have

rights to be

to kind of express our opinions you have

the right to to to

to to to the court without being

prosecuted without being

beaten to death for something and we

it was great things but we didn’t know

so what and then a lot of people came a

lot of afghans returned from

abroad those who were living as refugees

and those who

left and left for as immigrants in the

west

and meeting with them was another

challenge for us because they came up

with the new world views

with the new ideas with the new thoughts

about and their completely new

experience

about life and how life how life

what life meant for them yes and i saw

i i grew up in a kind of rather closed

now comparatively speaking like a kabul

despite being metropolitan and stuff

suffered during the war but it was a

close society

and now facing with all these new people

in my mind it was like

they were talking to me about the issues

of the concepts that

about like how they thought about

afghanistan what afghanistan is

about their grieves about their hopes

that i couldn’t connect

easily for instance they talked about

their like

i realized that afghanistan despite

my thought that it was always like a

country i realized that we

had so much divisions we have suffered

so much and we are divided by so many

problems

that needs time to be addressed now how

to understand these problems

so despite a lot of hope that was

surrounding me

and surrounding the whole like felt the

air

there was a fear also fear started to

grow up in me a concern maybe a better

word

that concerned that like

what’s going to happen to us again how

are we going to define ourselves

in this world in this time

in a which that i’m confronting with so

many new people

they’re my people but they’re also so

different

than me sometimes better sometimes worse

it doesn’t matter but

so different

but in the midst of all of it

one day in the midst of all of it i i

felt that yes there’s a lot of

differences between us

there’s a lot of injustices that in a

way shape our own history

there’s a lot of problems tragedies but

also great things

there was some level of connection that

i never found

despite my interaction with many people

around the world

a level of connection with this

the other afghans whether they came from

iran or or pakistan whatever

there was some level of connection that

cannot it was

it was i felt it that i could not

explain it so

and in my mind it kind of it was it that

question of

who we are become even more and more and

we’re relevant and more and more

stronger

one day i was invited and i think the

luck struck

one day i got a phone call i got a job

to work as a board assistant and the

organization called foundation for

culture and civil society a newly

established

organization in kabul in 2003

and its aim was to promote avon culture

and civil society so our society for me

was completely new concept i didn’t know

but i thought i liked the people sitting

together and having conversation and

thinking about like

we have to do this and we have to

promote this kind of rights we have to

talk to the

people of the villages they have to have

a voice in the government these things

were interesting for me

i didn’t know i was just sitting down on

the corner and just taking notes of the

people

and one day the head of the organization

he called me and says oh we’re having a

talk today

there is a guy called whitney azoy he’s

invited he wrote a book on

a long time ago and about um

the title of the book is buskashi game

and politics in afghanistan

and he says why don’t you come and

listen to his talk and i was invited in

a wedding party

at the same time i kind of like

make it was hard for me to make a

decision because the wedding party was

my friends

but the other day i decided like okay

let me go and listen to the talk so i

went and this guy

an anthropologist himself he was talking

about his experience his

life living in kunduz province in kunduz

and tahar province

and looking at the life of the people

during the period of

before the war before the soviet

invasion

and i kind of explained the social

structure the dynamics

the cultural traditions the

people-to-people contract

how authority was defined there how

buskashi a common game in afghanistan

in fact represents in fact kind of is a

mirror that explains how

different society especially the

communities in the northeast of

afghanistan

organize themselves i was captivated by

this talk

so i went to after the talk i went to

this person and says

how do you know about us that much i

grew up here i don’t know

like you explained in a way that i felt

it all the time but i was never even

able to put my thoughts into words

so how you did that he looked at me and

i just gave him my card and says well

why don’t you come back

a few next in a few days we will have a

conversation so i went to his

office a few days later and um

he was sitting with his wife and we had

a conversation about obama’s and he told

me the stories

of his life in 1970s as an american

diplomat

first and then an american scholar

researcher in afghanistan

travels in the north and the south

especially the northeast areas

and he asked me what do you want in life

now

i was in a hospital and

um i worked in the hospital and stuff i

working with a cell society

but then i thought well i want to study

abroad

i want to know the way you know i want

to know how you think

and have the ability to kind of trans

translate my thoughts into words

with that he just he gave me a paper and

says okay i want because his wife was a

spanish he

asked me if write the every name

of the city in spain the original name

in arabic because

spain was controlled part of the by the

kind of as we call it

part of like the islamic world for a

long time so i sit down and just those i

remembered from the school period i

wrote it down

and then in a way he encouraged me to

apply

and apply for a scholarship called

fulbright

i was graduated from medical school so i

went apply to the fulbright in that time

and it was a long process i really don’t

want to go through that but

when i got my acceptance like i was

accepted

when i got my acceptance letter from the

universe columbia university

it was says we congratulate you we are

that you are accepted

in the school of um arts and sciences

and i thought okay now they’re going to

put me in a

institute of nara isabel because for me

arts and sciences means like i

go and study like music and i didn’t

want to study music as with all these

due respect for musicians and stuff

so i but then i came home

and i was literally didn’t want to go to

to the states and i thought i don’t want

