REPORT FROM CENTRAL ASIA Transcript (034)

PAULA ALIDA ROY [bumper]: Hello, this is Paula Alida Roy, educator and poet, and you are at the Point of Learning with my friend Peter Horn. I hired Peter to teach English at Westfield High School in New Jersey in 1997. A few months later, Duane Lacey became my student in AP English Literature and Composition. I’m so proud of Duane, now a poet and professor of philosophy at the American University of Central Asia in Kyrgyzstan. Although I will be interested to hear what Peter and Duane discuss, I am also eager to hear from Peter’s other guest, Faryal, a young Afghan woman, a graduate student who was born under Taliban rule, and now faces a return to it.

PETER HORN [voiceover]: On today’s show, Duane Lacey, a philosophy professor who has taught in Muslim-majority countries since 2008 …

DUANE LACEY: For myself, I needed to see up close, firsthand, and personal. I needed to understand what an Islamic culture really meant. I needed to hear the call to prayer, not in a movie, but outside my window.

[VO]: We discuss what drew him to philosophy and poetry, and his experience in the United Arab Emirates and Kyrgyzstan.

DUANE: One thing is the value of the guest, right? The value of the stranger. Deep-seated in a lot of the cultures that I’ve had the opportunity and fortune to experience. And it is this idea that oh, you’re a guest here! Which means we have to give you food, we have to be nice! Like, compare that to New York. It’s very different!

[VO]: I also speak with Faryal Haidary, who is intently following news from her home country of Afghanistan ...

FARYAL HAIDARY: I wake up every day looking at my social media. I’m looking all those women in the street protesting and thinking if I was in Afghanistan, I would have done the same thing.

[VO]: Having earned Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees, Faryal was planning to return home, but now she cannot.

FARYAL: It’s not an easy journey for any Afghan woman to go to school. From the beginning, like from going to school to university. And now they’re jobless. They cannot work. They cannot do anything. So what was all that education for? It was for nothing.

[03:18]

[VO]: All that, and much more on today’s special show, “Report from Central Asia.” Duane Lacey is a professor of philosophy at the American University of Central Asia in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. With interests ranging from Ancient Greek philosophy and mathematics to the philosophy of science, Duane’s first college appointment was at St. John’s College in Maryland, but he quickly set his sights east, working for a time in the former Soviet Republic of Georgia before serving as a professor at the United Arab Emirates University in Abu Dhabi for five years. Since 2013 he has taught philosophy at the American University of Central Asia, about 650 miles from Kabul, Afghanistan. I note this because, after Kyrgyz students, Afghan students comprise the next largest demographic group at AUCA, and when the chaotic US withdrawal began in August, Duane became the unofficial liaison between AUCA and the Afghan students whose safety was suddenly compromised. Although this work kept him on edge and underslept for weeks, he not only agreed to Zoom with me in late August, but also introduced me to a former student of his, Faryal Haidary, highlights from whose interview make up the second two-thirds of this special episode. Although Duane was never my student, he was a high school senior during my first year of teaching, and I recall fondly many hours of conversation with him in the English Resource Center, where I was on duty 8th period every day. I’m pretty sure he had no scheduled classes then, but looking back, I don’t know! I do know that Duane Lacey was one of the most brilliant students I met in my nearly two decades at Westfield High School, and it has been a profound experience to reconnect with him recently. Facebook, you’re still good for something! While we were catching up last month, Duane said that philosophy and poetry saved his life in high school. Early in his remarks he pays tribute to a kind, smart, and influential English teacher named Kate Strauss.

DUANE: So for me, poetry was first, and it was mainly because I had, you know, the wonderful Kate Strauss. We had a writing assignment. I wrote this poem, and it’s just the way she reacted to it kind of caught me off-guard. She was encouraging! You know, Westfield—I was lucky. All of the circumstances of why I moved when I was 15, from New Hampshire with my parents to Westfield, New Jersey—all of those reasons are horrible. It was a terrible moment in my family’s life, but I was lucky to end up in Westfield. The teachers I was used to in Manchester, New Hampshire might hit you if you made them angry. [Peter laughs.] I’m not joking! You know, like they certainly weren’t polite, and “encouraging” was like not in their vocabulary. So anyway, so I started getting into poetry, but I remember the only reason I got into it because was because someone said, “Hey, this was really good!” And I was like, “Teachers do this? Teachers actually say, ‘good job’?” Anyway, so I go to this used book store, I’m just looking at the poetry books, and then I sort of wandered into a small philosophy section. I guess I was around 15 years old, 16 maybe. And on the bookshelf was this book called What Is a Thing? by Martin Heidegger. And I looked at the title and I just thought it was the dumbest title ever. I was like, How could you have a whole book called … I was looking at it like, come on! WHAT IS A THING? Really? And it’s a whole book! So I bought it. I had to. So I took it home, five bucks, you know, and it’s not really advisable on your first foray into philosophy. You know, [German-Swiss psychiatrist] Karl Jaspers said Heidegger is a dangerous thinker because he will hypnotize you. So maybe it was just by chance that the first real philosophy book that I picked up was a hypnotic set of lectures by Martin Heidegger. But basically, I picked up the book and I’m like, All right, what is a thing? I mean, come on, you know? And then I start reading it and he’s talking about a piece of chalk. And he’s like, “What is this piece of chalk? When I break the chalk in half, where is the essence of the chalk?” I’m like, Holy … What is chalk? Wait, what is a thing? And I read the book. Couldn’t understand it. I mean, I didn't have the background to understand it. There are whole chapters on like Immanuel Kant and the “categorical imperative” and all this stuff that I had not studied. So it’s like, I know these words and I know the sentences are grammatically correct. Why don’t I understand, you know?

