Being Home
Dear Everyone,
I’m walking up the street, suddenly noticing how familiar it has become. It’s my street now, maybe even my home…
There is the old man I “Salaam” everyday and his enterprising grandchildren with their wares spread out for sale on a blanket. I’ve never seen them sell anything, but they are there everyday, with their grandfather sitting benignly in the background. And further up there are the cows and the chickens in their little pen, lying and pecking and rooting in the dirt and the filthy spot where the latrine empties. Even the smell is familiar. It’s almost comfortable. The dirty water runs with the garbage littered in the ditches, and the children splash around in it, washing, drinking. The boys are playing football in the street, running in cheap flip-flops from Pakistan, kicking a tennis ball that not even the dog would play with at home. Tiny children of uncertain gender totter uncertainly on their new feet, wearing the scabs of sand fly bites next to the huge smiles on their faces. Young men stand around making jokes and looking awkward in the way teenagers everywhere look awkward while they’re trying not to. They see me coming and dare each other to yell something rude. Old men stop their conversations and greet me with the grace of sages, bowing their heads, hands covering their hearts. A donkey trots by, loaded up with a pile of wood, driven by a twelve year old with a stick and the voice of circus roustabout. Women peek and titter in doorways. I catch sight of their faces briefly before their burqas fall. They’re getting bolder. Some see me and don’t even attempt to cover anymore.
I know where I’m going, and where I’m coming from. I live here. I know that up ahead I will pass the orphanage with the cherry tree out front and the crowd of children ready to yell at me and ask for pens. Beyond that is the Buzkashi field with the rock rising out of one end to tower over the Kookcha River like a scene from the Old Testament. There will be volleyball games on the field and a garbage dump and men with donkeys and flocks of blue and white women in the distance. I know that up on the Buzkashi Rock there are the ruins of an old house, and concrete stairs arching through empty space from one splendid patio to another, each with a gorgeous view of the river. The Russians destroyed the house but they couldn’t destroy the enchantment. I know that across the field in one direction is the GP office where my friends will invite me for tea and conversation if I want it, and in the other direction is the UN compound, where I can buy a ticket for a plane ride to any major destination in the country, as long as it doesn’t rain. If I go past the UN, and follow the river I will come to Jo and Tim’s house, and if I knock on the door, Jo will ask in her precise British accent if I want to go for a walk along the water and up through the fields to the tree-lined canal, from which you can see all the hills of Faizabad and the still-white mountains behind them. We will return at sunset as Tim gets home from work and they will invite me for dinner, and we will play cards, or read poems, or talk about the problems of Afghanistan and wonder what on earth to do.
And if I were to find an inner tube and float down the Kookcha like the adventurous young do on sunny Fridays, I would pass the airport, and the sheep grazing fields and arrive at the shady trees under which we had a picnic last week surrounded by curious giggling children. I would find the current that we leapt into willy-nilly, which swept us in breath-taking cold swiftness a hundred yards downriver before we fought heroically to gain the bank, laughed out loud, and ran back to do it again like children on a slide in the park.
This is Faizabad, the Place of God’s Grace, the gateway to the remoteness of the Wakhan, where the best house in the best village is a crumbling wreck, where the only food is a poisonous wheat that cramps the joints and leaves one with the choice between crippling and starvation, where 200 in a thousand women die in childbirth and there is a celebration for children only when they’ve managed to stay alive a whole year, and where a family will invite you in and give you the last of their food without a whisper of a complaint because you are a guest. This is Faizabad, where they will smile at you and tell you that there are no poppies here when a five minute walk will take you to places where there is a patch in every yard and they are grown by the millions beside the road in lovely shades of pink and white, providing the aching world with 75% of its opium.
And this is Faizabad, here on my street, as a little girl with her head shaved for lice reaches up for my hand and trusts me to hold hers while we walk along, and another child takes my other hand with a shy smile, and I keep expecting them to let go but they don’t. we walk on, the three of us, like we’ve entered a small strip of heaven, a stretch of time and space where there are no guns or sand-fly bites, no crumbling walls or drug-lords, where beautiful flowers are not harvested for poison, where the water is clean, and where the lion lies down with the lamb. I walk lightly, holding my breath. This is a delicate magic. As long as they keep holding my hands there is no time, no death, no sorrow; as long as they keep walking with me the world is still innocent and has yet to fall. My whole being is contained in the feeling of their tiny hands resting in mine, in their tottering steps beside me. I forget everything else. Then, like unicorns toss their manes and disappear, I feel their hands slide out of mine and they are gone. I might have dreamt them.
One day soon I will leave Faizabad. I will wake up one morning not too long from now and be… home. But the meaning of that word is changed now. A poet said that God has put eternity in the hearts of men, so that we live out our time here longing for home. Maybe in a place like Faizabad we long for it even more, because the beauty and the heartache of the world meet so close. But even here, maybe especially here, the world, dark as it is, is still dappled with light. Heaven alights on us like a dove, the child slips her hand in ours, and for that moment we are home. A singer sings to God: I am home anywhere if you are where I am, and Jesus says that unless you become like one of these little ones you will never see the kingdom of heaven. I take these things as signs. They are the treasures of an afternoon in Faizabad, held out to me by children in a timeless minute and afterwards lodged deep in my longing. I will hold them there as long as I can. They are the clues to the way home.
