Category: Afghanistan

Jeopardy

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Jeopardy

Jeopardy

 

By John Curran

 

Yeah I used to be kind of a news junkie, more like a news nerd actually, but truthfully now its come to such a point that I am just losing interest, brother. Not that I ain’t there. Make no mistake concerning the big picture, when that clarion trumpet calls, I will be there. But for now, and its not more than a sad reflection of the times, that I find my mind wandering now and wondering how many minutes until Jeopardy. I used to love Jeopardy, I’m finding that now, I still do. And ya know, Jeopardy is, has been, and probably always will be, just the greatest damn game show ever. But there was a time, going back to just the last year and for the three years preceding, so four years back, when I was living my life without Jeopardy.

I had no TV. It was a magic time, a time when I became re-inspired as a painter and was again feeling it and doing real serious stuff. It was great. Really great. See I’d left my old place in Texas feeling kind of  burned out after a long number of years there. I’d been doing painting there. I’d been in a great Art program and had been doing good work with this group, even making money selling, complete validation, the pride of that. But real art reflects off the real life I feel and towards the end of all these years in Austin I was getting stale. The life was getting stale in many ways correspondingly. When a problem came about at this time with my local housing arrangement, I jumped at the chance to make a change. And so, not knowing nothing or nobody I came up here to Portland, Oregon and was provided with a decent little one bedroom single guy apartment in an area spinoff of the main metropolis. A small apartment complex, it had kids, that was new. A lot of these places don’t allow kids, or so it seems. It was a small place and what with that it soon became common knowledge that I was a painter. A like artist guy. That definitely raised some eyebrows, people be funny, but it didn’t bother me as far as my work was concerned. I was suddenly so totally back again into what was really some of my best painting ever.

The Afghan sisters who to me were the most beautiful girls I had ever seen, a lineage that carries on in spite of a sad history of repression. I love the way their large family, four girls, two older brothers, mother and father, carried on in their Muslim traditions in the midst now of living in this the modern American society. I was inspired by their obvious love for each other as a family and I’ll say this, the beauty of the Afghan woman is ….Anyway, the two middle sisters came to me early on and they had two paintings that they had done. I think one painted the pizza pie and one painted the cat. They wanted to see if I wanted to buy them. I really did like the cat, it was amateurish but yet…there was something there and hey, what’s five dollars for a piece of original art, acrylic on canvas? The other, naw, but both were pretty good. Ya start somewhere. I’ve still got the cat. It’s a sort of a centerpiece, people comment on it, how like what a great painting it is. I think so too.

 

Lost Afghan Baby Reunited With Family

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Lost Afghan Baby Reunited With Family

Despite all the bad news coming out of Afghanistan there was some good news.

Lost Afghan Baby Reunited With Family

At long last, some happy news out of Afghanistan. After an agonizing five months a baby lost during the chaotic American military evacuation has been reunited with family members in Kabul.

By D. S. Mitchell

 

Left With A Soldier

On August 19th, 2021 thousands of people rushed the Kabul airport trying to leave Afghanistan, in the wake of the U.S military withdrawal. Anyone who was watching on television saw the chaos that unfolded.  After twenty years of military occupation America was pulling out. In the chaos of the evacuation the father of a then 2 month old boy, Sohail Ahmadi, left him in the care of an Afghan Republican soldier. The boy and soldier somehow, yet unclear, became separated.

A Taxi Pick Up

A taxi driver told social service officials and reporters from Reuter’s News Service that he had found the baby alone and crying, abandoned on the floor of the airport. By his report, the driver searched the area for the child’s family but was unsuccessful. On his wife’s advice the man took the baby home. The couple’s initial attempts to locate the parents of Sohail were unsuccessful. The couple gave him the name Mohammad Abed. “If we had not found his family then we would have protected and raised him as our own child,” the taxi driver Hamid Safi told news reporters.

Mournful Goodbye

Sohail’s father, Mirza Ali Ahmadi, said he searched for 3 days at the airport for his missing son. In utter despair he said, he finally boarded a plane to the United States with his wife and their four other children. Months after the departure,  with the help of social media channels, several emergency relief agencies and local police, the relatives of Sohail were tracked down in Kabul just last week. It was at that time the boy was handed over to his grandfather.  The grandfather was elated, telling reporters that Sohail will be cared for by his aunt until he can be cleared to join his parents in the United States.

Tears of Sadness, Tears of Joy

It was a sad goodbye for the taxi driver, his wife,  and their three daughters. Mrs. Taxi Driver, Safi’s wife Farima said, “I felt responsible for him like a mother. He used to wake up a lot at night. Now when I wake up he is not there and that makes me cry. I am a mother. I understand he will not be with us always and he needs to be with his parents,”

Sohail’s Father 

‘We were in a bad condition these past five plus months,” Sohail’s  father reported, after they had had a video reunion, “but now that our son has been found we are happy,”  The case of Sohail Ahmadi has a happy ending, but for many other children separated from their families in a war torn world this outcome is rare and we should celebrate it.