PETER: Part of what’s interesting about this story is it reminds me of nothing so much as a good friend of mine who was a kind of mentor figure to me when I was in high school. He’s somebody who would, you know, refer to elements of Ugaritic or Farsi. And you would ask him a question like “How many languages do you speak?” And he would say like, “One at a time!” So I was like, “Well, how did you get on this road?” I remember asking him as a freshman or something in high school. And he said, “I was at a parade even when I was eight or nine years old. And there was a group of Jews from our neighborhood who came marching, and they had a sign, they had a banner in Hebrew, and I couldn’t understand what the banner said. I wanted to know what the banner said. And so as soon as I could, I started teaching myself Hebrew”—or he did it with an elder in the neighborhood, I don’t know, but it was that challenge to him: Here’s something that I want access to, you know. I feel like it could be available, but it’s not available yet, [and] it’s tempting, and I want in! And that launched him on this whole thing. So whether Heidegger is the first philosopher one should encounter or not in a given curriculum such as you might design now, it’s interesting to think, it felt like a challenge.

DUANE: Yeah, and I guess, you know, the advantage I had was I was so ignorant of all of it that I didn’t realize how difficult it was. I was just like, “Okay.” So it was like little moments of Oh, I get this idea! And somewhere in there, I remember—like anyone who’s read anybody theoretical will have had this kind of moment where you’re reading something and you think like, Oh wait, I’ve had this idea! but I just didn’t say it as clearly as this person is now saying it, so now it was just like candy to a baby for me. I couldn’t get enough, you know? But the other thing with the poetry connection—and I do still tell my students this to this day: Poetry and philosophy, I believe, should both be read very slowly, working in good faith on the idea that there’s nothing on the page that’s not there for a good reason. If you get to a sentence or a statement and you don't know why it’s there, then slow down and stop and try to figure out why it’s there before you just keep going. So I’ll tell my students, “Look, I’m assigning you 50 pages to read by next Tuesday. But if you can get through two pages really well, that’s better than reading all 50 and not knowing what just happened.” And I think poetry is the same way.

[14:04]

[VO]: Before he was Professor Lacey, Duane was an undergraduate in September 2001, studying at the New School in New York City. There he witnessed firsthand the attack on the World Trade Center. Because it had a deep influence on his eventual decision to teach in the Middle East and Central Asia, I asked him what he'd be willing to document about his experience of 9/11. I've edited it, but this segment still features some graphic detail, so I will say that it lasts about 11 minutes, if you're not in a place to hear it right now and would like to skip ahead. Duane was at this time working a  range of odd jobs to pay for school and living expenses.

DUANE: Technically I had no business being in the vicinity of the World Trade Center. I was an undergraduate at the New School. I’m not going to say I was homeless, but I was sleeping in an elevator at one of the university dormitories called the Marlton House, which is on 8th Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. The guy at the Marlton House, he’s like, “Okay, so you can spend the night in the elevator and then at around 6:00 AM or so, go downtown.” There are, I don’t know, four or five buildings. He’s like, “I have an agreement with the owners. You just need to sweep all the steps in the building and clean the elevators.” I mean, basically custodial work. And that’s what I was doing when the first plane hit. I didn’t see the first plane. I was in the basement. I don’t really remember the exact location, because we were working on different buildings. I guess I want to say Warren Street, which is about four blocks away from the Trade Center. So I remember I was in the basement and all of a sudden there was just this boom! The ground shook, the noise was intense. And I, in my brain, I was like a bomb just went off. You know, that was the first instinct or whatever. So I ran up the steps of the building and went outside and, you know, you could see the Trade Center. There was this fiery hole and I guess, you know, it’s very difficult when you deal with like perspective and proportion. The Trade Center is tall and far away, you know, so that hole looked kind of minor, relative to the whole building. But you know, actually, to even see it at all, it must be a massive hole, right? With flames and smoke. And so there were two guys who only spoke Spanish. They were doing scaffolding on the building that I was working in, and said “Plane! Plane!” And you know, I’m kind of freaked out. A plane just hit the Trade Center? We didn’t know, at that moment we didn’t know what kind of plane—maybe it was just someone, you know. We didn’t know it was a massive commercial plane, you know, American Airlines. We didn’t know.

[VO]: Duane was working with a man several decades his senior named Roland.

