An Afghanistan Picture Show: Or, How I Saved the World (12 page)

They had many dugouts there on the edge of the mountain. Every now and then, when they were deciding what to do about the Young Man, their attention wandered and they looked up into the rich blue sky, in the direction of Afghanistan. From far away came the noise of a plane.

A
fter another inconclusive interview with Dr. Najib of the Jamiat-i-Islami’s political office, he took a rickshaw back to Saddar. The expatriate “Rhodesian” had told him about the joys of the American Center, with its air-conditioning and its color portrait of President Reagan, so the Young Man decided to stop there. He wanted to be a recluse for an hour. —They had
Time
,
Newsweek
, and even the
Partisan Review
. He took all three. He sat at a clean round table by himself, his happiness alloyed only by the realization that eventually he would have to go outside again and walk past the men in baggy white cotton shirts and trousers who sat cross-legged in small white-painted shops, smiling or staring at him, the sewing machine with which they made their living momentarily idle; they all seemed to have dark faces, dark hair, dark eyes, mustaches and white teeth; they were summer-white like chalk dust or road dust beneath the trees of Peshawar’s British cantonment, and their hands were still; then after other ceremonies of mutual appreciation he would find himself back at the hotel; he would enter his room, where every dirty wall was as hot as an oven door, even late at night, and where, in ecological cheer, ants crawled slowly across his bed, and a cricket led him in song from the bathroom, as it had been doing for days; and scorching air came from the fan, which every now and then died for a while along with the lights (electrical power in Peshawar was erratic)—but here at the American Center things couldn’t be better. —He picked up
Time
first. Israel had been doing something in Lebanon. He saw an Afghan staring at him from another table. He ignored him. He looked at
Newsweek. Newsweek
appeared to agree with
Time
.

The power went out. At first it was merely dark; within five minutes it was hot and dark. Most people left; the staff brought out dimly flickering lanterns for the rest. The Young Man stayed, hoping that the power would be restored; meanwhile it was impossible to read. He looked up, and the Afghan smiled at him, and he smiled back, and the Afghan came to join him, laughing at the lanterns. —“Like in my father’s time,” he said.

He was a diplomat’s brother. (The diplomat, of course, was now an ex-diplomat.) He hated Pakistan. “Afghanistan once ruled Pakistan and India!” he cried, looking around him wildly. “They are nothing but a nation of money-lovers and slaves! They do not help us!” —He took the Young Man to an ice-cream parlor and bought him a Sprite, which the Young Man drank down thirstily. —“Last month this cost two rupees fifty paisa,” the Afghan said. “Now it is three rupees fifty. They make it hard to live.”

He took tranquilizers at night, he said. He was thirty, and his hair was going gray. If Afghanistan was free he would have returned there at once. “But also I like America,” he said placatingly, “America is a very good country.” He had been told that if he went there he could immediately obtain a girlfriend, an apartment, a Cadillac. He asked the Young Man to call up the consulate and arrange for him to leave tomorrow.

He wouldn’t believe that the Young Man couldn’t do it. “What is freedom, what is democracy, then?” he said.

He said that Pakistani girls were not allowed to meet him, because he was Afghan. He was very lonely. He asked the Young Man if he had a girlfriend. The Young Man told him that he would be getting married soon. —“Very good,” the Afghan said in his deep voice. “You are a superpower; you can do anything. Me, I am nothing.”

The Young Man could think of nothing to reply.

He implored the Young Man to get him a visa.

“What will happen to you if you cannot get a visa?” said the Young Man, returning his problem to him like a prize package.

“If I cannot, I …” The man’s voice trailed off uncertainly. “My money will be finished after a few months …”

“And then what will you do?”

He laughed. “I—I’m not sure.”

He cleared his throat. “But I, also, try a lot to find a job. But I cannot find any job.”

“Do you think,” pursued the Young Man, “that you’ll have to go live in one of the camps when your money is gone?”

“Yah, yah. Yah, I must go.”

“And what will happen then?”

“I don’t know. But United States is a very good country for me. It’s a very big country. If I found someone to send me a visa, I can go there.”