to be a musician i’m not actually good i

don’t even have a good voice

but then somebody told me that no no

don’t worry about it just go

and nobody knew enough in my

neighborhood what arts and sciences

means

so when i went there i realized that

actually arts and sciences imply

humanities too social sciences too it’s

just not about arts in a way that

we define it in african-america which is

a respectable

uh subject to study i went and i studied

abroad and after i finished i i came

back and i started to work

and i wrote and i tried to tell as a

master’s program in a master’s program

i tried to i studied i graduated but

even more questions came into my mind

about

the more i studied afghanistan

academically the more i looked at it

in different layers i realized that

avonuzon is in a way

like every other country and also like

no other country

it’s the only country that’s in the

whole region that’s never been directly

colonized

and it’s a multi-ethnic multi-linguistic

multi-sectarian

country but unlike

any other country in the region it does

not have

a separatist movement nobody wants to

separate from it

while every every ethnic group in

afghanistan was to

kind of have their co-ethnics across

the bound borders of afghanistan so when

i just realized that okay there must be

something different

it might sounds in a way taken for

granted might take him for granted for

most of us we just see it as what it is

but if you look at it from like a more

theoretical perspective if you compare

it with all the theories of

like political science about ethnic

politics about

governance about state formation this is

an anomaly

it doesn’t exist especially a muslim

world and i thought i

found a way to move on with my phd

so this is like a golden question for me

if that is an anomaly that cannot be

explained

despite all the explanations that people

give but cannot academically

explained it requires to

to go deeper into it and that’s why

after a few years of working in

afghanistan

in new afghanistan i went for the phd i

graduated i came back

and i studied anthropology

took me six years people think that it’s

easy but actually it was a

most difficult period of my life because

i had to live with

cans of being lubia as we call it

for weeks because student life is a poor

life whether you want it or not whether

you where wherever you study it

and i came not from like a wealthy

family but from a middle class

avon family so now i’m back in

afghanistan i’m just like

equipped with more some answers i found

i wrote my dissertations about these

questions

and i’m if i can say there is one answer

for that there is none

but i realized that there’s something in

afghanistan there’s something

that cannot be politically explained

sometimes cannot be mathematically

defined

but if we look at the culture as the way

we think as human beings

as individuals and also as societies as

communities

as youth or not as men or women

there’s something more and that’s i can

call it culture

something that in a way binds people and

that is based

not on something artificial it’s not

based on their state policies

it comes from a long history it comes

from a deep cultural

traditions it is based on something that

exists in our minds and hearts and it’s

and there is no way to kind of put it

into one word or one sentence but all i

can say

that this the shared experience of

happiness and pain

and misery and smile

and pain and relief and the fact that

the afghan societies itself hold each

other together

the fact that no state ever

put us together but we came together

based on certain

understandings and thoughts and feelings

no matter the historical

circumstances especially in the modern

history especially in the 1990s

when the state collapsed in the country

when there was no police

there was no army and yet communities

managed to hold

itself together following nothing

very fancy their traditions their heart

their faith and their beliefs and i

think that

to me excuse me has been

one of the main factors that kind of

may be able to answer us that who we are

as

africans right published my book and i

realized

during my whole experience as a student

as a scholar and as an ordinary person

as a doctor as a civil society activist

as just a normal human being as a coach

a geek

part one with all of that i i realize

that

the experience of what we’ve faced what

we’ve experienced

in the last 40 years especially post

2001

we are going through a process of

cultural rebirth in which

us and again us not as individuals

only but as individuals and as a

communities but as a community that’s

not very only inward but the community

that are connected with the larger world

are trying to redefine ourselves as who

we are

as much as traditions hold us together

and help us to kind of define ourselves

in certain periods of time

that traditions are not something frozen

in time

that traditions that history that

understanding that psychology that we

have

are helping us in this period

to move ahead and redefine afghanistan

again

not on the realities of the past but on

the facts and hopes of the future

and the present and the future i’m

saying that because i know that today we

are facing again

with a very major challenge a challenge

that

threatens some of the best achievements

that we have

an achievement that’s maybe not tangible

because it doesn’t bring money

but it brings hope and it brings meaning

like our

rights as human beings our rights as

women and men of this country

our right to have ability to explain

ourselves and it’s a right to live with

dignity

these are the the factors these are the

concepts these are the

elements that actually can define

afghanistan in the 21st century and

again

help us to move ahead despite all the

problems and if that is that or lost

then we are truly we probably gonna have

to ask this question from us again

what we are doing and what we are and

who we are

i’m personally very hopeful because i

know that despite all the challenges

there is some vital force there’s an

energy inside

us an energy that cannot be quantified

by

data cannot be explained only by surveys

cannot be seen through just

only academic or scientific or

cultural or even religious eyes

or views it’s something that’s a

combination of all of it and some that’s

kind of a vital force that will keep us

together

and will help us to move beyond the

challenge

of today that threatens the very basic

rights

that well that defined us in the

beginning of the 20th century

21st century and hopefully continue to

shape mold and structures us our being

for the remaining of this century