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September 28 Changes to my phonebookOne in and one out
There is something about our phonebook entries - they tell about who we are - a socialite or more of a loner, up or down the social strata, and here they also reveal whether we have Afghan friends or not.
And they record who is coming and who is going - in any sense of the word.
Recently I had two prominent changes to my phonebook.
The first one was an exit. It was my colleague Abid Akmal who was brutally murdered last months after he had mysteriously disappeared two months prior. It was a personal feud as it turned out, nothing Taliban-related. But someone in my closer circle wound up dead. And I didn't really realise it until I deleted his number from my phone. Some people you delete because they leave the country and you will never hear from them again anyway - but never had I deleted someone's phone number because he had died.
The other change to my phone book was an addition: the personal phone number of the First Vice President of Afghanistan. He had rang me - yes he had - one evening last week to invite me for dinner to his house. The purpose was to discuss land and fundraising issues surrounding the Ahmad Shah Massoud Library & Culture Centre. I was totally perplexed to receive his call and couldn't believe it until I was actually sitting down for dinner with him a few days later.
It was only three years ago that I learned about Ahmad Shah Massoud, and now due to circumstances I was having dinner with his brother? All this pain and longing had brought me to this stage - this I firmly believe. |
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