Would you Fund a Mercenary / Documentary Film Maker?

“Have you want­ed to do some­thing to help the Arab Spring but weren’t sure how? This is your chance.

In Sep­tem­ber, 2012 two famous free­dom fight­ers from the Libyan rev­o­lu­tion, Amer­i­can Matthew VanDyke and Libyan Masood Bwisir, will trav­el togeth­er to Syr­ia and join the rebels on the front line against the dic­ta­tor Bashar al-Assad. ”

“What is the pur­pose of this project and what will VanDyke and Bwisir be doing in Syria?

[Among oth­er things, film­ing] Masood Bwisir enter­tain­ing and improv­ing rebel morale with his famous rev­o­lu­tion songs, includ­ing new ones or vari­a­tions of his Libya songs mod­i­fied for the Syr­i­an revolution”

This kick­starter appli­ca­tion reads like an audi­tion to be picked as a char­ac­ter in a first per­son shoot­er. Drop a coin and hit the space­bar to select this char­ac­ter for the Syr­ia level.

It feels as though the rewards should have been 25$ gets a mag­a­zine clip for AK. 100$ gets a new AK. 1$ buys chai on a hot Syr­i­an day.

I mean, I like crazy … I just think that this kick­starter is crazy in an both old and inter­est­ing­ly nov­el ways. I spent a lit­tle bit of time try­ing to relate to the mind that gen­er­at­ed this project proposal.

From here, it’s not such a dis­tant jump to imag­ine crowd­fund­ing mer­ce­nar­ies in third world places? Now imag­ine, two com­pet­ing fac­tions engag­ing in such fundrais­ing, eg “cam­paign con­tri­bu­tions”? I’m sur­prised Kick­starter has allowed this project up on the site, and I am glad that the fund­ing has begun to stall out at the final moments.

Matthew, if you read this, why don’t you just reach out to Vice Mag­a­zine and get an advance from them to cov­er your expenses?

On a relat­ed note, I high­ly rec­om­mend you read Cam­paign­ing on the Oxus by Jan­u­ar­ius Aloy­sius MacGahan.

He was an Amer­i­can reporter for the New York Her­ald Tri­bune who cov­ered the Russ­ian Army cam­paign in Cen­tral Asia in the late 1873 as a 29 year old. Start­ing from a remote Siber­ian town, he gal­loped 2,000 miles through the dessert to join the Russ­ian forces invad­ing Khi­va. His writ­ing is engross­ing.  On the way, he doc­u­ments a vis­it to a Khan’s harem, and when he final­ly arrives, his engaged jour­nal­ism takes him to the bat­tle­field, where he par­tic­i­pates in the slaugh­ter of the sword field­ing sav­ages with his own rifle.

You should in the least read the open­ing para­graphs of the preface.

Those were the good old days!

Obitutuary for Merhab Sarahj, Taj Mahal Guesthouse Manager

Accord­ing to a trust­ed source, we learned that the Taj Mahal guest­house man­ag­er has been shot by two motor­cy­cle rid­ing gunmen.

We knew him as Mehrab, while his full name was Mehru­bin Saraj. For many of us, he was more than the man­ag­er of the Taj Guest house, but our first condi­ut into Afghan soci­ety. He took us to pur­chase our Afghan clothes and explained the world out­side the com­poud walls.

One care­free after­noon, I asked Mer­hab to tell me about his life before the Taj. This is a tran­scrip­tion of my notes from that day:

In the 80’s we saw ter­ri­ble things.

As a teenag­er, after a Sovi­et raid, I helped bury 14 mem­bers of my extend­ed fam­i­ly. That night we packed all our belong­ings onto a don­key drawn cart. With a car­a­van of 23 and two cows we trav­elled two sleep­less days to the bor­der with Pakistan.

My father want­ed to avoid the mass­es accu­mu­lat­ing in refugee camps on the bor­der, so he guid­ed us to the hills on the out­skirts of Peshawar, where he knew about some caves.

We sur­vived as shep­pards, hav­ing bartered some of our goods for ani­mals. We shel­tered inside the caves and blocked the entrance by stones each night to pro­tect the ani­mals from wolves and jack­als. At times I would stand watch with a rifle, and tried to fol­low my fathers advice “aim for the bright eyes”.

My father was most con­cerned with the posi­bil­i­ty that the kids would get bit­ten by snakes and scor­pi­ons. In time, he man­aged to pur­chase tents and we moved back to the refugee camps so that the youger kids among us could attend makeshift schools.

When the next sum­mer came, to escape the heat, my fam­i­ly again went back to the high­er ele­va­tions near the ancient caves, but this time we set­tled in the plum orchards. … and we brough oth­ers with us.

While the own­ers of that land had pre­vi­ous­ly tol­er­at­ed us as one fam­i­ly, they took an armed stand upon our arrival block­ing our way. They wor­ried that we would bring even more refugees with us and would start treat­ing the land as ours.

So we went back to the caves and only went to the orchards for picnicks!

In the 90s we returned to Jalal­abad. A branch of my fam­i­ly had escaped to Egypt and also returned. One of my broth­ers went miss­ing in Iran, and I still don’t know where he is.

We recov­ered our home and I was mar­ried to my cousin. We lived some­what apart in refugee camps, but my par­ents told me about her and made the fam­i­ly arrange­ment even before we returned.

Since then, I have tried my hand at var­i­ous enter­pris­es. I worked at what I knew best — as a shep­phard for 6 months. A soap fac­to­ry I start­ed failed. I tried my hand as a bee­keep­er, bought 25 hives, but they all died. And then I opened a tobac­co shop.

I dis­cov­ered the Taj Mahal Guest house when it was run by the UN. I came on as a pool clean­er, and worked my way up to man­ag­er. First I worked close­ly with the Kiwis, and now with Dave.

RIP Mehrab. August 2012.