In our humid climes “a rainy day” is something of a metaphor – for dreariness, boredom, or morosity. Here in Kandahar, the scarcity of water is such that people are far more acutely attuned to its centrality to life. And so the metaphor is reversed. In Afghanistan, if water appears in a dream, it is considered to be a great good omen. If you leave on a trip, members of the household you are departing scatter water in your wake, so that your last image of their doorway is of the sun dancing on the flying droplets.

Just so you fully understand, until about ten days ago, it had not rained here since last April.

And so we have all been watching the pearl-white veil that has occasionally covered the face of the sun with heart-straining hopes, with secret glances at each other, so we don’t scare the rain away by noticing it. And when a few drops fall, we look skyward, hands out, in silent gratitude.

But, mercifully, three good drenching rains have visited in about the past week. It’s not enough to tide us over till next year, yet. But at least it has been…wet, a magical interruption in the bone-drying norm. And overnight you can see the results. The tiny little wild almond seedlings we sprouted over the winter shoot up a thumb’s breadth; the bitter orange blossoms suddenly perfume our little yard; we don’t have to water the garden for two days afterwards, and Ayta, our growing puppy, dances in the muck, racing back and forth to the truck, barking at the water falling on her head from the sky. She doesn’t understand why I throw her rudely out of the house, and shout at her for jumping up on me with her muddy paws. In the vergers outside town, the grape vines, thick as a forearm and laying up against the earthworks that support them, have put out their glossy first leaves, and wheat, despite the poor price it fetches, blankets fields in an emerald green. Opium too, whatever you may be hearing about campaigns to eradicate it. At this stage, it looks almost like spinach.

I’ll extend the metaphor, and use the image of sparkling, life-giving rain to describe developments in the fortunes of the Arghand cooperative, especially the incredibly fertile and generous involvement by friends in the United States. Most of January and February, I was away from Afghanistan, on one of those whirlwind trips around the US, speaking at a variety of venues, moving forward on some Arghand issues, such as marketing strategies, retail placement, etc. This episode brought to you by the incredible and inspiring hard work of the likes of the inimitable Jeff Eaton and Barbara Buchan in Lincoln, MA, astonishing Mari Oye and her crew of Wellesley High School worker bees, who somehow find time for Arghand amidst studying for chemistry exams, doing original historical research, captaining ski teams, taking SATs, and I omit. Or the cool and unflappable, and silently turbo-charged, Pat Cooper in Denver; a whole new bunch of friends in San Antonio and San Fransisco… And again, I omit.

It gave me an unexpected burst of faith in this country of ours: audiences who were passionately interested in hearing some “ground truth” about Afghanistan, who responded favorably to my efforts not to turn question and answer sessions into partisan catfights – not a very productive activity, in my view – but rather to use them as ways to think together, as Americans, about what is not working very well for us at the moment, and how we could help fix it or at least nudge the vector a little. I at last had a sense that something is truly bubbling beneath the surface, a desire to do things differently, to redefine ways in which our country behaves, even if these impulsions may have to chart unconventional courses, seek new forums for their expression and impact, brush up against the subversive…

And I was overcome by the enthusiasm for our “grass-roots entrepreneurial venture,” as our retail manager Jennie Green has dubbed Arghand. In Denver especially, thanks to the organizing genius of Pat Cooper, I had a chance to brainstorm with groups of loud, thoughtful, imaginative, enthusiastic, colorful, supremely competent, largely female professionals. They have served as an unparalleled sounding-board for the viability of Arghand products (emphatic yes) and helped devise a rational marketing strategy, overall design for product labels and other literature, and in general have helped shape my thinking about what horizons to steer toward over the next year or two. I have to say I was struck by the instinctive frontier reflex of mutual support I experienced in Denver. Quite a contrast to the narrow-hearted one-upsmanship often encountered in my native East. The visit left me more convinced than ever that the future of America, if it is to be a positive one, will emerge not from the self-satisfied coasts, but from the heartland. I am also deeply moved by the very material support that so many people stepped up to profer, individually or institutionally, during or immediately after this trip. This generosity has removed a huge burden of anxiety from my neck. Although not yet fully equipped to take on the next stage of its development, Arghand is well on the way, and at least is no longer in danger of having to shut down just when it’s on the brink of self-sufficiency due to lack of operating funds. Responses from retailers, incidentally, to Arghand soaps, have been enormously positive. We are just awaiting proper brochures and labels before we begin the next big push of placing soaps in stores.