DUANE: And then Roland casually looks at me. We’re looking up at this gaping horror in the first tower, and he just looks at me. He’s like, “You want to go get some breakfast?” So Roland’s idea was like, This would be a good time to get a cup of coffee and an egg sandwich! So I walked with Roland actually kind of closer, I guess, and then he’s inside ordering us our breakfast. And that’s when the second plane came. And that was for me, that’s the life changer. It came over my head. The speed, the noise—the speed of that plane was—obviously I’ve seen the footage that we’ve all seen of that second plane—because nobody was watching, so we don’t really have much footage of first plane, whereas we’ve got all the footage of the second plane hitting, you know. I guess the camera, because of the camera angles or whatever, and it’s so far away, it looks slow. You know, when we see the news footage of the second plane, it looks kind of slow. It was not slow. I mean, you know, imagine a a commercial airliner basically at full tilt, flying so close to the ground at, you know, hundreds of miles per hour, it’s just the speed was intense. And then smash! It hits, and immediately everyone on the sidewalk where I was just ran away, just ran away, dropping, you know, dropping DiscMans, tripping over baby strollers. And I’m not an engineer, or anything close, but I do remember just that plane over my head, the proximity of it, the speed of it, the sound of it—it shook the ground and the impact, my immediate thought was that building is going to fall down. That’s what I thought. There’s no way it could not fall. So whether or not there were, you know, other things going on, I don’t know. But I’m just saying as a bystander, my thought was, there’s no way anything survived that kind of impact. It was just that intense. And I mean, I guess for all of us, that was the moment when we were like, Oh, wait, a second plane? Number one was no accident. This is now a completely different narrative. So Roland comes out. He’s got our coffees. And I’m like, “Dude, what do we do?” But he was, you know, it’s such a classic, like New York thing. So I said to Roland, I was like, “Should we get back on the subway?” He’s like, “No. We gotta walk.” So the Marlton House is on Eighth street. So it’s a pretty long walk to get back to the Marlton House. But he said, “I worked on the—” That’s why, I mean, ‘typical New York,’ you know? He’s like, “I worked on the steel for that building,” and he said, “and it’s riddled with gas bubbles. It’s going to burn and burn. And it’s probably going to fall down and we don't want to be on that subway line.” So Roland maybe saved my life, because I probably would have gotten on the subway and gotten trapped. But he’s like, “Let’s just walk.” So we walked back. It took us I don’t know how long—

PETER: [incredulous] The guy you were with had worked on the construction of the Towers? DUANE: Yeah. Yeah! He was that old. So then I got to a payphone. I tried to call my parents to let them know I was okay. But you couldn’t dial out of the city at that point. And I didn’t own a cell phone, but anyway it wouldn’t have worked. If I had stayed where I was when that collapse happened, I don’t— I definitely was in the radius. So you know, the sheer scale of it … I mean, you want to help. I was a little angry at the people who just ran away, but it’s not like I ran toward the building. And the sheer scale is like, I cannot do anything, you know? And the police and the ambulances and the fire trucks started rolling in and, you know, New York’s finest. I was just thinking like, man, I do not envy what they're about to try and deal with! I don’t know if the news footage covers this, but it was actually quite noticeable that, you know, after the planes hit, one of the things that was just coming, issuing, issuing out of the holes in the building was paper, just like just covering the sky, paper and pigeons, kind of switching up—all of this paperwork that needs no longer means anything. Right? And then amidst all of that, there are these other things coming out, and you didn’t realize it at first. And you’re like, Oh, those are people, you know? And what choice did they have? I mean, it’s either burn to death or jump, you know? And so, I didn’t help anyone. I didn’t run, but I didn’t help anyone. I slowly made my way toward safety. And then I thought, what can I do?

[25:50]

DUANE: But then yeah, 9/11 then all of a sudden, it’s like, What’s the Taliban? Who’s Osama bin Laden? What’s Islam? Like, to me, Islam was just another religion, you know, I didn’t care. It wasn’t significant. So now I guess me, like so many people my age and otherwise, it was like we were shocked into all of a sudden feeling like we should know about the rest of the world, maybe.

PETER: Yeah, because this is the thing. Again, you lived all these years, and of course we just got back in touch recently, but if you excise two decades from this story, you go from living through 9/11/01 to being twenty years later in a 90% Muslim-demographic country. That’s where you’ve been working now for the past—what, eight years? is that right?

DUANE: Yeah. I’ve been in Kyrgyzstan just about eight, seven or eight years. I was in the UAE for about five years. Yes.

PETER: I mean, that’s fascinating!

DUANE: Gnawing at me was maybe you should—this is me talking to myself—maybe I should not just be, you know, some professor working on obscure shit, trying to pump out papers, like maybe I should try and do a little bit more. So that’s when I thought, All right, well, I’m getting a PhD. I hadn’t finished yet, but that’s when I started thinking like, Maybe I’ll go into the military, maybe I’ll go work for a government agency. Maybe I should do that. Maybe I could put my analytic logic and theory skills into a practical application. For myself, I needed to see up close, firsthand, up and personal. I needed to understand what Islamic culture really meant. I needed to hear the call to prayer, not in a movie, but outside my window. I needed to know. Because I knew all the sentiments. I knew how angry I was at Islam. I knew how angry other people were Islam, and then invading Iraq, that whole … George Bush, you know, all of that that we would do. I was like, Okay, I’m not a fan of Islam. I’m not a fan of any religion, period, but I just felt like I cannot. I cannot criticize that which I do not really understand, you know, no matter how easy it is and in the environment that we were living in post-9/11, it’s easy to criticize Islam, easy as can be! No one’s going to get upset. You’re going to get all the support you want. So I went to the Middle East. Now I’ve learned what an Islamic culture is, but at least now I can be critical with some firsthand knowledge of what I’m actually talking about. You know, I’m not just making it up or listening to some talking head on some news channel or whatever.