“Thank you,” the Young Man said, shutting off the tape recorder.

He never did anything for the Afghan.

It is much nicer to work for the Citizens’ Action League, as I subsequently did, than to set out to Help Afghanistan, for all that I had to do in the former case was to get a stoplight built at a dangerous intersection (which also never happened) or fill up ten pages of petitions a day with signatures; but what the Young Man wanted to do is less susceptible to being broken into necessary procedures which can be checked off (and it is certainly an American need to check things off).
^a
I suppose that he would have satisfied that urge had he been a happy part of some worthwhile organization which could require him to inspect so many camps, scrounge so many rounds of ammunition per time period. The only trouble is that committing oneself to any organization requires faith without knowledge, for as long as you are snooping around trying to learn which group, which side is the right one (before going to Afghanistan, as I said, he was willing to entertain the idea that the Soviet Union might be doing something progressive in Afghanistan), all organizations will be like closed clams. And why not?

They are as vulnerable as you. —The International Rescue Committee would not hire the Young Man or let him work as a volunteer because it was not his intention to go into relief work for its own sake, but to “help the Afghans” (and, not yet having seen Afghans or relief work, he could not be certain to what extent the two were compatible. If you think this prissy, think again). Understandably, the I.R.C. was not thrilled by his attitude—which perhaps they sensed from his résumé, for they canceled the interview—but then of course there were not any positions open even for unpaid work: Pakistan had strict limits on employed foreigners. He was able to visit the camps, in fact, only because Aid for Afghan Refugees (A.F.A.R.), a fine fund-raising organization in San Francisco, sent word that the Young Man belonged to their group. This was generous of them, it not being strictly true, since the Young Man had come to several A.F.A.R. meetings but neither he nor A.F.A.R. had ever suggested that he become a member. It is my guess that A.F.A.R., like I.R.C., felt slightly uneasy about him. A.F.A.R., like Joan Baez’s Humanitas International or Dr. Joseph Pace’s Direct Relief in San Jose, could not officially support violence or other forms of politics; and the Young Man was considering going into Afghanistan with the Mujahideen, whom it was important for A.F.A.R. to dissociate itself from. The members of A.F.A.R.—mainly Peace Corps volunteers who had served in Afghanistan—could not quite fathom the Young Man’s connection with their issue. Nor were they all that interested. The Young Man was callow, babyfaced, unproven. A.F.A.R.’
S
president felt sorry for him, though, and very kindly made the telephone call to I.R.C. That made all the difference. So in the end A.F.A.R. committed itself to
him
through a kind of faith without knowledge. —Or rather, A.F.A.R.’
S
president did. No one helped the Young Man out for any reason connected with what he thought and hoped he was: he was a megalomaniac. Even the Afghanistan National Liberation Front took him into the war zone as their guest only because they respected the General and he asked them to (and because he paid them). Only the desperate Afghans that he met in the streets had any illusions that the Young Man could accomplish anything. After all, what could he have done? —A book, maybe, or a slide show, or a radio show, or sale of his photographs
on the street, or mailing campaigns to libraries and churches, or fund-raising booths? —Later, he tried every single one of these.
^b

