October, 2007; St. Thomas, USVI

Dear Friends,

Six years ago as I stood on the Brooklyn Heights Promenade a few blocks away from my apartment and watched the world as I had always perceived it go up in two columns of smoke, and stared in disbelief at the shower of tattered office memos that floated toward my neighborhood on a fair, south-easterly breeze, I understood that I was standing on a fault line. But I didn’t know why. Unlike Sarah, I did not have a graduate degree in Islamic history. I do not speak Arabic. I was not an international journalist. I had never heard of Al Qaeda or the Taliban, and I could count on my fingers the number of times I had so much as glanced at the international pages of any newspaper. I almost never traveled. Truth be told, I was an average American housewife whose primary concerns included getting my daughter into the best possible Kindergarten and tracking down great balsamic vinegar for less than $25 a bottle. So when the carousel came to an abrupt halt, I fell off hard. And kept falling until I was able to get my head around the nature of this catastrophe.

Even so, I couldn’t have predicted that I’d wake up on September 11, 2007 in Kandahar, Afghanistan, a loaded Kalashnikov at my side. The sky is clear blue – as blue as it was in New York City six years ago – only the air is drier. The persistent background noise is the sound of hammers cracking almond shells. The smell of anise from a plant in the garden wafts through the window. The family next door makes all the usual family sounds: I can hear the scraping of pots, the squealing of children, scolding parents. They’re speaking Dari, which is as unfamiliar to me as Korean, but the tones are so familiar I know just what they’re saying: “Get down from there! Don’t tease your sister! Put away that glass before you break it!” Somebody is pulling a broom across the cement courtyard. It’s already hot but the ceiling fan is not turning, which means no electricity. Not having electricity, I remember from my April visit, is not as surprising as actually having electricity. Anyway, the absence of turning fan blades intensifies the inherent peacefulness of this place. I glance back over at the AK and smile: This has to be the most peaceful dangerous place on earth.

My body has yet to adapt to the eight and a half hour time difference, but it’s very clearly morning so I haul myself off the double floor mats and head outside, hoping to make a diagonal bee-line for the bathroom. It’s no use. Sarah’s dogs, Jessie and Gringich, ambush me from opposite ends of the compound as I approach the 20 year-old red pickup truck. They spring onto their hind legs to greet me with paws and teeth, not seeming to recognize that I am a member of a different species. “Get down!” I yell at them. At which point two of the female cooperative members emerge from their shaded outdoor workspace. “Sahar bekhayr!”(Good morning) I call to them, using up one of the four Pashtu words I can actually remember. They seem jovial as they call back: Sahar bekhayr!

In the bathroom I make an effort to put myself together but it isn’t easy. My hair, which benefits greatly from the persistent humidity of the Virgin Islands, is completely flat, my nostrils are plugged with dust, and my teeth are already staining from the multiple cups of tea I have been consuming daily. Never mind. I splash my head and face with cool water, then go join the guys for morning Chai. Thankfully, Ramadan has not yet started so I eat bread with almond butter and Sarah’s sublime pomegranate jam between the broad gestures I make with my hands and face in an ongoing effort to communicate across the most absurd language barrier. Even so, I don’t feel remotely uncomfortable around these men and women who are so warm and welcoming they’ve already made me feel like a sister. Besides, Nurallah and Abd al-Ahad have been studying English, which causes them to view my presence as an opportunity. If I worried (among many other things) about long, awkward silences as I prepared to leave beautiful, comfortable St. Thomas, I needn’t have. Every moment that is not dedicated to making soap is taken up with a heroic determination to talk.

On this particular morning I feel similarly determined. It is 9/11 and here I am in Kandahar, Afghanistan of all places, and so I have questions. I want to know what it was like six years ago when Kandahar was making its debut on the world’s stage in a role characterized by burqas and black turbans – pure evil. Everybody tells me the same thing: It was shocking. Exciting. They knew it wouldn’t be long before the Americans started to bomb their city, yet they felt hopeful. Finally they were going to be liberated from the horrific Taliban. They were going to be able to play music, use computers, fly kites and get some secular education. The bombs, they figured, were an acceptable price to pay for the chance to recover their futures. Maybe, just maybe, this was going to be a last gasp of the violence and oppression that had dominated their country for the past 25 years.