PETER: And I know that obviously some of the fundamentalist aspects are really hard to contend with, especially when they affect the lives of these students that you have come to care about. But before we go there a little bit, is there something that you’ve come to appreciate as—I don’t know—valuable, admirable about Islam, Islamic culture, about the people that you have met in Islamic cultures? Because again, I don’t know how once you’re living in it, you can separate the people that you’re having daily life with, sharing daily life with, and then say, well, this is the “culture.” I don’t know. I mean, it seems like kind of a difficult exercise.

DUANE: Yeah, no, absolutely. For any of the people listening to this podcast, one of the things that I’ve come to realize—not just in Islamic cultures, but like in Georgia, for example, in the Republic of Georgia, which, what’s the predominant religion there? Well, it’s mostly Orthodox Christianity. One thing is the value of the guest, right? The value of the stranger. In the United States, you know, in America, we have that phrase “Southern hospitality.” It feels like that, but the deep-seated—and I guess it’s, you know, biblical, if not older—but deep-seated in a lot of the cultures that I’ve had the opportunity and fortune to experience is this hospitality, this idea that, Oh, you’re a guest here! Which means we have to give you food. We have to be nice to you. Like, compare that to New York! It’s very different! The friendliness to a complete stranger is something that surprised me time and time again. And I’m not saying on the other hand, Peter, that countries are not getting more nationalistic in a very frustrating, frightening way. I believe they are. The other thing I did want to say though, really quickly, just is that there’s a deep respect for books in the Islamic culture and not just like “Arabs,” or whatever people think when they think “Islamic culture,” but Southeast Asian Muslim … So, if there’s a book on the floor, you do not step over the book. It’s what we would call haram.

[VO]: Haram is an Arabic term, meaning “forbidden.”

DUANE: And if you’re carrying the Quran, it should be wrapped up. You shouldn’t touch it with unwashed hands. So it’s a little maybe excessive, but I liked that respect. And it’s not just the Quran. It’s any book.

[34:00]

[VO]: I asked Duane if there was any particular mission that drove his teaching of Western philosophy in predominantly Muslim countries.

DUANE: There was a period of time when I felt I had some kind of life-changing insights to—you know, I was coming into a conservative environment, you know, I’m going to shatter the glass, shatter all of it, just, you know, break it up.

PETER: That’s how I felt rolling into Westfield, New Jersey, baby! Yeah. That’s young teacher stuff.

DUANE: You know, that’s right, exactly! So, well, I guess right now at least, my feeling is I’m more familiar with what I know that I know. I guess it’s sort of a weird way of saying like the best thing I can do is be that teacher who gets excited at everything Socrates says, and you know, I know that sounds maybe corny or cheesy or whatever, but it’s like, I do think—and I’m sure you’ve had this experience, too—like when a teacher loves what he or she is teaching, that translates to the students, for the most part.

PETER: Sure.

DUANE: And so for me, it’s become more that I just need to be better at what I’m already supposedly better at, and I’m supposed to love what I already love. And I need to take care to, you know, to be aware of where I am and who I’m talking to. In that “care,” what I mean is to break down the differences, the cultural differences or whatever between us and create a classroom where, Hey, we’re all gonna have a headache by the end of this conversation because we’re just going to be like, “What is chalk?” I don’t know. But now I can tell you why I don’t know what chalk is. That’s the difference. Like asking the questions is one thing, but being able to explain why you don’t know the answer? Hey! Job done, lesson learned, headache acquired, go on about your day, go be a business major, but I just had you for an hour of philosophy and … you don’t know what chalk is! Yay! So like, I want that experience. And so I’m just trying to be better at that.

[VO]: I wanted to know about major differences between the two predominantly Muslim cultures Duane has worked in, the United Arab Emirates (or UAE)  and now Kyrgyzstan.

DUANE: When I moved here from the UAE, you know, in the UAE, the male students I taught on one campus and the female students I taught on a different campus. They are not integrated. So I went from five years of that and then I came here and one of the first things I see in the hallway of the university is two kids making out on a couch in the hallway. And I was like, Oh, thank God! This feels better to me. I think I mentioned too, when we were talking, you know, the guys in the UAE at least, you know, the guys there dressed like Bedouin guys and the girls are dressed like Bedouin women. Here, you know, it’s more like jeans and t-shirts and stuff like that. So that’s why I say that the religion is there, but it’s less predominant. And so when I’m teaching philosophy, either there or here, I guess, there’s always that moment—you know what I’m talking about, Peter—like the “aha moment,” you know, when the student is like, I don’t know why I’m here. Why am I talking about chalk? Or like, you know, in my math class, I’ll say something like, “Okay, can you all please imagine the number five?” And they’re like, Yeah. And I’m like, “Well, okay, have you ever seen the number five?” Yeah. And then I begin, like, “You’ve never seen the number five. You never will. You never have, but it’s real.” And then I go a little further. I say, “Everybody knows what a circle is, right?” Yeah. “Have you ever seen a circle?” They’re like, like, Yeah, yeah. I’ve seen a circle. And then I say, “No. You never have, and you never will. It’s a two-dimensional object, my friends. It’s a concept, and hence Plato,” and there we go! “All right. So what’s the ontological status of the number five?” And you know, at those moments, nobody cares whether Muhammad said this or Muhammad said that or, you know, Jesus said this or Moses said that, I mean, it’s like, What? I thought I knew what a circle was. Now you’re telling me I never saw one! Those are the moments I live for in teaching. And that shit happens no matter what culture, and you just, you know, they just give you a moment to ask that question. And I mean, ask anyone, “Have you seen a circle?” They say yes. And then you’re like, “No, you haven’t.” And then they’re like, Wait. That’s the world I live in.