And, anyhow, when you’re walking among the largest refugee caseload in the world, and here they all are begging you to help them with tears in their eyes, what can you do? First you meet one of them in Peshawar (come to think of it, why not begin counting with the Pakistani beggars in Karachi, or the whores in San Francisco?—the General was always saying that do-gooders must put their own houses in order first), and then you meet a family of them, and then several thousand in a camp (thank God he didn’t have the money to go to the Northern Territory, where supposedly it was even worse, with homeless people as far as the eye could see along the margins of muddy mountain roads, selling their possessions at bargain prices to rug and curio importers—but he had only
heard
about it; I’m sure it wasn’t quite that bad); so you give something to the first person who touches you, and maybe the second if you have more to spare, and then your quota is expended (whenever I hear of a church’s sponsoring some starving child in an African village, I, being basically a cheerless fellow, think about the ten others beneath that same roof); and you say to the third person, “I’m sorry, but I can’t help you,” and he and his three sisters cannot understand why you, who have so much, cannot help them, unless somehow they offended you or did not treat you with sufficient hospitality or else maybe the fact that the sisters put on their best dresses to ask you was unredeeming because the dresses had become shabby, so that they were not worthy of you; but surely once you explain to them what they did wrong they can make amends so that their souls can this time
purely
beseech your soul and then you, being a god, will grant what is after all a
pro forma
gesture on your part?—and you (if you are decent) are cut inside with guilt and pain, so maybe you forget your quota and give them what they need, for it does mean so little to you compared to what it means for them,
^c
and they all embrace you and go away happy, but now here is case number four, whom you really are going to have to turn away, because the consulate has told you that one can sponsor only so many refugees; and he has in his eyes that same astonished look: “
You are going to let me fall!
”—which is not reproach because you are not reproachable, so how can he reproach you without reproaching the entire world? (and he couldn’t possibly be doing that). The Afghans were among the lucky, for their case was one of mere invasion, not genocide, and, as you had already learned, in helping people one has to draw the line somewhere. Of course helping them would be delicious, the line drawn considerately to avoid them, since their distress had been brought about by our international enemy; this was why working with them made more sense to an American of utilitarian bent than aiding Soviet war widows: other Americans would
surely
back you. —Cases number five and six, however, come at you simultaneously with ruthless aggression; if you gave something to five you’d have to give to six, too, so to hell with them. (The population of Peshawar had doubled since the refugees came.) Here’s case number fifty speaking: “But United States is a very good country for me; it’s a very big country; if I found someone to send me a visa …” —This fellow bears an interesting resemblance to case two, but differs from case seventeen in ways x, y and z; and now, safe on the High Ledge of Generalizations, the Young Man has become me, who is quite satisfied to raise enough money here in Oakland to maybe send the Mujahideen one machine gun,
^d
and then let’s call it quits and go on to some other project.

When the relatives of my friend H. arrived in California, they were kept in custody for several days, and then assigned to a foster family. The parents were treated as servants by the family. The children were made to eat out of dog bowls. When the parents protested, their five-year-old son was placed in an institution. They were not allowed to visit him. (I did not quite believe any of this when H. told me—how could such things happen? Had they entered the country illegally? Was H. exaggerating to get my sympathy? But why would he do that? He had more money than I.) They did not see the boy for six months. H. hired a lawyer and filed suit. Eventually they succeeded in getting custody. The boy had become very quiet. They did not know what had happened to him in the institution because he would not talk about it. Meanwhile, the parents awaited a judgment as to whether they would be allowed to stay in the United States. At length the Immigration official assigned to their case summoned them. He put leg irons on their feet. He made them shuffle after him down a long corridor. He told them that he was going to put them on a plane back to Afghanistan. When they landed, the Russians would execute them, he said. It is not hard to imagine how they felt as they walked toward that unseen airplane; they
had
to walk down the hall, just as my friends and acquaintances in Afghanistan must go over the mountains at night to the place where the Russian soldiers had cut their pipeline and stand there selling gasoline or trading it, so much gasoline in a dirty cup for so much hashish, the Russians too stupid to see that they are selling to their enemy one of the things needed to go on killing Russians, and that Russians who use hashish are easier to kill! (Yet I wonder why the Afghans even bothered to pay, why they didn’t just go farther down in the moonlight and kneel beneath the leak where the gas came dribbling out; or why they didn’t set it afire?—but of course it was their own gas; why should they blow up their own country’s gas?) —To H.’
S
relatives, of course, it did not seem evident that there was anything left to buy or sell or negotiate.
—Then the Immigration man smiled and set them free. It was only a joke. They could stay. When I met the family a few days later at a restaurant, they smiled and picked at their food. They spoke hardly any English; they had no money. I gave them two hundred dollars—all I had. They smiled and told me how happy they were to be here. They insisted on paying for the lunch. I think they really were happy. What had happened to them
here
was insignificant.