We have also embarked on the process of incorporating my – our – own 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization, Arghand Trust. This has been, friends, such an incredibly rewarding process. Suddenly, I have a ready-made group of advisors (folks impressed into service as board-members or worse, OFFICERS) with whom to discuss ideas, questions, unmade decisions. Suddenly I have an institutionally structured (if the opposite of stodgy) pool of experience, talent, and capacity upon which to draw.

So, over here, the first task on my return was to get the Kandahar roses in the ground. I confess we dropped the ball just a bit. The keeper of the Mercy Corps garden from which we were going to take the cuttings informed one of our number while I was away that we had to start the next Sunday. Said number thought he meant the Sunday I was to return to Kandahar, which was two weeks later. Result, the garden had thrown out its cuttings and the days had grown ominously warm and we had to scramble. Consequence: only a total of eight plots of roses have been planted, rather than the advertised 20. In my current style, I have chosen to be philosophical. You know what? We do what we can do. The Arghand guys enjoyed a whole week of wholesome physical labor preparing land and planting roses, in the bright air, and we doled out the money to the participating elders. And we’re off.

I must say though, that the theme of a previous Note reared its head again: fear. Even Abd al-Ahad and Karim and Nurallah were concerned enough about venturing out to some rather notorious villages of Panjwayi district that we exchanged cars with our fearless director Shafiullah so they could take his anonymous white Toyota Corolla, rather than our pick-up truck, which for some reason is considered to look like a “government car.” The two others traded jibes with Karim who has no beard, to the effect that he would be the first to go should they get caught. “I’m going to shave it closer tonight!” he bravely parried. At the next meeting of the district council, I voiced my desire to visit one of the plots; after admonition by some fellow-council members the man whose land the guys were going to plant said he’d rather not.

And then I thought about it. What is this really all about? These council-members are not poor anonymous villagers vulnerable and unprotected in the face of menacing “night fairies.” These are local khans, members of an important institution of the current provincial government, and known by everyone in their neighborhood as such. What? It will put them at risk if I show up at their farms for half an hour? Everyone in town knows they’re on the council, which works closely with the US or Canadian military, no less, not just li’l ole me. I had a second thought. This suddenly felt very much like the behavior of someone who wants to maintain one foot on top of each watermelon: that is, someone who wants to look pro-governmental when he’s sitting on a government council in Panjwayi district center asking foreigners for reconstruction money, but wants to look sufficiently pro-“Taliban” when he’s at home in his village to keep that side happy too.

So next council meeting, I let them have it. “You guys are afraid?” I demanded. “Aren’t you men? You’re going to let them tell you who you can have in your own homes? Don’t you have guns? Can’t you protect yourselves? You’re just going to let them take over, claim the space, without a fight? We have to stand up to these people. We have to take back the ground from them. Because if we continue to hide in corners like scared little mice, of course they’re going to overrun the place.”

Well, that got some amused – and some less amused – response. But I think my point was made and taken to heart. My own guys turned completely around on the issue: “Anyone who doesn’t want us to visit their land shouldn’t be able to work with us,” quoth Nurallah.

I have to say I’m a little irritated at the moment. As often the case, it is with certain manifestations of the Afghan government we support. Yesterday, I get a call Nurallah’s brother. Their other brother (former police chief of Khakrez district) had been arrested for carrying a pistol, and was being taken to the US base.