Write to me more. It gets lonely in the last weeks. I’ll see you soon.
rjs
I’m walking up the street, suddenly noticing how familiar it has become. It’s my street now, maybe even my home…
There is the old man I “Salaam” everyday and his enterprising grandchildren with their wares spread out for sale on a blanket. I’ve never seen them sell anything, but they are there everyday, with their grandfather sitting benignly in the background. And further up there are the cows and the chickens in their little pen, lying and pecking and rooting in the dirt and the filthy spot where the latrine empties. Even the smell is familiar. It’s almost comfortable. The dirty water runs with the garbage littered in the ditches, and the children splash around in it, washing, drinking. The boys are playing football in the street, running in cheap flip-flops from Pakistan, kicking a tennis ball that not even the dog would play with at home. Tiny children of uncertain gender totter uncertainly on their new feet, wearing the scabs of sand fly bites next to the huge smiles on their faces. Young men stand around making jokes and looking awkward in the way teenagers everywhere look awkward while they’re trying not to. They see me coming and dare each other to yell something rude. Old men stop their conversations and greet me with the grace of sages, bowing their heads, hands covering their hearts. A donkey trots by, loaded up with a pile of wood, driven by a twelve year old with a stick and the voice of circus roustabout. Women peek and titter in doorways. I catch sight of their faces briefly before their burqas fall. They’re getting bolder. Some see me and don’t even attempt to cover anymore.
I know where I’m going, and where I’m coming from. I live here. I know that up ahead I will pass the orphanage with the cherry tree out front and the crowd of children ready to yell at me and ask for pens. Beyond that is the Buzkashi field with the rock rising out of one end to tower over the Kookcha River like a scene from the Old Testament. There will be volleyball games on the field and a garbage dump and men with donkeys and flocks of blue and white women in the distance. I know that up on the Buzkashi Rock there are the ruins of an old house, and concrete stairs arching through empty space from one splendid patio to another, each with a gorgeous view of the river. The Russians destroyed the house but they couldn’t destroy the enchantment. I know that across the field in one direction is the GP office where my friends will invite me for tea and conversation if I want it, and in the other direction is the UN compound, where I can buy a ticket for a plane ride to any major destination in the country, as long as it doesn’t rain. If I go past the UN, and follow the river I will come to Jo and Tim’s house, and if I knock on the door, Jo will ask in her precise British accent if I want to go for a walk along the water and up through the fields to the tree-lined canal, from which you can see all the hills of Faizabad and the still-white mountains behind them. We will return at sunset as Tim gets home from work and they will invite me for dinner, and we will play cards, or read poems, or talk about the problems of Afghanistan and wonder what on earth to do.
And if I were to find an inner tube and float down the Kookcha like the adventurous young do on sunny Fridays, I would pass the airport, and the sheep grazing fields and arrive at the shady trees under which we had a picnic last week surrounded by curious giggling children. I would find the current that we leapt into willy-nilly, which swept us in breath-taking cold swiftness a hundred yards downriver before we fought heroically to gain the bank, laughed out loud, and ran back to do it again like children on a slide in the park.
This is Faizabad, the Place of God’s Grace, the gateway to the remoteness of the Wakhan, where the best house in the best village is a crumbling wreck, where the only food is a poisonous wheat that cramps the joints and leaves one with the choice between crippling and starvation, where 200 in a thousand women die in childbirth and there is a celebration for children only when they’ve managed to stay alive a whole year, and where a family will invite you in and give you the last of their food without a whisper of a complaint because you are a guest. This is Faizabad, where they will smile at you and tell you that there are no poppies here when a five minute walk will take you to places where there is a patch in every yard and they are grown by the millions beside the road in lovely shades of pink and white, providing the aching world with 75% of its opium.
And this is Faizabad, here on my street, as a little girl with her head shaved for lice reaches up for my hand and trusts me to hold hers while we walk along, and another child takes my other hand with a shy smile, and I keep expecting them to let go but they don’t. we walk on, the three of us, like we’ve entered a small strip of heaven, a stretch of time and space where there are no guns or sand-fly bites, no crumbling walls or drug-lords, where beautiful flowers are not harvested for poison, where the water is clean, and where the lion lies down with the lamb. I walk lightly, holding my breath. This is a delicate magic. As long as they keep holding my hands there is no time, no death, no sorrow; as long as they keep walking with me the world is still innocent and has yet to fall. My whole being is contained in the feeling of their tiny hands resting in mine, in their tottering steps beside me. I forget everything else. Then, like unicorns toss their manes and disappear, I feel their hands slide out of mine and they are gone. I might have dreamt them.
One day soon I will leave Faizabad. I will wake up one morning not too long from now and be… home. But the meaning of that word is changed now. A poet said that God has put eternity in the hearts of men, so that we live out our time here longing for home. Maybe in a place like Faizabad we long for it even more, because the beauty and the heartache of the world meet so close. But even here, maybe especially here, the world, dark as it is, is still dappled with light. Heaven alights on us like a dove, the child slips her hand in ours, and for that moment we are home. A singer sings to God: I am home anywhere if you are where I am, and Jesus says that unless you become like one of these little ones you will never see the kingdom of heaven. I take these things as signs. They are the treasures of an afternoon in Faizabad, held out to me by children in a timeless minute and afterwards lodged deep in my longing. I will hold them there as long as I can. They are the clues to the way home.
Write to me more. It gets lonely in the last weeks. I’ll see you soon.
rjs
posted by rjs | 4:17 PM
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