It wasn’t. It was supposed to be, but it wasn’t, which is why everybody I know including my own mother told me I was crazy to go to Afghanistan last spring, and again this fall. Not only crazy: Reckless, irresponsible and maybe even a little stupid. After all, I have a husband and a child who are both incredibly dear to me. I live in a beautiful place. I have interests and aspirations. Suffice it to say, it would be a major drag if I got whacked. But I told them not to worry. I told them that, statistically, my chances of encountering trouble on this journey were slim, even by comparison with the 30 years I had spent living in New York City. And I told them I was not afraid. This part, of course, was a bald lie that I confessed to Sarah in the days leading up to my departure because these days I DO read the international pages of MANY newspapers, and so I know that Kandahar City is now basically encircled by Taliban infested areas. “I’ve got a pretty bad case of the jitters,” I wrote to her via email. To which she responded immediately: “Don’t worry. I feel that way every time I’m packing up to go, and it sucks. But it’s going to be fine. YOU’RE going to be fine. Don’t worry.”

I decided to believe her. After all, she had been living on the ground in Kandahar for the better part of six years, and she was still with us. Her Afghan friends and colleagues had clung to the planet as well. Besides, I had made a commitment to Arghand – a commitment that was born not from anything as flimsy as altruism, but rather from an organic sense of internal … rightness. Here was a chance to move in a direction I believed in, alongside a person I believed in, and to broaden my world view in the process. Signing petitions and reading op-eds just wasn’t cutting it for me; I wanted to help Sarah scour this nest of corruption, greed and extreme fundamentalism one bar of soap at a time.

So I got on the first of three planes and two days later I’m there. Nurallah picks me up at the airport and together we drive back into town. At first glance the place looks good to me, better than I remember it from the spring because this time I know better than to be shocked by the developing-worldliness of things like unpaved streets, animal carcasses hanging from doorways in the midday sun, crumbling mud brick buildings and open sewers. What’s more, the storied fruit, which was nowhere to be found last spring, is here in abundance. The bazaar is a cornucopia of grapes, watermelons, pomegranates, and a large melon I have never seen before with a mottled yellow and green skin called khatakai Managing somehow to negotiate a path through the frenetic traffic of taxis, rickshaws, motorcycles and donkey-drawn carts, Nurallah drives by the stadium where the Taliban used to hold public executions and I’m surprised to see a carnival replete with amusement park rides in nearby field. The sky is peppered with kites. Boys are playing soccer. I even notice several women walking around in black scarves, which believe it or not is an upgrade from the traditional burqa. I say to Nurallah: “The place looks good!” At which point he flashes that devastating Hollywood grin of his: “Yeah, good!” he says. “Very, very nice!”

Back at Arghand things appear to be going smoothly as well. Huge sacks of almonds from Uruzgon Province, paid for with grant money from the Australian Foreign Ministry, have just been delivered and now dominate the basement. The women crack shells while Abd al-Ahad uses the electric seed oil press to make sweet almond oil, which releases a warm, nutty aroma. Meanwhile, Fayzullah operates the huge still in the courtyard to make essential oil of “yellow” artemesia. This smell is equally intense but in a less familiar, more complex way. After a flurry of Salaams, hugs, kisses and handshakes, the guys hoist my heavy bags onto their shoulders and carry them into Sarah’s room so I can start the business of settling in. Suddenly this seems like the driest, dustiest place on earth and a pang of longing for my husband and daughter bubbles up unannounced. I take a deep breath followed by one long look around the room. Okay. I have everything I need to make myself comfortable here. That’s when I realize with some degree of astonishment that my apprehension has evaporated.