[41:13]

[VO]: Faryal Haidary was born in Kabul, Afghanistan at the height of the Taliban’s initial rule between 1996-2001. She attended school through 12th grade in Afghanistan, after which she pursued her studies at the American University of Central Asia in Kyrgyzstan, where she earned a B.A. in Psychology and a Master’s degree in Sociology. AUCA is also where she met Duane as her professor for Introduction to Philosophy, and I am very grateful to him for introducing Faryal to me. She and I spoke the night of September 13th, Buffalo time, which was the morning of September 14th in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. On my end, a severe storm rolled in just as Faryal and I began to talk. I’ve done my best to suppress the thunderclaps, but you may detect some in the distance. I mention the date because things change so rapidly. Faryal refers several times to the courageous resistance being waged in Panjshir, one of the 34 provinces of Afghanistan. As of today it’s very hard to know what’s going on. In late August, as the battles were heating up, the Taliban disabled internet and mobile phone services in Panjshir, effectively cutting off the residents not only from the rest of the country and the world, but also from themselves.

PETER: So my first question is how are you this morning?

FARYAL: Well, I wake up every day with looking at my social media and looking at all those women in the street protesting, and thinking, If I was in Afghanistan, I would have done the same thing. But also looking at the women getting lashed and whipped by Taliban. And then seeing men around her, just looking at the scene and not doing anything—when it’s just one person, one Talib, like they could just get their gun and beat him, or do something because their population is more than Taliban, but no one is doing anything! And this is so heartbreaking. Just recently my friend texted me that our friend who graduated from the same university as I was abducted, and her whole family was abducted, because she graduated from an American university. And that was unbelievable. They’re still [jailed] by Taliban, and I don’t know for what reason. Their justification is maybe because she studied here in a westernized culture. I feel so sad that we are considered as the infidels now to Taliban because we went abroad. We struggled our way to get an education. We didn’t give up. We didn’t sit at home and do domestic house chores. We wanted to get financially independent and the only way to do that was to get education. And this is sad for all those women who are now educated. It’s not an easy journey for any Afghan women to go to school, from the beginning, from going to school to university. And then now they’re jobless. They cannot work. They cannot do anything. So like, what was all that education for, then? It was for nothing.

PETER: To go back to this question, when you say that it seemed like there’s one Talib in a given situation committing a horrible act, how is it that he could not be overpowered? I think this is one of the things that a lot of people wonder when they’re looking at this situation, to say, you know, Afghanistan had thousands of troops who seemed to well outnumber the Taliban’s forces. These troops had been trained by U.S. forces and other allies. They seem to be well-equipped. Some people wonder: how was it—you know, how do you think it was that the Taliban was able to take over so quickly? Of course they had been in control, you know, two decades ago for a period of six or seven years. But how was it that they were able to resurge so quickly? Was it purely fear of the Taliban, or was there something else at work?

FARYAL: I think it was the government itself. It was not well aware, and no one was expecting this, even the Afghan government and plus, they did not support all of those troops in other provinces. When it starts from other provinces, like, for example, Herat [in western Afghanistan]. We lost Herat in just a few days. And then people started to fight back and there were civilians involved. But we heard that the government did not help them at all while they asked for so much help, and the government did not respond to anything and they did not send any weapons. They fought all by themselves, like what’s happening right now in Panjshir. Are you aware of how the resistance group is fighting against Taliban in Panjshir?

PETER: I’m aware that they have been making a strong effort.

FARYAL: Yes, they are, and those weapons are not supported by the government at all. Unfortunately. Like maybe it is—maybe I’m not well aware, but as I have heard they were the weapons that they restored all this time for—just so that they’re prepared, if anything happens in Panjshir and now they’re using young students who are not trained. They have lost their lives, and they’re still fighting others. They seem to be like putting forth a lot of effort, but Taliban are doing mass killings, going door by door killing, beheading children, killing women and men. I’ve seen horrible videos in social media of Taliban killing people who were from Panjshir. I just recently watched a video of like people from Panjshir getting abducted by Taliban. And it’s unbelievable. It’s terrifying to see all those things, but yeah, the government of Afghanistan was not well aware and was very weak. They could have fought, but they did not support the troops in the other provinces of Afghanistan. Maybe it was the fear or maybe they were not ready, but now all those weapons are left for Taliban. So now the government does not have any kind of weapon, except those people who are fighting in the resistance group right now in Panjshir. And I’m not sure if it’s enough. They don’t have enough food. They don’t have enough anything there. They don’t have electricity. Everything was cut off by Taliban and they did not let any kind of humanitarian aid to get inside Panjshir. They have blocked all the ways in.

