July 1, 2003
By KHALED HOSSEINI
KABUL, Afghanistan
I n Kabul, dying once is not enough," a young man said to me. We were staring
at the remnants of the tombstone of a long-dead Afghan singer that had been
blasted by Taliban soldiers. It was a clear day, and I had just arrived in Kabul
after a 27-year absence. For days afterward, as I rode through the clogged,
rubble-strewn streets of the city where I grew up, I thought of the young man's
words.
And I thought of my father, who two years ago, after hearing that the Taliban had blown up the giant Buddha statues in Bamiyan, shook his head and muttered, "Afghanistan is dead." But that was before 9/11, before the Americans rode in and drove out the Taliban. That was before liberation and before Afghanistan got a new lease on life.
But now, after seeing Kabul, I am left to wonder: is Afghanistan dying again?
One morning I met a policeman named Nasser directing traffic near the Haji Yaghoub Mosque, and I asked him how his life had changed since the fall of the Taliban. "Well, I am allowed to shave now," he said, shrugging. He told me he was supposed to make $40 a month, but the government hadn't paid him in three months. And he needed to feed a family of 12: his wife and four children, and his dead brother's two wives and five children. As he spoke, a crowd of burqa-clad women and barefoot children with rotten teeth were begging for money in front of the mosque.
"The world had promised us so much and yet . . ." Nasser said, trailing off, as a black Land Cruiser blew by. "N.G.O.," he said, as if it were a dirty word. He complained that millions of dollars in aid money had gone to nongovernmental organizations and United Nations agencies that spent it on fancy cars and fancy offices, a belief that I found was common in Kabul. "What have they done for us?" he said. "I have yet to see them put two bricks together."
I visited the grimy Aliabad Hospital, one of Kabul's main medical centers, where I met a 15-year-old boy with brain tumors who was rapidly going blind because fluid in his skull was pressing on his optic nerves. As the overhead light bulb flickered, the neurosurgeon on call told me the boy needed a ventriculo-peritoneal shunt, an ordinary plastic catheter used to drain fluid from the brain. But the hospital did not have one.
So a nurse and I drove around town until sundown, hospital to hospital, clinic to clinic. Finally, we met a doctor who drove us to a dark alley and sold us a shunt for triple what he had paid. I didn't even have the satisfaction of getting angry with him; he probably had children to feed too.
When the Taliban fell, Afghans around the world rejoiced. In December 2001, a United Nations-sponsored conference in Bonn resulted in the formation of an interim government. A month later, the international donor community gathered in Tokyo and pledged nearly $5 billion over five years to rebuild the country. Afghanistan was reborn.
But the hopes and dreams of those giddy days are a distant memory in the Kabul of 2003. Security is the most urgent problem. It is tenuous at best outside Kabul. Taliban forces are regrouping. Disarmament is a distant dream. Afghanistan last year was once again the world's leading opium producer. One child in four still dies before the age of 5. Major roads remain unbuilt. Women are still harassed and threatened. The provincial warlords battle one another while scoffing at the central government.
And for brutalized Afghans hoping for a better life, disillusionment is slowly seeping in.
I talked to a man who sold cheap goods from the dried Kabul River bed, a bazaar lovingly called "Titanic City" by the locals. I asked him if he thought the world was serious about rebuilding Afghanistan. He took a deep breath, held it, let it out. Then he smiled and said nothing.
Is Afghanistan dying again?
I pray not.
Khaled Hosseini, an internist in Mountain View, Calif., is author of "The
Kite Runner," a novel.