It doesn’t take long to establish a routine: I wake up, eat breakfast with the guys and get to work. Some of it is on the computer – my usual book keeping, communicating with retailers and soap dispatchers, ordering supplies, and whatever other administrative tasks need attending to. But now that I’m “on site” I can throw myself into the more tactile aspects of the process, which delights me. I get the women to give me a refresher course on soap molding and help out a little with the first polish. I crack some nuts. The ladies ply me with tea, laugh at my attempts to pronounce Pashtu words, and ask me over and over why I have only ONE daughter, and why have I neglected to bring her with me to Kandahar? “Maktab” I grunt, which is the Pashtu word for school, and they sigh with collective resignation. These women all have daughters, older than Isabelle, which means that most wouldn’t have been allowed to attend school under the Taliban. In my head I begin to compose a speech that I will lay on my spoiled (by comparison) 11 year-old the next time she whines about my inability to finance her summer camp aspirations.

I pack boxes with the guys, get them to show me how to use the shrink-wrap machine for pebbles, and when I request instruction on how to do the second and final polish they’re overjoyed. This is their least favorite part of the process because it is so laborious and repetitive – downright Sisyphean. Just when you’re finishing a batch and starting to feel that rush of accomplishment, you can’t prevent your mind from flashing onto the racks of cured soap in the basement. Final polish is a thankless, uncomfortable job that has no end, so they give me the cement ledge under the window, which believe it or not is the best seat in the house, and happily take whatever help they can get.

I don’t like soap polishing any more than they do, but it is from this ledge that these men become real and, finally, incredibly dear to me. They laugh constantly throughout the day, amusing themselves mostly at the expense of each other, or with dirty jokes, and they sing. They discuss politics. They talk about inflation and lament their money problems. Like men everywhere, they tend to be less open about matters of house and home. Abd al-Ahad and his wife are soon expecting their first child, yet Nurallah and Fayzullah had no idea until I blurted it out over tea, horribly embarrassing poor Abd al-Ahad. Despite the camaraderie, however, they couldn’t be less alike. Fayzullah, the oldest and quietest of the three, is a former mujihadeen soldier with a touch of the perfectionist in him. He approaches his work with evident diligence, and is less likely than the others to let it slide when he catches me in the act of employing improper techniques. Fayzullah can’t read or write because he was too busy fighting to attend school, but he’s knowledgeable about agriculture, which he cultivates in his Arghandab village. One morning he brings me white pomegranates (spin anar) from his garden, which I have never seen before, and the sweetness and beauty of this fruit brings me to the verge of tears.

Nurallah is a horse of a different color, and the best way I can think to describe him is as a person of incredible largeness. Not physically, he’s actually rather slim, but spiritually … he is one of those people without a fixed character, so knowing him is a thing that seems to happen in real time. Yet he does possess certain intractable qualities: He is proud and loyal and honest and deeply responsible. He knows his own mind to the point where expression transcends language. If he wants to communicate something to me and can’t find the English words, he’ll use his face, his hands, his body … he’ll make animal sounds. I tell him he’s a natural thespian, he should go to Bollywood, and he beams while at the same time insisting that acting is not real work. Nurallah is a natural striver, but he is also a lover, and because these instincts occasionally exist in opposition with each other, he is no stranger to conflict. Yet he is an optimist; he can’t help it. The heart of Afghansitan beats within the marrow of his bones, even though he is more desperate than any of the others to venture beyond its borders. He believes that the country is worth saving and he believes it CAN be saved, but he knows that true salvation will only come from within. More that any of his other characteristics, I think, this makes Nurallah invaluable to Arghand.

