Disaster Services

Yes­ter­day Megan and I taught CPR to a group of Uni­ver­si­ty Stu­dents who have tak­en it upon them­selves to form a Dis­as­ter Response team and are try­ing to amass skills and knowl­edge that will be of use to them and their com­mu­ni­ties. One of the boys, Hameed, is part of our infor­mal “geek squad” at the Taj and wrote the pre­vi­ous post on this blog. Of the four he was the only one who spoke ful­ly flu­ent Eng­lish. Two could get by in Eng­lish and the fourth spoke none, although he was flu­ent in Pash­to, Dari, Urdu and Russ­ian. Many Afghans in this area can speak and read (if they are lit­er­ate)  Pash­to, Dari and Urdu. If they are in their for­ties or fifties, they can get by in Russ­ian. The younger gen­er­a­tion tends to know dab­bling of Eng­lish. Pash­to is the main spo­ken lan­guage but Dari seeps in from the West, Urdu from the East, and West­ern Lan­guages trick­le in through the occu­py­ing armies sta­tioned here.

The class was punc­tu­at­ed by Hameed’s rapid fire trans­la­tion, side con­ver­sa­tions in Pash­to, and the boys wrestling match­es as they were a lit­tle over­en­thu­si­as­tic when prac­tic­ing the Heim­lich maneu­ver on one anoth­er. The best part of the class was the myr­i­ad of ques­tions the boys had, indi­cat­ing both a sin­cere desire to learn skills applic­a­ble to dis­as­ters they had wit­nessed first hand, as well as expos­ing deep seat­ed cul­tur­al dif­fi­cul­ties that nev­er arose in my numer­ous First Aid re-cer­ti­fi­ca­tion classes.

Noorah­mad probed about how to clear water from a person’s lungs, the mem­o­ries of last year’s flood­ing and earth­quake still penetrating.

They asked about the spread of infec­tion and how they were sup­posed to avoid get­ting dis­eases when sweep­ing a victim’s mouth clean or pro­vid­ing res­cue breath­ing. (The next step of prepa­ra­tion involves each of them assem­bling a med­kit, com­plete with lots of latex gloves).

Through Hameed’s trans­la­tion, Najib explained to me that he was from a very rur­al area where there were no trained med­ical per­son­al in any kind of prox­im­i­ty. He want­ed advice for preg­nant women that he could bring back to the vil­lage and dis­perse. Accord­ing to the UN, Afghanistan has the sec­ond high­est infant mor­tal­i­ty rate in the world, topped only by Seir­ra Leone. It is the only non-African coun­try in the top twen­ty-five. Access to infor­ma­tion on preg­nan­cy and birthing, let alone trained med­ical work­ers, is slim at best. Even where there are med­ical facil­i­ties, mis­in­for­ma­tion abounds. I was shocked to find out last night that the direc­tor of the Neona­tal ward at the Pub­lic Hos­pi­tal in Jalal­abad has nev­er seen a live birth.

Rah­mat raised his hand and said “In our cul­ture we are not sup­posed to touch women. What should we do if it is a woman who is not breathing?”Although sur­pris­ing to my west­ern sen­si­bil­i­ties, the ques­tion is of utmost impor­tance. Most women in Jalal­abad still wear their burqas in pub­lic. Although Afghan soci­ety is extreme­ly phys­i­cal, it is so in a ful­ly seg­re­gat­ed way. Men and boys are always play wrestling, hug­ging, and walk­ing with their arms around each oth­er, but the two sex­es nev­er touch in pub­lic.  Mean­while, in the pri­va­cy of the university’s two-month-old women’s dorm, I chat­ted with half a dozen teenage col­lege girls play wrestling in their own way- hug­ging, pok­ing and slap­ping. Still, one girl there was mar­ried and five months preg­nant yet her hus­band lived across cam­pus in a men’s dorm. There was no place they could live togeth­er with­in the orbit of the school.

Even in a life or death sit­u­a­tion, where a women would die if she were not giv­en a few breaths of oxy­gen, there is a hes­i­ta­tion if it is the right thing to do. The ques­tion was not uncar­ing, quite the oppo­site, but it reflect­ed the extreme chasm between men and women which will take more than an effec­tive counter-insur­gency force and an army of preda­tor drones to solve. In the end, if these boys ever have to per­form life sav­ing aid they will have to make those deci­sions for themselves.

