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From India to Afghanistan
"I came to love Afghanistan…though I wouldn’t have predicted it."
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By Nishat Kurwa
Youth Radio’s Nishat Kurwa traveled to India and Afghanistan to produce the stories of young people in Bombay and Kabul. During her travels, the Muslim Indian American woman discovered a different viewpoint on a place that she considered home, and a surprising sense of belonging in a place that was foreign to her.
I don’t use the word love lightly. With family, it’s implied…but in other relationships, it comes after years of shared laughter, annoyance, innuendo, and what’s more, loyalty. But in the space of six days, I came to love Afghanistan…though I wouldn’t have predicted it from my first impression of Kabul – I saw it as a dusty, brown-draped, treeless city beaten down by war and pain.
I had just come from the vibrancy of Bombay, a home away from home, where my relationship with my family, and the city itself, has been reinforced by my return every few years. I still relish the constants that make it home. The ‘ferias,’ or sidewalk shopkeepers selling everything from fruit to caftans to hip hop CDs…the boxy, humid Fiat yellow cabs…the city’s smog-stained high-rise flats and active socializing that goes on inside them on any given weekday night…even the horns blaring outside my grandfather’s window looking out on the Colaba Causeway. As the country becomes more westernized, the distance between my American home and my family’s home in India feels smaller.
Leaving for Afghanistan wasn’t easy, and my aunt, Masi Ateka, tried to convince me not to go. Here, she would say, you’re home! There, who will take care of you?
My family’s cautions were still in the back of my mind when I first landed in Kabul, but they were drowned out by the excited chatter of my Afghan plane-mates, some getting ready to see THEIR home for the first time in decades. In the airport, throngs of men pushed their way to the luggage carousel, craning necks to spot their duct taped box or huge plastic suitcase bounce on to the belt. I smiled at the scene…I’ve watched it every time I’ve deplaned in Mumbai.
At the airport, I met my driver, my translator, and my Afghan American companion, Roya. Each time they introduced me to someone new, they would add…she’s a Muslim, from India. It was gratifying, those parts of my identity being acknowledged, and valued. Within a day of my arrival, my comrades were calling me Nishat-jan – ending my name with a term of endearment that roughly translated, means ‘dear.’ It took me aback at first – with my family in India, we only use ‘jaan’ to refer to those closest. But in Afghanistan it seemed formal and awkward to address even new friends without it.
My aunt would have been happy to see people treat me like family in this Muslim country. From those who had been in Pakistan as refugees, and expected me to understand their adopted, poetic Urdu, a sister language to Hindi…to the man at the airport, who asked, what’s your nationality? No, I know your passport says United States, but what’s your nationality? Others compared me to their own people, saying, she looks so Afghan.
My oval brown face, angular nose and dark eyes, and the way I wore my dupatta, or headscarf…weren’t the only things that helped me to fit in. My hands and head moved intuitively to embody the mannerisms that are particular to Muslims…I know the words that are passports into conversations and moments. When I heard other foreigners greet Afghans…it heightened my sense that my own salaams sounded infinitely more real, maybe because of the feeling behind them.
But sometimes the ubiquity of religion made me feel like an impostor in Kabul, where, accepted as a Muslim sister, my costume of dupatta and long sleeved bulky clothing belied the full truth about me. At home, I pray Namaaz as much as I can but not enough to feel truly faithful. In my cozy Kabul room with a dripping oil stove, sometimes the morning Adhan, or call to prayer, wasn’t enough to rouse me. Shivering just at the thought of braving the flooded bathroom tiles to perform ablution rituals in freezing cold water, and coming back to bed with wet socks and a long working day ahead, I would roll back into the heavy blanket to catch a few more minutes of sleep.
Perhaps some of what made Afghanistan feel so much like home is that it strengthened my ties to Islam. My friend Roya said through all of the violence in the country, parents have always told their kids – ‘have faith in God and be strong, war will pass.’ Whereas my family’s practice at home in the States seems private and personal, intersecting with our larger community only a few times a year, in Afghanistan, it’s woven into everyday life.
Unlike many Muslim Americans, I don’t normally wear hijab and cover my head…but I wore it everyday in Kabul. When I got to the San Francisco airport, a customs agent glanced at my passport and asked where I’d been.
When I said, ‘Afghanistan’ he looked at my headscarf, now slipping down my greasy unwashed hair, and chuckled – ‘you can take that off now – you’re home.’ I didn’t respond, slowly wheeling my luggage cart to baggage claim and thinking about why the comment so bothered me. With one assumption, one stereotype, he shook the sense of belonging that was such a gift to find in my travels.
That moment reminded me that home will always be both here, and away.
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