PETER: And just to be clear, when you say “the government,” you’re talking about the former democratic government that was in place for 20 years. Not the current—

FARYAL: Yes, I should get used to saying “the former government”!

PETER: Well, I’m so sorry that you need to, because of course there’s no opposing religious minorities, there’s of course no women, there’s no anybody but the Taliban. And it seems like they are many people who were there 20 years ago—just older. This is one of the things that, you know, for me as an educator, my understanding is that the word Taliban actually comes from Arabic talib, meaning student.

FARYAL: Yes.

PETER: Is that right? You know, reflecting the fact that the group was started by Pakistani religious school students in the mid-1990s. But yeah, as an educator, I struggle with the irony of this term because it doesn’t appear to me that anybody’s learning. How do you think about it? Is it just my own, you know, liberal, Western bias or, how do you think of the meaning of the word Taliban in light of what these men do?

FARYAL: Well, it’s very ironic, as you said. Taliban, yeah, it means “students.” But I don’t understand, first of all, students of what? And second, students would respect other students, and they’re not. They’re not respecting anyone. They do not have any kind of respect for education. So I don’t really understand, first of all, like students of what? If it’s Sharia law, it’s at a very extreme level and it’s not even like—it’s not religion, I know. It’s very political. Yeah, that is a very ironic term, actually. And the fact that they don’t let other people become students, like real students, like going to school getting an education. They are making it so difficult. Recently I just watched a picture of female and male students in the university and how they should be separated. And then they did another demonstration of how women should dress up if

they go to universities. And that is not in our culture. I don’t know how students would learn something behind those black veils. Like, that’s horrible. Like what would happen in the summer? It would be so hard. How will they be able to study in their classroom? There’s so many things that like get on my nerves when I see these things. And I just don’t know where's the logic in it? It’s just all they think about is women and imprisoning them somehow, either with clothes or with other things.

PETER: We should say that this is an audio interview, so people can’t see you. But you do not wear the burqa. You do not conform to fundamentalist standards of dress. How do you think about the choice to, you know, how to dress, you know, what clothes to wear? What thinking goes into it for you?

FARYAL: Well, I love how our Afghan culture dresses. It’s very beautiful. It’s very colorful. It’s not black or too depressing. It has lots and lots of details, and it’s sewn very carefully and with a lot of time and effort. It’s very beautiful and colorful. I love it. I cannot wear it every day because it’s a little bit heavy, but we always wear our traditional dresses in weddings or other events. But I believe every woman should be given the right to dress how they want, even if it’s not it’s not “culturally appropriate.” My personal opinion is a little bit different. I don’t know what women in Afghanistan would think, but like I don’t wear a scarf, and my parents do not have any kind of problem with that. And they respect my choice. So yeah, this is how I am. And I think—I don’t know—in Islam, it was—maybe I’m not well aware, but hijab and burqa—that comes from the culture of Arab people, not Islam. And people confuse that. There are so many ways that you could look modest, but not covered all over with some black burqas. And I think every woman should be given the right to choose whatever they want to wear.

[57:22]

PETER: I wanted to go to a kind of larger question, because we first talked two weeks ago, and I know so much changes day by day. But I’d kind of like to set the stage, especially for U.S. listeners to say that the Watson Institute is an organization at Brown University, which is in Providence, Rhode Island, here in the U.S., so that’s an institute for international and public affairs. And they’ve reported that nearly a quarter of a million people—241,000 people—have been killed in the Afghanistan and Pakistan war zone since 2001—more than 71,000 civilians. They also cite a 2009 report from the Afghan Ministry of Public Health that at that time, in 2009, fully two-thirds of Afghans were suffering from mental health problems as a result of the conflict. That was 12 years ago. The human cost of this conflict has been horrific. However, as you note, as you have experienced, there were also some advances in opportunities, for women and girls in particular, as compared with life under the Taliban rule. You’ve also shared your belief that the U.S. should not have withdrawn from Afghanistan. I know that many things are in flux, and so many things have happened so quickly, but how do you think about it right now? Do you think it would have been better for the U.S. never to have established a presence in the country? Or how do you think about this question?

FARYAL: Maybe it would have been better, but I don’t know what would have happened to the people of Afghanistan if the U.S. wouldn’t have intervened at that time. But I don’t understand: one thing is 20 years of war against Taliban to replace Taliban with Taliban. It does not make any sense. It’s just going in the same direction. We’re going 20 years back, and this is sad.

PETER: Do you think there’s a benefit for what women, young women such as you have experienced so that you’re able to work towards a different Afghanistan?

FARYAL: Personally? Yes. I was given a lot of opportunity. After the fall of Taliban, I was able to go to school. It was not easy or not as my parents explain how they went to school as a girl, for example, because at that time [Ed. note: before the mid-1990s, the initial period of Taliban rule] things were much easier for women. But yeah, I was given a lot of opportunities, and it was thanks to the U.S., because I came here, I got my Bachelor’s and Master’s degree. If the U.S. wouldn’t have invaded Afghanistan, we wouldn’t have had those opportunities in the beginning. And I don’t know what would have happened to the women of Afghanistan at that time.

PETER: So what now? You’ve earned a Bachelor’s degree in psychology, a Master’s degree in sociology. And I know that you were planning further study and thinking about international policy, for example. So as you think about the possible U.S. role going forward, or the role, for that matter, of any other country that was involved in Afghanistan, what could a positive role be at this point?

