A Long Visit

Yesterday, I visited a refugee area where "squatters" reside. As we pulled up, I noticed mud huts no taller than 8 feet, arranged in a maze-like fashion. It gives you the feeling that these people can't get out. They are surrounded by flat, open ranges of dirt that lead to unforgiving mountains, shooting up like daggers to the sky. Cursed. It seems this place is cursed. People moved to the camp fifteen years ago when the Taliban took over Kabul. "They fled with only one pair of sandals". This is a butchered Afghan expression that describes those who've had to flee their homes due to invasion and war. As we pulled up in our little taxi, half-dressed children and veiled women scurried like cockroaches to their respective corners. Only a few stopped to stare, dumb-struck that anyone would be visiting this place. 

The sewage is open and runs straight past the doors. I'm sure that during the summers, this place has one distinct smell and I guarantee that it's fouler than anything we could imagine. As we walked into this woman's home, her kids greeted us with wide eyes. I shook both of her hands as I kissed her leathery cheeks, three times. Her hands are wrinkled and weathered from years of hard labor and dry air. Women here look much older than they really are. We sat under a thatched roof, made with sticks and mud. I sat down next to a brand new baby boy wrapped in a blanket with masking tape all the way around his torso and legs. He was lying on the floor like a package waiting on the front step. His eyes slowly blinked open and shut for a long time. He cried for milk and his mother lifted her shirt right in front of us and fed him for what seemed like hours.

As she spoke, the light from the only tiny window in the room hit her full lips, synchronizing with her words. I understood little of what she said, but I saw sacrifice in her countenance. She has been married for 20 years and just had another baby. I counted five children in the house of which four were girls. I'm sure that she and her husband are beside themselves with joy that they finally had a little boy; he because boys are more important than girls and she because maybe, just maybe she'll get a break. I get tired thinking about her life. It's been twenty years and she's still having babies. 

I look down at the dirty saucer in my hand and BANG. The whole house shakes violently and my chai rattles and spills onto my lap. Without a doubt that was a bomb and it was close. Very close. A helicopter hovers low over the house. The mother sends the children out to see what's happened. I'm thinking, "what's wrong with this picture?" They come back. No news. This is typical. Afghans never seem to know what's going on until a long time after. Perhaps they've grown tired of keeping up with it. I hold my breath. I mean, it felt so close.

It's a different experience with fear this time. It's not the kind where you feel like someone is behind you in a dark alley or the feeling you get when you look over the edge of something tall. This is a fear of chance. You can't control any of it. My mind goes blank. Finally, I text Aaron and find out that the army set off controlled detonations in the area. We just happened to be right next to it. Fear lets go of its grip on my body and goes back to its familiar place: the middle of my back. I guess it just hangs out there while I'm in Afghanistan. I've had that ache ever since I landed here.

As we inch away from the little camp in our taxi, I look back. I tell myself not to forget this place. I feel like I'm doing something bad by leaving though. It's like I'm turning my back on them, desperate and displaced as they are. I pray that God keeps shining the sun through the cracks in their windows. One can only wish for heaven in a place so far from anything nice. If you don't believe in something greater than what you can do, I wouldn't want to be caught dead in this place. Depression would smack you so hard in the face it would kill you. God, watch over these people. Give them peace. It won't come from human hands, I know that. They've been forsaken and tortured by man. It's too painful to trust in people anymore. I look for signs of hope, but all I find is exhaustion. I recall that the mother couldn't stop mentioning God. 

Even in the darkest corners of the earth, belief burns like a candle through the night, waiting for the sun to rise.