At the time I received the call, I happened to be perched on top of the desk of a petty official at the Afghan National Bank. I was sitting there cross-legged among his papers, my arms folded, like some gangly Buddha. The official had just unsuccessfully attempted to extract a $10 bribe from us for processing the deposit Arghand has to put in the bank in order to be registered as a cooperative. As a consolation, he sought $2, or 20 afghanis for each of the five different receipts he had written for deposit of our money and requisite fees. “Fine,” I said, but give me a receipt for the 100 afghanis. He said he couldn’t. “Then I can’t give you the money.” I put the purple bill back in my pocket. With a lift of his chin and a pout of his lips, the “public servant” informed us that in that case, our deposit book would not be available until the next day; we would have to come back. And so, bursting I still don’t know how out of the chair I was sitting in opposite his desk to the surface of said desk, I found myself settling amid his paperwork and replying: “Fine. I’m sitting here till you give me the book.” Unsurprisingly, it materialized in less than five minutes. I had to force myself to discipline rogue twitches at the corners of my mouth, and to avoid glancing at the gob-smacked spectators.

But amidst it all had come a call from Najib about his brother Palawan Aka, so as soon as the bank business was done, I had to hightail it out to the airport, picking up Nurallah, the rose sorter, on the way. I will spare you the details of the two trips out to the airport, approximately a half hour drive each way, and assorted inconveniences at the Afghan National Army HQ.

Here’s what happened. On the dirt road just outside his house, Palawan was stopped by a patrol of the Afghan National Army, and frisked, as a matter of course. They didn’t find anything. “Baradar,” he admonished, having the courtesy to address the officer as “brother” in his native Farsi, rather than in Kandahar’s Pashtu. “Look, I have a pistol here. Why didn’t you find it? Do you call that a search?” The ANA officer demanded the pistol, Palawan showed him his weapons authorization license – along with all of his proof that he has served long and faithfully as a ranking officer of this government – but the ANA guy said the card was no good (though it has no expiration date), cocked his gun, and hauled Palawan off to the ANA detention center on the US base. This in front of fifty villagers, all of whom vouched for Palawan’s bona fides.

Here’s the deal. The Afghan National Army, about which you may have heard good things amid the positive spin that Afghan events are being given, is in fact swaggering around the countryside like it owns it, not bothering to distinguish its friends from its enemies, infuriating the people by its high-handedness, while proving signally incompetent in performing the task for which it is at hand, namely countering Taliban “insurgents.” The United States has been in charge of organizing and training this force, and I have to say, I have seen no examples of anything that looks like serious military training or the respectful treatment of civilians that is supposed to be a part of it. In this case, in front of 50 gawking neighbors, several of whom can only have been Taliban sympathizers, the ANA delivers a towering insult to someone who has put his life on the line for this government, and has honorably discharged high office in its name. Set aside your notions of equal justice for all, no favors made to public officials. In this case, in this context, there is no way these villagers aren’t saying, “My God, after everything he’s done for this government, this is how it treats him? I don’t want anything to do with this kind of a government.” Fair enough, Palawan might have been a little high on his horse to be trying to tell the ANA how to conduct a search. Still, what the ANA could perfectly well have done was to say, “Brother, thanks for the tip. But let us give one to you. Your weapons license is no longer valid. The province is issuing new ones. So if you want to carry that pistol around, you better get it properly registered. We’re giving you a warning. Next time you’re caught with it, you’re going to jail.”

Nurallah, shaking his head almost mournfully over tea this morning said: “I’m not upset that my brother was put in jail. If he were wounded – if I were wounded – I wouldn’t care. That’s not a problem. The problem for me is the Taliban who saw the thing. What are they saying about the government now?” He went on. “We are not bad people, we don’t want to do bad things. But if we wanted to…by God we could keep the Afghan National Army from setting foot in our village ever again. If they killed us they could enter, over our dead bodies. But we would fight them.”

This is the kind of stupidity that is being perpetrated by members of a government who have no idea how fragile a peace they are riding on.