A Refugee's Adventure

February 19 - A few days ago....

My nose was cold. I was cocooned in my bed, two layers of thermals over my entire body, a touque and a luke warm hot water bottle, which I had had to get up in the middle of the night to refresh as I was feeling like a cocooned popsicle. My nose was the only part peeking out for obvious reasons, oxygen. I was starting to squirm with needing to relieve myself though otherwise I would have stayed tucked in. It was Saturday morning; I was in no rush to get the day going.

As soon as I left my room I was thankful for the little heat I did have. It was like getting out of a tent; you realize that your little fridge is better than the freezer outside. Oh how I wish they had a squat toilet; the toilet seat on the western style one is Freezing!

While Pete and I were hopping from foot to foot in the kitchen waiting for the water to boil for tea we watched as the thermometer on my watch descended to a mere 6 degrees. The 10 degrees in my room actually felt warm when you walked through the door, at least for the first few moments; a good example of perspective, which I tend to get a good dose of on these trips.

When Pete announced that he was going to have a shower, I shuddered at the thought. It’s one thing to sit on a cold toilet seat, another to stand in your birthday suit under cold water in 6 degrees. Even when, to my surprise, he said there was hot water, I still wasn’t tempted. The shower in Dubai was still a close enough memory to convince me to keep my clothes on.

Azeem, the Wet Centre manager at DACAAR picked us up around 10 in his car, which he pointed out was safer as it was a local non-descript blue car, Toyota Camry style; not the 4x4 Toyota Prado types that are like neon signs with bulls-eye targets. He drove us through the main part of town and then up to a park where we got out and walked.

The views from the park were not as they could have been due to the smog in the air, but enough to give some perspective of the surrounding area. Perched on the foothills around the city the houses were stacked high. They were fairly large looking flat roofed, rectangular and with plenty of windows. Some were plastered cream, blue or red, but most were left exposing the earthen or concrete structure, blending them into the hillside.

One of the first things I noticed leaving the airport were the grand long needle pine trees that I now see are scattered throughout the city particularly in the park areas. During the world wars in Europe I remember reading that the trees of cities like Paris were either victims of bombs or cut down for fuel leaving entire parks decimated, so I was surprised to see so many of them still standing here in Kabul.

On the walk back to the car, Azeem told us a bit about his story.

When he was an engineering student at the university of Kabul in the 70s he used to frequent the very park we were walking through with his friends, to sit, drink tea, smoke hookah and chat. When the Russians invaded in 1978, I was 1 year old, he was in his third year of study. Even with the invasion, he did manage to finish his studies, but by that time they wouldn’t hand out the diploma certificates. He explained that their fear was that if you received your certificate then you would be more likely to leave the country. Which is what ended up happening anyways.

Once he was finished he went back to his hometown in the Eastern mountains of Afghanistan living with his wife and children. As a man there was always the fear of being pulled into the war against the Russians and he was not willing to join rank. So, he started traveling, often 4 days by foot through the mountains, over the border to Peshawar, Pakistan to work. Here he was working for NGOs (non-government organizations) on design teams and often managing the construction of schools, hospitals and a mosque. In the summers, he would take a great risk to return to his family and tend to his crops, which he explained that in doing so helped him to have some of the best crops in the village as there were few men who did so.

It was a grueling trek he explained where they were carrying very little with them: a sleeping bag and two pairs of shoes so that when your feet were tired of one pair you could put the other pair on. During one of these treks in the winter, there was a large group of them travelling together, over 100 people; some travelling for work, others transporting firearms, some on horses, others on foot. Azeem, his two brothers, a few cousins and neighbours were near the back of the group and they decided to stop near a small stream to pray. The rest of the group kept moving along the valley.

Suddenly fires were being shot from over head at the front of the group and the back; Russians in white suits camouflaged in the snow.

Azeem and his group jumped up from their prayers and started running. Shots were hitting the rocks on his left and on his right. There was nowhere to hide. All but two of them managed to make it to a small gorge and jumped in. They stayed there through the night. The next morning more that 40 people had been killed and 50 taken hostage.

As he was telling the story there was a sparkle in his eye. Did they keep going, I asked? Oh no, we were not far from home, so we returned. It was adventurous times, he said with a chuckle.

By 1988, after years of leaving his family, trekking over the mountains to work in Pakistan, he was finally able to procure a truck to safely transport his family to Peshawar. For 17 years, they lived there for as refugees. During this time was when he started working for DACAAR – Danish Committee for Aid to Afghan Refugees as a senior surveying engineer of the refuge camp; mapping the camp entry and exit points, the alley ways and general layout.

Telling the story years later in the company of someone like me having never been shot at before it is a fantastic story that sounds crazy, scary and surreal. I would imagine if he was telling that story with a group of his friends that have lived through war, shootings, guns, battles, it is another one of those adventures that they survived.

Like technology, life is a collection of perspectives that develop and transform moment by moment– at a pace that I can barely keep up with.

Azeem and I at a closed down restaurant in the park.