FARYAL: Yeah, like for other countries not to not to interfere. For example, Pakistan right now is supporting Taliban somehow. And no one is talking about it. Like the news, the politicians, everyone is so silent, and Taliban somehow shows that they are actually fighting against Pakistan. And that’s just to fool people, like how they did a few days ago with the burqa, a demonstration of how women should wear the burqa. Some of those “women” were not women at all. They were Taliban actually behind the burqa. So yeah, they know their ways to fool people, but I was expecting more from the UN to do something, but I don’t know. No one is doing anything, especially right now when I’m seeing the news and watching all those horrifying videos of people getting killed by Taliban in Panjchir. And they’re starving to death. They don’t have any doctors. This is so sad.

PETER: The line is now, as you may know, among people in the United States government—aI’m talking about the White House and President Biden saying, Yes, we understand that women and girls are in danger in Afghanistan. But we also understand that they’re in danger throughout the world. And we want to do the things that we can as a separate country, not an occupying force, to deploy diplomatic means, to deploy humanitarian aid, for example, but not to continue a military presence. To try to support women’s rights, to try to support all human rights, to try to do that … I wanted to see how that sits with you. Does that make sense? Does that seem reasonable? Is there something more specific that you would like to see as far as a role, you know, especially given the U.S. presence over the past two decades, for the U.S. to play now?

FARYAL: Personally I wanted to go to Afghanistan this year to find a job there and work there because I wanted to work for women in Afghanistan. And I’m pretty sure, like my friends who graduated from here, they all went back to Afghanistan to work there. They had opportunities to leave and go abroad and study, or seek asylum in Europe or the U.S., but they didn’t. They decided to go back. And the ones that I know, they had to evacuate Afghanistan, not because they wanted to, because they were forced to. I do believe there were students who wanted to stay in Afghanistan and work there. I mean, I really appreciate the U.S. thinking of other ways to help Afghan women. But if Afghanistan was a better place where we didn’t have to face this from the beginning at all as women—why do we need to get displaced, why do we need to flee our country and not make it a better place? So many people have been saying that, which is true, but yeah, I understand U.S. getting exhausted of supporting Afghanistan, military-wise.

PETER: We spoke a little bit about when we talked a couple of weeks ago about your experience in school, and unfortunately the audio was not great on that conversation [so it couldn’t be used]. You said that your family was very supportive of your going to school, but that you had to go through hell every day to attend high school, for example, fearing the risk of suicide bombers, and that it was a great relief to come to the American University of Central Asia, because you didn’t have that fear anymore. I just wanted to ask if there was anything else that you wanted to share about your experience as somebody who had to fight for an education and had to be especially mindful of it.

FARYAL: Well, I just remembered a particular incident. The fear did not only come from getting targeted by Taliban, either in a bomb blast on our way to school, or like mines that were installed close to the roads. Whenever we would pass by a U.S. military vehicle, we should have this distance [gesturing] from them. And they had this stop sign, like red hand to not come closer than this particular distance. And now when we were coming back from school and we were in our transportation, a school van … and I was, I don’t know, 14 or 15. And I was told that sometimes the U.S. military, I mean the soldiers, sometimes they shoot civilians if they get very close to them. I was very afraid of that happening to me one day. And on this day, the soldier I remember in the vehicle was shouting at our driver to not come closer, but I don’t know, he was going a little bit fast and I ended up screaming in the car because I thought He’s going to shoot very soon. As a teenager, I was like, I don’t know, why did I go through that? Yeah. The other students were laughing at me because they thought it was so stupid. They thought that I shouldn't fear or that they wouldn't shoot, but they looked very serious. And then I remember how in the beginning I was treated when the U.S. military invaded Afghanistan in 2001. I was passing by a street and I was so, so excited to see them passing by the street because they would sometimes throw sweets to us or just like blow kisses from very far distance. And yeah, I was very excited to go to school when I was like five, four. I remember I would go with my mom and then I would be so excited to see them passing in the streets. And most of the time they would wave. I had both like the sweet memories, and then the part where I was afraid that they were going to shoot me. But I do understand that it was, I mean, it was their policy. They had to do whatever to to protect their lives. But I wish that did not happen to civilians. I wish that civilians were not involved, but it’s hard to avoid that. And I understand. But fear of death was not only coming from Taliban. So most of the time I was afraid of U.S. military vehicles to get in our way more than like being afraid of Taliban. Because most of the time, something would happen: a bomb would blast, or … because they were targeted, the U.S. military.

PETER: It must have been a strange transition because of course you had had very negative experiences. You told a story about a Talib assaulting your mother when you were very young—this must have been just about the time or just before the U.S. came into Afghanistan. And so of course you knew that there was the threat of of physical violence from Taliban, that they were very powerful, but then of course you shift over and then there is this, you know, U.S. military and that also comes with some threat of violence. It must’ve been a very difficult and disorienting childhood.

FARYAL: Not in the beginning, because in the beginning they were nice towards children, but then I heard like stories where they shot even little children, because they thought those children were a threat, and it might be true to some extent, not true to another, but I guess we don’t know for sure. So after that, I had that fear, but in the beginning, I was so excited. I would go to school happily to see them. And I still remember, like, they were all bald and and I thought like, All the Americans look like!