My Moment of Heroism

Morn­ing rolled around. After hav­ing break­fast with my uncle, I head­ed towards Jalal­abad bus sta­tion in Kab­ul. I sat in the rear seat of a wag­on. A man with grub­by clothes, long hair, dirt-caked hands, wear­ing a big bag­gy vest with swollen pock­ets, lines etched into his tanned face, creas­es framed his eyes and his mouth, came aboard and sat next to me. His face was pale and his eyes were fright­ened, like the eyes of a hunt­ed ani­mal. In my coun­try, we hear of sui­cide attacks every­day, and the signs that the man had were all of a per­son about to com­mit a sui­cide attack on for­eign troops in our coun­try. The road I was trav­el­ing on is an impor­tant high­way which con­nects two major cities, the cap­i­tal, Kab­ul and the fron­tier province, Jalal­abad. For­eign sol­dier­s’ con­voys trav­el on this road frequently.

Think­ing all about these pre­mo­ni­tions, I thought that the man sit­ting next to me was sui­ci­dal tar­get­ing for­eign sol­diers. His eccen­tric­i­ty and talk­ing to him­self dou­bled my doubt. The man on my right looked scared and pale. We trad­ed a blank look. I was try­ing to fake a smile, but all I could man­age was a fee­ble upturn­ing of the cor­ners of my mouth. He stared at the sus­pect­ed man, his eyes switch­ing from him to me.

After dri­ving for thir­ty min­utes, we passed Mahipar Val­ley. I sat bolt upright rack­ing my brains when I remem­bered my moth­er who used to tell me sto­ries when I was at sev­enth grade. There was a line in one of her favorite sto­ries. She would always repeat it again and again: “cham­pi­ons are not made in the gyms; cham­pi­ons are made from some­thing they have deep inside them.” I was rolling my eyes. I asked the man on my right to roll down the win­dow for me. I made the excuse and start­ed talk­ing to him. When I asked him about the dirty man on my left, we were on the same page (he was doubt­ful too). I could­n’t dare talk to the sus­pect­ed man. How­ev­er, I hes­i­tant­ly shot my first ques­tion fol­lowed by anoth­er bunch. I would either get a nod or a mono­syl­lab­ic answer which shot up my doubt.

After a few min­utes of vac­il­lat­ing from one idea to anoth­er, my eyes were sud­den­ly caught by an approach­ing oncom­ing con­voy of ISAF (Inter­na­tion­al Secu­ri­ty Assis­tance Force) and ANA (Afghan Nation­al Army). I looked at the sus­pect­ed sui­cide bomber. He was mov­ing from side to side look­ing at the con­voy while keep­ing one hand on his tum­my mut­ter­ing some­thing with him­self. Like when some­one is dying, they repeat vers­es from their holy book. When I saw this, I became a hun­dred per­cent sure that the sce­nario seems to be a sui­cide attack. My Adam’s apple was bob­bing up and down. My lips had gone dry. I licked them and I found my tongue dry too. 

When you kill a man, you steal a life. You steal a wife’s right to a hus­band, and rob his chil­dren of a father. If you save a life, I believe in some rewards from God. So, I quick­ly decid­ed to thwart the imma­nent attack and save my life along with nine oth­er pas­sen­gers in that vehi­cle and many oth­ers outside. 

First, I took a deep breath, focused all my con­cen­tra­tion and ener­gy and then grabbed both hands of the man twist­ed them and turned them over to hind. I felt so strong at that moment that I attacked a thir­ty year old man and slumped over on his seat with my itsy bit­sy body. I put my knee right up against his back. He was scream­ing and try­ing to release him­self, but he was held so tight­ly that he couldn’t even move. Loud Afghan Atan music with strong beats of drum and trum­pet blared from the speak­ers in the car. Since we were in the rear seat, the dri­ver couldn’t hear us, so he kept dri­ving. I was hold­ing him as long as the con­voy passed us. Final­ly, I searched him with my foot pre­tend­ing that I would release him. After a veneer of releas­ing, I searched him thor­ough­ly. There was noth­ing explo­sive to feel hard or heavy with him. His vest was stuffed with emp­ty min­er­al water bot­tles and old shop­ping bags like some­one with a psy­chi­atric problem.

After it turned out that the man was inno­cent, I was very much embar­rassed. I received punch­es, slaps and shoves, but I nei­ther showed any reac­tion nor cared about it. After exchang­ing a few words with him, I got to know that he had men­tal prob­lems and was psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly unbal­anced. After a few min­utes, the man raised his hand to scratch his head. I flinched, because I thought it was anoth­er one of those slaps on my face. I was mor­ti­fied and still felt scared tinged with a lit­tle feel­ing of courage and brav­ery, but I took myself as if I had done noth­ing wrong. 