Abd al-Ahad is invaluable, too, but in a more … enigmatic way. Unlike Nurallah, he is not a straight-shooter who wears his heart on his sleeve, or lives to exude and absorb love. On the contrary, his tendency is to operate on the world in a more sideways fashion. But the better I get to know him (and believe me, you get to know a person fast when you’re polishing soap beside him for several hours a day) the more dazzled I become by his numerous gifts. In addition to being a kind of self-taught engineer who, like my own husband, can fix just about anything from the solar generator to the seed oil press to plumbing or electronics, he possesses a knack for English which he seems to pick up not through the formal classes Nurallah attends at 6:30 every morning, but rather through osmosis. Abd al-Ahad is funny – an excellent physical comedian with an agile mind and a contagious laugh – but where he really shines, at least for me, is in his grasp of history and geo-politics. Indeed, it was Abd al-Ahad who finally explained the ethnic, religious and tribal breakdown of Afghanistan for me in a way I could understand, and it was Abd al-Ahad who demystified the ethnic and cultural divisions between north and south, and it was Abd al-Ahad who got me to realize just how brittle Afghanistan is on account of said divisions particularly when Pakistan is playing that rift between a conservative Pashtun south and more diversified north in its ongoing effort to destabilize the country.

But here’s the thing about Abd al-Ahad: For all of his talents there is a flakiness about him, a kind of other-worldliness, which turns out to be as instructive as the history lessons. One day Abd al-Ahad didn’t come to work and he didn’t call, so Nurallah went to his house and found him lying around at home, complaining of a headache. Nurallah asked him why he didn’t call and Abd al-Ahad said that his phone was dead. When Nurallah asked him why he didn’t charge his phone, or borrow one from a neighbor, he just shrugged and muttered something about Nurallah not being his boss. Another time when Abd al-Ahad was on night duty he slipped out after dinner and disappeared into the bazaar. I didn’t see him until the next morning. When I asked him where he had gone he replied over that endearing laugh of his that he was just outside talking with some friends. I laughed, too, before I told him: “I’m really not comfortable being alone here at night.”

As the days pass and the varnish wears off (aided by the unfortunate collision of a deteriorating political landscape and the start of Ramadan) I begin to feel as if the cooperative, along with Kandahar in general, is shedding its clothes. This quality I’ve picked up in Abd al-Ahad and dubbed “flakiness” for lack of a better word is actually a thing I’m starting to recognize in many of the people here. Thus I wonder if perhaps it is not an inherent characteristic but rather a behavior with a cause. You grow so accustomed to living in a place that after a while you can no longer really see it. It wasn’t until I came to Afghanistan that I saw, in my mind’s eye, that purposeful forward momentum with which so many Americans walk. Afghans move in a different way. To me they seem less rooted to the earth, almost as if they are hovering, not entirely engaged in their own lives. Likewise, there is a collective disregard for personal safety that would make any American mother cringe. One afternoon when Nurallah and I were driving through the bazaar on our way back from the ISAF base I saw a man with four small children piled atop a moving motorcycle – not a helmet or safety buckle anywhere in sight. It wasn’t until a later conversation I had with Abd al-Ahad, however, that the picture came into focus. He was telling me his story: At 31, he has never experienced life in a stable environment. First it was the Soviet occupation, then the civil war, then the Taliban, and finally the Americans. His mother died when he was six. His father died when he was twelve. Two of his brothers were mowed down in Mujihadeen cross-fire. And his story is far from unique. With a background like this, how likely is anyone to think in terms of a bright future, or really any future at all?

Ramadan, which catches me totally by surprise (I had mistakenly assumed it wouldn’t happen until much later in the fall) doesn’t help. Everyone is hungry and thirsty, and thus even closer to a physical and psychological edge than they otherwise would be. They assure me it is no problem, they are strong Muslims, they can take it, but it just isn’t so. They’re human beings, for God’s sake, and the human body needs fuel several times throughout the day in order to function properly. The men are droopy by noon, the women are irritable, and I find it sad that there will be no more communal lunches. They all ask me the obvious question: Will I be participating in the fast? I consider this for a long time. My answer ends up being a resounding “no.” For one thing, my pampered American body does not take kindly to dehydration. But that’s not really it. At the end of the day, Ramadan strikes me as cruel and unusual punishment for people who have already endured so much. What’s more, I fundamentally mistrust organized religion; Islam is not the aspect of Afghan culture that I most wish to support.

