Kids of Kabul (6 page)

Cricket practice at Amullah’s school.

All of us, yes, we like to play, but we also want to do good things for Afghanistan, like be teachers, doctors, engineers — all of the best kind because there is so much to do.

I want to finish my schooling here, then go on to study agriculture. My father talks about his little farm, how much he loved it, and I would like to get that back for him. Probably not the same farm. That’s all gone in the war, but another piece of land, a better piece. Then I would take him and my mother out of Kabul to a place that is cleaner and quieter, and they can have some peace.

I think it is good to study agriculture because there are new ways of doing everything. All the time, people are coming up with new ideas. Some may not be good, but some may be very good. So I’ll learn all I can, then become a good farmer. Maybe even a rich one!

But first we need better security. Everyone is tired of being afraid. Here in the schoolyard everyone is playing hard and we’re having fun, but we can never really forget about the security. We see helicopters every day and military cars and trucks, and things still get blown up.

But if all that can stop, then Afghanistan will be great, because there are so many of us who want it to be great, it can’t be anything else.

Shabona, 14

Years of war and repression have left Afghanistan lacking many basic things that other countries take for granted. A country without a fully functioning education system, for instance, cannot hope to move forward. After the fall of the Taliban, Afghanistan needed everything — school buildings, books, chalk, pens and teachers. Trained teachers were in short supply. The Soviets, the warlords during the civil war and the Taliban all targeted teachers because teachers have such power to encourage independent thought — and independent thought is the enemy of despots.

Teacher training is a priority for many organizations working to help rebuild Afghanistan — especially training women, since many families don’t want their daughters to be taught by male teachers.

At a large wedding hall in Kabul, teachers from all over the area have gathered to learn new teaching methods from each other. Shabona and her classmates are taking part.

We are from a high school about an hour from the city of Kabul. We have come here today to sing for the teachers who are part of this teacher-training conference. We sang the Afghan national anthem this morning and we’ll sing something else this afternoon.

I like the national anthem. It lists all the tribes in Afghanistan, and it’s about how everyone should work together, even though they don’t.

Then we had to sit and listen to the teachers. Some of them talked too much, but some were interesting.

Some teachers sat up front in rows and pretended to be students while other teachers took turns pretending to teach math or science and other subjects in new ways to make it a better experience for the students. Some of their ideas would work better than others, in my opinion. I think it’s better to have a conversation with your students, not just talk all the time, because that can make us drift off, especially if we’re hungry.

Our school is a good school, but there is no safe place for us to run around outside. We are girls but we want to move, too! It would be nice to have some green space that is safe so we could run around without being stared at or yelled at.

I like most to study science. At my school we can study geometry, math, chemistry and biology. It’s all from books and sheets of paper and notes on the blackboard. We have two microscopes but they are very old and broken.

There are so many girls who want to come to our school. We have almost 2,500 girls! We have to go to school in shifts. I’m on the morning shift. I’d like to go to school all day but we have to make room for the others.

I was really young when the Taliban were in power, so I don’t remember a whole lot. Our teacher remembers. Whenever she thinks we are not studying hard enough, she tells us about that time. She had to leave school and was stuck at home most of the time. Her aunt had a little school for girls in her home. Not a school, just a study group, really, but it had to be very secret. Our teacher would put her schoolbooks in a basket, then cover them up with fruit so the Taliban wouldn’t find out that she was studying.

The Taliban were ignorant. They didn’t know that men and women are equals. It says so in the Qur’an.

The Taliban broke their own rules all the time, too. Our teacher’s brother was arrested by them three times. He had a little shop, a secret shop that sold satellite dishes for televisions. These were against the law, so the Taliban would arrest him. But then they would say, “You can go free if you give me a satellite dish.”

Our teacher says it was hard for her to go back to school after the Taliban because her brain wasn’t used to working. She says if studying hard becomes a habit with us, then we’ll be able to continue the habit if we are ever forced out of school again.

We joke around, but we are also serious students. We want to be doctors or journalists or members of parliament or teachers. We will have to get there through hard work because none of our families have money. Just in this group we have girls whose fathers died in the war, who have had family members injured or homes that were blown up.

