Last Days
In mid-September, I finally took my much-needed break and went to Thailand for a week. Before I left Bamiyan, I spent several days clearing out any evidence that I was an American. It was likely that visiting MSF staff would use my room while I was gone, and I felt it necessary to get rid of American newspaper clippings and magazines that friends and family had sent me. Each night, I used the papers as kindling for my bath water. I had saved the newspapers and magazines to bring me closer to home, but I knew that it would be better if they were not found.
In Thailand, I connected with Mike, the head of Freedom Medicine’s construction projects, who was retired and living in Bangkok. He’d arranged a hotel for me, and, after two days of travel, I arrived tired and dirty, my feet encrusted with months of grime. Instead of jumping into a real bed, I jumped into a warm and inviting bubble bath in my hotel room and scrubbed myself clean. I met Mike for breakfast, but all I was interested in was a cup of hot, black, brewed coffee. I returned to the hotel, slept for a while, and slipped back into the bath for another long soak before meeting Mike for dinner and then drinks at Cheap Charlie’s—a famously rustic and eclectic expat bar, which has since closed.
Although I was happy to be in civilization, Bangkok was an assault on my senses. There were too many people, too many lights, too many cars, too many shops, too much food to choose from, and too much noise. I felt overwhelmed by it all. We visited the Buddha temples, went on a tour of the city, and shopped for bargains at roadside stalls and shops, and in the time left over, I sat riveted to the BBC news on television.
On my last night in Thailand, I stopped alone at an outdoor café and drank chilled wine as I watched the people, the stars, the civility of life here, knowing that not so far away, life was so different for so many, an endless struggle just to survive. It was difficult to reconcile that there was so much in so many places and so little in so many others, and after seven days in the chaos of a busy tourist city, I was glad to head back to Bamiyan.
The trip back would take another two to three days, and, depending on weather and road conditions, I wouldn’t arrive until early October. My assignment with MSF would be finishing up in just weeks, but there was still so much to do for the people who’d become my family, my friends.
In early October, shortly after my return, I was told that MSF France had determined that we should close our outlying and mobile clinics. The very people so in need of our care would now lose it. MSF France felt that any emergency in Bamiyan was over, and they planned to redirect their resources.
MSF would inform the village councils that they would be ending their visits. The people here were used to disappointment; this was another in a long, endless line of defeats for the people here. Working the last of the mobile and outlying clinics was bittersweet; I knew that we had made an impact here, but I had fully expected the mobile clinics to continue to rove the countryside and provide health care in these distant, often forgotten mountainous regions. Shaidan, however, now had a permanent clinic, staffed by an Afghan physician and nurse who would also live there in the clinic building. Amir, though, would lose his job of chowkidor, and I hoped that would give him more time for his studies.
I didn’t really have the luxury of sitting and lamenting all that would soon be lost here; there was still a lot of work to finish up. At all of the clinics, we had initiated “ORS Corners,” where dehydrated babies and children could be rehydrated and observed for a day before being discharged home. So many deaths in babies result not so much from the primary disease, such as diarrhea, but from the often deadly consequences of severe dehydration. Around the world, we can save so many if we can only rehydrate them, a simple procedure. Taking the time to ensure rehydration also allowed us the necessary time to teach parents how to recognize and treat dehydration. Although we used and gave out packets of ORS (oral rehydration salts), it was easy enough to make at home using sugar, salt, and boiled water, and it was important that these people knew how to do that. We spent a lot of time teaching people how to make and use ORS. It may well have been our best and most lasting contribution here.
Though it had never really been consistent, the MSF expat team was in flux once again. People came and went with regularity, and we remained acquaintances, coworkers, but never really friends. We lived disparate lives in Bamiyan. I spent my free time with the villagers I’d come to know, or with the soldiers, or the Afghan staff. I spent more time at the ICRC staff house than I did at my own. I wanted to wring every bit of living here out of my experience in Bamiyan. I wanted to ride a donkey, eat with my fingers, work on my Dari skills, wash my clothes in the stream, eat dinner with the soldiers, and, when I was done, I wanted it to have mattered that I’d been here.
I had settled into this village as though I was one of them. I’d grown to love these stalwart people, these laughing children, the snowcapped mountains, the dusty roads, my secret meetings with the soldiers, and even, unbelievably, my mud room. I’d become a part of this place, even more so after a woman in Shaidan gave me a beautifully embossed antique cuff bracelet as a thank-you gift. I told her I’d wear it forever and remember her kindness every day. And I have.