By the third and final week of my stay the political situation is heating up and I’m starting to hear more than a few reports of kidnappings. Taliban militants are targeting Afghans who are affiliated with foreign initiatives (such as Arghand) or the Government. They are demanding outrageous ransoms. If they get the money they’re happy, and if they don’t get the money (which they usually don’t because most Afghans are poor) they’re equally happy because now they get to promote their agenda through intimidating beheadings. Tragically, this is what happens to the 25 year-old cousin of one of our female cooperative members, a driver for the Afghan army. Mahmooda, our young administrator, is slayed by the news. She won’t go shopping with me in the bazaar unless I promise to wear a burqa. Nurallah puts on a brave front, but lets it slip that several of his friends and relatives think he’s crazy for driving me around town in broad daylight, and bringing me repeatedly to his house in a village on the outskirts of the city. My understanding of the Taliban as a Pakistan-sponsored mafia is further confirmed, and it infuriates me that they are gaining political credibility. Pashtoon tells me that he is finally hopeless. He had always believed that Afghan insurgents were not motivated by ideology, but now he is sensing a shift due to widespread lack of faith in the central government. He feels increasingly determined to leave, if not for Tufts University in the United States then at least for Kabul.

I’m starting to think more and more about leaving myself. I miss my family and I miss going out on my own. I wish I could wander the streets of Kandahar, dropping into shops that look interesting and sampling the various foods, and making a fool of myself with my terrible pronunciation of Pashtu words that I blurt out in improper contexts. I wish I could go to Zhari on the back of Abd al-Ahad’s motorcycle, or to Arghandab with Fayzullah on the bus, and I wish we could all spend one day on a picnic by the Arghandab River. But we can’t. It’s just too dangerous. I’m happy to have sucked up the jitters in order to pursue this trip, but I’m not willing to put myself further at risk. For now, the Arghand Cooperative will have to suffice as the whole of my Afghanistan experience.

And the truth is it really does. Yes: I’m basically a shut-in here, and while this would not have been my choice, it is not without advantages. There is something unmistakably comforting about hunkering down with a group of people and working toward a common goal, against a common enemy. The world beyond our pale blue metal gates is becoming increasingly chaotic and uncertain, and it saddens me to watch our Afghan colleagues become more and more distressed, preoccupied, mistrustful and disillusioned. For me it is especially heartbreaking to watch young people in their twenties and thirties who have their whole lives ahead of them swallow the bitter disappointment of knowing that the wide open future for which they willingly accepted bombs six years ago is disintegrating around them. And yet …what is there to do but carry on from one day to the next? We all have families to support so we continue to crack almonds, distill artemesia, wash pomegranate seeds and polish soap. The predictability of the work is therapeutic. It is also reassuring to know that ever day we are building a space, however small, in which dignity, productivity, tolerance and cooperation are not merely possible but practiced.

Oh, Arghand is not perfect. There are rivalries, slights, petty jealousies and disagreements that can flare up into battles of will. But this is one more way in which I have come to view the cooperative as a quintessential family, which feels so natural in this place where large extended families have little choice but to function as cooperatives in lieu of social safety nets or public services. I feel enormously grateful to have been unconditionally welcomed here, so it is with mixed emotions that I prepare to go: Happiness at the thought of reuniting with my nuclear American family and sadness at the thought of leaving this new extended Afghan one.

It never occurred to me that I would go on for so long. Please forgive the indulgence. Sarah asked me to write this “notes from the field” in response to an email I sent her toward the end of my stay in which I mentioned that in some ways it felt easier to exist within this familial cocoon of shared responsibility than in the west where the pressure to distinguish oneself professionally, acquire materially and get ahead financially is unrelenting. She wrote back: “I know just what you mean!” But she sees herself as enough of a maverick to appear not entirely reliable. Well. Anybody who knows Sarah Chayes knows that she is nothing if not reliable. Here, in any case, is my corroboration of her story.

Love to you all,

Jennie