PETER: Wait, I’m sorry. All the Americans looked just bald, or they looked like something else?

FARYAL: Yes, bald. But it was a good thing for me. I don’t know. I liked it.

[61:14]

PETER: Can I ask if when you were in high school, was there a moment that you decided I want to continue? You know, I want to learn more, I definitely want to go to college to university to learn more. Was there something about it, or was it just that you could? I'm interested if there was maybe an idea or a field of study that got you, like fired up. I know you did your Bachelor’s in psychology, but I don’t know if you decided that you wanted to do that before you went to university. Was there something that made you say, like, I want to go to college?

FARYAL: Yeah, the drive for education came from my parents, first of all. They wanted me to have a degree because everyone in our family has a Bachelor's degree, and also a Master's degree as well. So after high school, I should have thought about what I want to study, but I specifically did not know psychology, but of course, continuing my education was a must. And it didn't only come from the family. Men and women who just graduate from the 12th grade in Afghanistan are not well respected by the society and also not given the opportunity to work. So I would have had less opportunity to work. And maybe I would have been less respected by people around me because the people of Afghanistan really do respect education, and all those people who—it does not matter if you’re a woman, but they would criticize all the time, like going abroad as a woman is not a good thing for any Afghan. I mean, maybe some families, they do allow that, but with a lot of struggles and difficulties, like my friends had a lot of difficulties convincing their parents to give them permission to study here. But apart from that, people are supportive of education. Everyone wants to become engineer or a doctor.

PETER: I remember that. That's in my notes, the jobs and the money. We got a lot of that in the U.S. as well. Very last thing. When we spoke before, you said, “I hope that Afghanistan is not just a trend right now, that the media will figure out a way to continue to cover Afghanistan.” I’ve been listening to reports about the many journalists who have had to flee the country, who have decided to flee the country for their lives, the threats on their lives. And you were very much hoping that the world will not forget about Afghanistan. Is there anything else that you would like for people to be thinking about, or is there any way that would recommend for us to continue to learn about what’s happening in Afghanistan? Because again, news is not easy to come by.

FARYAL: It's just for people to know that for Afghan women specifically, Afghanistan will not ever become a place to live. For those who think Biden’s decisions are so right, maybe it was right. And yes, I know that it was not all his decision. It was decided before, by other former presidents as well. But I just think the way it was done was not right. They have lost a lot of people. Afghans have lost a lot of lives as well. So I wish that could have been done more thoughtfully and more strategically, but yes, I want the world to know that Afghan women are fighting right now against Taliban. They're protesting in the streets while others are just watching and they’re making history. They are putting their lives in danger. Yeah, I cannot imagine. I would have done the same thing, I think, if I was in Afghanistan. I would have been as as angry as they are. I would like the world to always remember Afghan women and support Afghan women as much as they can, because Afghanistan is not a place anymore for them to live. And the situation right now looks very hopeless. I don't know if things will get better in Afghanistan. So for Afghan women it’s going to get even worse. I want the world to remember Afghan women as these rebellious, defiant women who would fight for their lives, who would risk their lives, fighting for their rights, and not being afraid of any kind of threat. I’m sure you have watched those pictures where Taliban have pointed their guns towards a woman. And she’s just looking at him back very angrily. That’s how far they can go to have their rights back. And most of them also say that they’re not doing this to be able to work in the government or work in a high-rank position in the government. They're doing it because they don't have freedom for themselves. And the thing is, according to our culture, to how we were raised or what we were taught, what we were taught was right—according to our culture, the way we dress, the way we play music, that’s all banned. And nothing looks like Afghan anymore. I don't know who they are, honestly. People are more worried about losing a sense of a big part of their identity, starting from the flag and then these dress codes and not being able to play music or sing, and that's a huge part of our culture. And it's so sad that it's been taken away from us. I want the world to know that that's not what Afghans want. I mean, men do not want it as well, but somehow they don't have the courage to take some serious steps, or to talk about it. But only those who are fighting in Panjchir are really courageous, they are risking so much. And they are people who are not trained to fight, but they are doing whatever they can to protect their lands, and they're also fighting for Afghan women’s rights as they told us. So yeah, I hope that will end well for Afghans.

[VO]: That's it for today's show! My great thanks to Duane Lacey and Faryal Haidary for joining me, and thanks to you for listening, sharing, rating, and reviewing Point of Learning. If you were looking for another reason to support this show, I will be donating all Patreon contributions for the month of October to help Afghan men, women, and children relocating to Buffalo. If you join by September 30th, you will help support that—details on the show page. Of course, you're also encouraged to donate directly to organizations supporting Afghans. The show page will also feature a list of reputable organizations, as well as a link to the episode of the Entitled podcast out of the University of Chicago Law School that featured Faryal last month. Special thanks to Sluggy, a Denver-based artist who accepted my challenge of remixing some traditional (and not so traditional) Kyrgyz music for today's soundtrack. I'd also like to give a shout-out to Jenn Starrett from putting Duane and me back in touch. Point of Learning is written, recorded, edited, and mixed by me here in Sunny Buffalo, New York. I'm Peter Horn, and I'll be back at you in a few weeks with artist and photography professor John Opera. See you then!