The Price

There is a mail from RAWA in our office inbox. RAWA is an association of Afghan women we had contacted recently to determine the possibility of acquiring video footage of the early years to use in a documentary we are currently producing on the history of the refugee crisis.

----

Dear friend, (it is an auto responder)

We have been flooded with thousands of emails in past few weeks and also are swamped with tens of journalist who want to interview us.

Though it is our wish to reply to all of the emails individually, unfortunately the flood of thousands of refugees from Afghanistan and other problems created due to the US strikes on Afghanistan keep us very busy, so we are sorry to say that it is impossible to reply to all of your kind emails one by one…

We are so touched and impressed by your kind and supportive emails. All of your emails are so meaningful to us and they give us strength and energy to fight the brutal fundamentalist terrorists with more determination.

IF you are interested to find out more about the horrible plight of Afghan women and the atrocities committed by fundamentalists in Afghanistan just pay a visit to our web site at http://www.rawa.org

----

I don’t want to read more; already I feel the first tingle of shame. What must it be like to scream into a vacuum for years and suddenly hear an echo? My boss comes over. He was the one who sent the mail, he should read the reply. I slide off the chair and glide from the room, my slinky gait aided by sudden absence of spine. You should have at least looked at the website (lately I’ve begun to think the old mans voice in my head is probably not God), you didn’t even want to hear what they had to say once you knew they weren’t serving your interests…

“Come and look at what we have so far,” my other boss drags me into edit suite 2 and plunks me into a chair.

The footage this boss gathered during his two weeks in the NWFP meeting with refugees and elders, Afghans and Pakistanis has been roughly slotted into the track of the voiceover we have collectively penned. My office is the sort of place where people get so involved in projects they resent any interference, but this one has been easily shared, shouldered together. And when someone leaves the room in disgust at a picture of a child crushed to death by falling debris no one mentions it when he returns. This sudden sensitivity is disconcerting.

Pashtun poet and intellectual Parisian Khan Khattak speaks of pain and responsibility. Khyber Agency spokesman Enayatullah Khan refers to the pivotal role the Afghan people (I assume he means men) have played in the construction of the rack their country is currently strung upon. God’s wrath has fallen upon them, he says, for never being able to live peacefully with each other. They agency elders agreed to let us document their land and way of life, my boss says, what do you say in two weeks we go back and do that?

Adventure! Excitement! Hard work! Purpose! Material for book!

Ok.

Two refugee women are telling us their stories. They had to be interviewed inside, away from prying eyes. The old one is a widow, they young one hasn’t seen or heard from her husband in months. He went to look for work, she tells the camera. The cracked mud walls of their two room home seem almost beautiful in her room. She has draped the bed and walls with swathes of bright colored fabric. But I don’t think she finds much comfort in that.

Actually…no. I don’t want to go. I don’t want to deconstruct the tribal myth and reveal the wisdom and goodness beneath, because I don’t think there is any.

It is my boss’s turn to shrug and say ok. He thinks I’m moody.

The associate creative rockets in and speaks of pictures of a pre war Afghanistan he has found on the net.

Do you know how beautiful it was? Have you any idea? Spittle flies from his mouth and into the face of the assistant director, who merely wipes it off and nods. We are all nodding. Afghanistan was beautiful before the Soviets invaded; we have read that in our history books.

What about Karachi, do you know how beautiful Karachi was before…I smack the inner voice upside the head. This is a time to learn, not regress.

The associate creative returns to his surfing, Taliban singles online has been added to list of sites recommended by independent researchers for accurate picture of afghan state of mind.

………

Inside edit suite 2, we argue briefly about where the interview with the old man with the skin disease should come in. He lurks in freeze frame as we talk, red black scales creeping up his legs and vanishing under his rolled up shalwar.

My boss is on the side of drama. He doesn’t think there is a surfeit of it. This is not a book an obsessive compulsive will pick up and latch onto till he finish’s it. We have to grip people….get them in the…

In the…? But he refuses to elaborate.

You decide. I remember that I trust him. He is not my enemy. And he doesn’t always have to be my friend. We must not succumb to the black and white choices thrust upon us.

Discussion over, and when I come outside a crowd is gathered around the TV.

………

CNN is broadcasting pictures of four wheel drives and horsemen riding side by side into the distance, presumably towards Afghanistan. Mazar-i-Sharif has been liberated, they tell us, and women are burning their chaddars in jubilation.

Stop. Rewind. What kind of Afghani woman burns her chaddar at the onset of winter?

Forward. The Northern Alliance has entered Kabul. Men are lining up in droves to have their beards trimmed. The last Afghan woman to read the news on radio pre Taliban is now the first Afghan woman to read the news on the radio Post Taliban. Her broadcast meets stiff competition from a boom box singing of deewana dil.

The Taliban are gone, the Taliban are gone, crowds line the streets to greet victorious soldiers of the Northern Alliance. What are they saying, what are they saying…a reporter on the fast track asks his interpreter. Things like my shop has been looted…my carpets are gone…they took my electric fan…the interpreter thinks. “Er…Victory”, he tells his charge, “they are saying victory.”

“Excellent, excellent”. The reporter gestures to his crew, tells them to shoot him against the approaching tank. Lucky for him, the gathered awam doesn’t speak English. “Victory to who exactly?”

Bollywood and Leonardo di Caprio the interpreter think.

“Cruel and barbaric aggressors from the dark ages?” he says. When will he be paid? Does the swing in the political situation mean the value of an interpreter will go down? Does this mean his brother in law will no longer be able to charge $3000 per journalist desperate to get near the front line and in sight of own column?

“This is beautiful”, the young reporter is suddenly overcome with emotion, “what must it feel like, to wake up one morning and find your shackles gone.”

The interpreter considers. Shackles are obviously a form of currency. “Very sad.”

“Sad?” The reporter frowns. He thought his guide was anti Taliban. Then he realizes how silly, how ignorant, how gauche he is being. “Yes, your people have had to pay a terrible price for this victory.”

Exactly. The interpreter appreciates the reporter’s maturity, the wisdom he has accumulated through years of sifting through important stories like Jack Straws pot smoking son and the labour playboy of the moment. His people have had to pay a terrible price for this victory. Back home in Peshawar, where they have a legitimate product dealership, strangers have already come around twice and asked the family when they’re going to go back to their own countries.

………