William Vollmann - An Afghanistan Picture Show - Or, How I Saved the World

“To have acted otherwise,” said Brezhnev, “would have meant leaving Afghanistan prey to imperialism and allowing the aggressive forces to repeat in that country what they had succeeded in doing, for instance, in Chile, where the people’s freedom was drowned in blood. To act otherwise would have meant to watch passively the origination on our southern border of a seat of serious danger to the security of the Soviet state.”

Anjilla’s family had a friend who they knew was a Communist. He used to bring Lenin’s picture to their house. On the night the Russians came, he knew that something was happening, but he said nothing. That night the sky was full of airplanes. In the morning her father said that it was not safe to go anywhere. Her mother wanted the friend out because he was not safe for the family. The friend was up early in the morning. He seemed very excited. He said he had to get cigarettes. When he got to the store, he was shocked. He was expecting that something could happen, but he couldn’t believe that the Roos had come. The Russian soldiers were looking at him in the store. The friend came running back to Anjilla’s house crying, “The Roos are here and we are finished!”

That day and the next day the Russians went to all the important places and secured them. On the radio they said that due to U.S. interference they had to get help from our very kind neighbors the Russians. Everyone in Anjilla’s family was crying. Anjilla prayed to Allah.

The friend had a brother who was a Mujahid. The Mujahid had said, “If I see him, he’s a dead man.” But after the invasion the friend became a Mujahid also…

Anjilla’s family had two guns. When the Russians came, they hid them in the flour. Eventually the Russians began searching the houses with metal detectors. Then they had to give the guns to the Mujahideen.

I went to see Anjilla’s father at work once. He refused to say anything about himself or his family. His words and thoughts were walled like one of those villages in the North-West Frontier where trees rise randomly from dry terraces, hiding things, and the houses are low and hidden behind the wall, and in the open field below graze bullocks, never looking up at that village, never looking sidelong at the refugee camp beside them where fresh-faced children stare and smile from between the crowd of white tents and everything is open and everybody sees you. — He had relatives in Afghanistan. He was afraid that I would publish his name and then the Roos would kill them.

As for Anjilla, time went on and she got engaged and became less and less inclined to think about the past.

And the refugees came year by year.

“I was in an underground press organization,” the man said on the phone. He would not meet me; he would not give his name. — “The secret police found out. They put much emphasis on the secret police in Afghanistan today. There is a salary of 8,000 afghanis, plus coupons, free medical facilities, and an ID to enter any house at any time. They are entitled to a military rank and title. For many people, this is how they are standing on their feet, actually. The inflation is two hundred percent; and flour, sugar and tea are quite expensive, so one has to live. That is why freedom-fighter activities in Kabul are— limited , let us say. — So they discovered us. Several friends were captured; the rest escaped. I left for this reason, and also because my wife happened to be on Daoud’s constitutional committee, and she had training in home economics from Pennsylvania State, so she was an Undesirable Element and assumed to be C.I.A. Amin was president of the— —Association in the United States in 1965. My wife was the treasurer. (But please change this information; for my safety you must change this information!) Recently in Afghanistan they found an old yearbook of the Association, so they said, ‘Ha, ha, ha! We’ve got another one! Another C.I.A. here!’ A friend of mine was in a meeting in which they decided to seize my wife. So we came to Pakistan. My brothers are still in Afghanistan and they are fighting fiercely. My sister is fighting in Panjsher. There are many teams of women fighters there. I am happy to be here. I love you people, really, because you are doing something. Refugee aid is not a solution. The solution is: Give us a gun and we will do the job. God bless you, and I hope we can return the support in kindness.”

“When I was in West Germany waiting for my visa, †I was very depressed,” Nahid told me, pouring more tea in my cup and then in hers. “I didn’t want to go out, ’cause I just left after the demonstrations and I saw some people get killed. Well, I was very depressed in the beginning. What I saw in my country, I thought the whole world would realize it and everybody was thinking about it, but once I left my country everything was normal. It’s not that other people don’t care, but it’s just — you know, it’s just the way it is.”

We ourselves feel nothing: we do not feel the earth reach up when a stone lands at our feet. But that does not mean there is nothing to feel. The earth is moved by the stone. And I hope that it is not a mere conceit of mine that the earth moves when a bomb falls on the far side of the world. But of course it does not move; we are not moved; that is just the way it is.

“What made you decide to leave Afghanistan?” I said.

“Well, almost everything,” Nahid said. “The situation, the fighting, the demonstrations, and, uh, those students got killed …” She looked down at the floor. “And we couldn’t study, you know. Almost all the teachers were coming in class and telling us that we should be ashamed of studying because other people were getting killed behind those mountains, because They were bombing everything. And in public you couldn’t talk without to be afraid of everybody. They didn’t like us because They were saying that we were feudals or landowners or whatever, and we were afraid of Them because whoever They were thinking was against the government, They were going to put them in jail and then who knows. They’ve killed a lot of people. No one asks why. No one can ask.”

“Did you consider joining the resistance instead of leaving?”

“Well, it’s hard here, you know. We hardly make very much money, you know, to pay our expenses. I do want to help my people and I did, but it’s easier to say it than to do it, because if I go to Pakistan right now they won’t let me fight, ’cause I have to stay home and cover my face and stuff like that. And when you live, you have to deal with your own problems, too.”

“What is life like for you here?”

“Well,” Nahid said, “the hardest thing is when you think you have lost everything you had behind you. You never know if you’ll be able to go back or not. On the other hand, I can go to school here, I can make my living, and people are really nice to us. Maybe it’s the nature of America, because it’s a country for all refugees.”

Nahid gave a party once, and there was beer and music and dancing. One of the guests got drunk and started shaking his finger in my face, yelling, “You Americans, you don’t care about us; you are a bullshit people!” and everyone else was shocked and shushed him because he was not being hospitable to me, and Nahid smiled apologetically and sipped her beer, and the musicians played one more song, one more song on their Afghan instruments, until it was three in the morning, and they gave me a bed to sleep in and the next morning they gave me breakfast. But I could not forget that I had seen Nahid drinking beer. She was becoming an American. — “I don’t know if the fighting is going to stop or how long it’s going to take,” she said to me passionately, defensively, “and when you’re young you have to do something, to be something where you are. My grandmother and my mother, they are older and will never be reconciled to living here. They want to go back because it’s very hard for them: they don’t speak the language, and they’re mostly alone because everyone else goes to work or school. But I think if Russians leave my country, then everything will be okay. I think most of us would like to go back. I do.” —Her head was down; her voice was very low. — “I would like to go back to help my people, to stay there. But then again, I don’t know if …” —She stopped. — “I don’t want to go back to my country and see that everything has changed so that I can’t— bear it anymore.”