My embar­rass­ment turned me a lit­tle to the right, so that the man could­n’t see me eye to eye. I faced to the pas­sen­ger on my oth­er side. I saw a smile on his face for the first time since the begin­ning of the trip. When I talked to him, he thought that he would die with his baby-girl on that day. We rolled up to Jalal­abad city. I was about to get off the bus; the pas­sen­ger on my right addressed me with the nick­name “denar bachay”, and pat­ted me on my back. He wished me a bright future. I apol­o­gized to the sus­pect­ed man for my mis­take and asked him if he want­ed to stay with me for lunch. He accept­ed my apol­o­gy and declined the invi­ta­tion. I got back home safe with a feel­ing of val­or. That is how my trip to Kab­ul ended.

A Small Adventure

(Note: This is the first post by Hameed. Get used to it!)

I have an Amer­i­can friend named Jere­my. He is my Pash­to lan­guage stu­dent as well. Our friend­ship is very tight, and it goes beyond the teach­ing. One day, Jere­my asked me to trav­el to Kab­ul with him because of secu­ri­ty prob­lems and to help with trans­la­tion on the way from Jalal­abad to Kab­ul. I agreed to his suggestion. 

It was a bright Thurs­day morn­ing of humid sum­mer, promis­ing heat, in July 2008. Every­thing was all set. We took a taxi, and rolled towards Kab­ul. The trip was very fun. We chitchat­ted on the way talk­ing about one top­ic after anoth­er. The time passed very quick­ly. It flew, actu­al­ly. We arrived in Karte-e-Char at 01:00 pm. Tom- the host wasn’t at home that time. The watch­man of his home was a friend­ly slight­ly over­weight man. Not only did he let us go in, but he helped us to car­ry the bags, too. We had the key to Tom’s room by hav­ing called him in advance.
We sat in the room wait­ing for the host to come. We had one taco each at the top of Mahipar Val­ley which hit the spot for an hour. I was very hun­gry and out of patience, so I asked Jere­my to call Tom if he could come so that we would have lunch togeth­er. So he did. Tom said that he could­n’t make it until 8:30 at night. My part­ner asked me if I could wait until 3:30pm for lunch. I was starv­ing, but my cul­ture didn’t let me say no, so I said, “That’s Ok, no biggie.” Final­ly, it was 03:30pm and I thought it was time for lunch beyond the shad­ow of a doubt, when I heard my part­ner said “Hameed, can you wait for three more hours, so that we would have a big din­ner at Rose?” Suit your­self, I replied under breath. ‘What?’ he asked. As…um… as you wish, I said. Jere­my was a man who meant every word he said, but I could­n’t get over how dif­fer­ent he was that day. I missed lunch, and I had to wait for three more hours to eat din­ner. I was very shy and clum­sy. I did­n’t even have the guts to tell him that I was starv­ing. I wait­ed for three hours think­ing about the Amer­i­can cul­ture, Jere­my, and how he could sur­vive with one taco for twelve hours. I would yawn and steal looks at my wrist-watch three con­sec­u­tive hours. I felt like a fish out of water.

Even­tu­al­ly, it was sev­en in the evening. My abdomen began to give low-bat­tery warn­ing by mak­ing fun­ny sounds. Jere­my prob­a­bly heard it. Then he had to take me out to chow down. We entered this west­ern style restau­rant, Rose and had a big meal there. We returned home around 8:30pm. Tom had still not come home. He didn’t come until 9:30. He was a very chum­my young man and had a bub­bly per­son­al­i­ty. He brewed us some tea right after he came to sound very Afghan and good host. We hung out deep into the night. 

Morn­ing came. Andrew, a friend­ly man in the neigh­bor­hood, invit­ed us for break­fast. After the break­fast, I said good­bye to them. Then, I went to vis­it an aunt of mine in Kab­ul. Next, as the day was end­ing and it was get­ting dark­er and dark­er, I stayed at my uncle, Qasim’s home for the night. My uncle and his two chil­dren had just got­ten their visas to Amer­i­ca. Uncle Qasim was extreme­ly hap­py and he was telling me about their planned immi­gra­tion to the U.S.

con­tin­ued reading …

Introducing Hameed!

We kick off the New Year with a new author on our site. Meet Hameed Tasal.

Here Hameed is align­ing the Satel­lite receiv­er dish atop the Taj. See the ear­phones? He’s not rock­ing out to blas­phe­mous tunes, but lis­ten­ing to the diag­nos­tic pitch that tells him if the info can­non is hit­ting the target.

And he’s no stranger to big name pub­li­ca­tions (such as Jalala­good) hav­ing been inter­viewed for the Boston Her­ald this April. Worth a read.