I was living in an area south of Kabul. There was a lot of war there, even after the Taliban were kicked out of power. We had lots of rockets, lots of shooting, lots of explosions. It was very scary. I remember not wanting to leave my mother’s side. She would even just go into the next room and I’d scream because I was afraid I would never see her again.

We were about to go to Kabul where it was supposed to be safer. Really, we were ready to go, about to get into the car, when a rocket hit the car and it exploded. So we were stuck until we could find another car to take us.

For fun, my friends and I try on each other’s makeup and try out each other’s cellphones. We would really like a place to exercise and play sports, but we have nothing like that. We do it in a small way, inside, but it would be great to be able to just run and run and run.

Will there be another war? We hope not! Afghanistan has had too much war. If war has to happen, let it happen somewhere else. Do you have war in Canada? Maybe it is your turn, then.

Abdul, 14, and Noorina, 15

Scouting has a long tradition in Afghanistan, as it does in many countries. In 1978 it was banned by the Communists, who wanted to set up their own youth organizations. It stayed banned during the civil war and the Taliban regime. In 2003 it was started up again with the help of international donors, and now it is sponsored by the ministry of education. Afghan Scouts perform a variety of public services, from cleaning mosques to assisting firefighters.

Abdul and Noorina are very proud of what they are accomplishing in their Scout troop.

Abdul
— Everyone in this Scout troop has lost at least one parent. We have come from many different provinces — Laghman, Kandahar, Daikundi, Lowgar, Badakhshan — all over. We live in a special place called Maristoon on the edge of Kabul.

Maristoon means community in Dari. The people who live here all have some special struggles. They are orphans or they are disabled, and everyone is very poor. But even with all that, we can do many things.

My own father is dead. My mother is blind. I’m not sure how she became blind. I think it was in the war. The war killed my father. My mother won’t tell me much about it.

Noorina
— My father used to work at the Afghan Embassy in Moscow, under a different time. Our whole life has been back and forth from war to war. When things were dangerous for us in Afghanistan, we went to Quetta in Pakistan and lived in a refugee camp. Then when Karzai became president, my father thought Afghanistan would be safe so we went home. But it was not good. It was still dangerous. So we went back to Pakistan.

My father set up a little shop in Pakistan. Just a little place selling groceries and little things. One day he went out to the shop very early, without even having breakfast. So my mother and I decided to take him breakfast. We got some food together but when we got to the shop, there was no shop! A rocket had hit it. The whole thing blew up. But my father wasn’t killed in the explosion. Someone shot him. So maybe he got out of the shop when he heard the rocket coming and thought, “Oh, good, I’m safe.” Then someone came along and shot him. I don’t know if that’s how it happened or not. I just imagine it like that.

It wasn’t safe for us in Pakistan. So we came back to Afghanistan. I hope it will be safe this time.

Abdul
— We all have stories like that. Nazifa’s father was kidnapped by the Taliban and then killed three days later. Naramullah’s father was shot. Aziz lost both of his parents in the war. He lived with his uncle, a doctor who treated people in the refugee camps around Kandahar. His uncle died of a heart attack. Lots of stories. It’s normal for us.

We belong to Scouts because it is a way to improve ourselves and improve our community. It is part of the Scout promise:

On my honor I promise to Allah that I will do my best

To do my duty to Allah, and my country Afghanistan

To help other people at all times

And to obey the Scout law.

We learn a lot in Scouts. Seeking knowledge is our whole mission. We learn how to respect elders, how to keep the environment clean, how to prevent fires. We live in a green area — well, it will be green when the spring comes. We learn how to take care of trees and land. Afghanistan has been through a lot. A lot of the country has been destroyed, but we can make it beautiful again.

I have both good and bad memories of the Taliban. Mostly they were very bad, but sometimes they would bring food to families who needed it. They helped my family in this way, so this is a good memory.

We see a lot of foreign troops. Scouting is a normal thing in many parts of the world. It was started by a British man in 1907. When the foreign troops hear about our Scout troop they want to come and visit us. Just last week some foreign soldiers came and took us on a hike into the hills behind Maristoon. That was a good day although not for our Scout leader. She had a hard time keeping up!

There are boys and girls together in this Scout troop. Men and women will have to work together to rebuild the country, so we learn here to be leaders. Good leaders. Leaders that people will trust. Afghanistan needs that.

Fareeba, 12