I arranged a good-bye party at Mama Najaf’s. The remaining MSF staff, including all of the Afghans—interpreters, drivers, physicians, nurses—attended, along with my friends from ICRC. We gathered for a dinner of kebabs and bread and Coca-Cola, a rare opportunity for most of the national staff. We danced and sang and reminisced, and when it was time to go, the Afghan staff presented me with beautiful gifts, which they could ill afford and which will always be treasures to me. But the greatest treasure I received was the one of friendship with the people of Bamiyan.
Saying good-bye to the soldiers was difficult as well. Although Matt, Joe, and the Chief left Afghanistan shortly before I did, others would be here longer, still missing home and family, reliable hot showers, and cold beer. They told me that the United States was making plans to invade Iraq. My stomach churned at the news. “Have we been attacked?” I asked, my voice cracking.
“No,” the Chief said, “but we’re going in anyway.” He shrugged. “We do what they tell us.”
I spent my final days in Afghanistan wondering about an Iraq invasion. What would happen here, where the peace was tenuous, the Taliban still lurking in the mountains, their very presence still striking fear deep in the heart of this country? But who could I ask? My questions wouldn’t be answered here by a French team, and at this late stage, I didn’t want to invite any ire or doubts about who I really was. So, I spoke in my soft brogue and counted the hours until I could be myself once again.
I was to fly out of Bamiyan on a UN flight to Kabul, a rare opportunity to see my beloved Bamiyan from the air. As I picked up my suitcase to make the short trek to the landing strip, the neighborhood children watched in dismay, frowns draping their grimy faces. A mother I’d only waved to came out as well and took me aside. “Can you take my boys?” she asked, pointing to the brothers who were part of the magical band of children I’d come to love. “Lotfan, please,” she said softly just as Grace had asked in Africa only the year before. I could only shake my head. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I can’t.” But my brain suddenly filled with the possibility of bringing them all home. It wasn’t realistic. I knew that. Afghanistan doesn’t allow foreign adoptions of children whose parents are alive, but it was always there for me—the unspoken wish to be with them again.
The children hadn’t heard the mother’s plea, and they followed me happily to the airstrip. As the little plane circled and then came in for a bumpy landing, the children began to cry. “Don’t go,” one shouted, while another threw her arms around my legs. I bent to them and held them all in one long hug that would have to last a lifetime. I boarded the plane, my face pressed to the small window, and I waved as the plane took flight and rose higher and higher until they were lost from my view, but never from my memory.
Several months after I’d left Bamiyan, Aasif and some of the other Afghan staff managed to save and pool enough money to rent time on a village satellite phone to call me. On their first tries, they reached only my answering machine, which recorded the great consternation in their voices as they tried to understand why no one was speaking, and why they only heard beeps. “Hello, Rabitta, it us calling from Bamiyan. How are you?” And then there was silence until Aasif piped in. “Rabitta, Rabitta, are you there? Hello, Rabitta, hello, hello . . .” These days, modern technology has allowed us to keep in touch in other ways. Aasif is back in Kabul, married now and with children of his own, and we are friends on Facebook.
I’ve kept in touch, too, with the soldiers who provided me a respite from my Irish brogue and sometimes just kept me going with laughter, food, and soap.
In June 2004, five MSF staffers were ambushed and shot to death in cold blood as they returned to their compound from a mobile clinic in Bagdhis Province, northwest of Bamiyan. That tragedy brought to thirty the total number of aid workers killed in Afghanistan since January 2004. It was an extraordinarily high number. In July of that same year, MSF announced that they were closing all of their programs and leaving Afghanistan.1
Abdul had been right—the Taliban were back and they were more evil than ever, targeting the very people who were there to help. The stark reality was that the danger inherent in aid work had increased. It was no longer simple rocks, it was bullets and beheadings, and there was no safety net. No one, it seemed, could rescue the rescuers, and that simple fact made my heart ache. None of us would ever be really safe again, but if we ceased all aid work, then the Taliban would win, and that somehow seemed a worse fate. Many NGOs pulled their international staff back to Kabul, where they would be less vulnerable. But the threat remains, and, sadly, many aid workers—myself among them—have chosen to stay away until there is at least some semblance of safety. And with ISIS and Al-Qaeda joining the Taliban, that time may be far off.
Late in 2004, the Agha Khan Health Services, an NGO that supports health and development in some of the world’s most hardscrabble spots, stepped in to fund and upgrade the services provided at Bamiyan hospital. In 2017, they opened the new Bamiyan Hospital, a wonder of modern technology in the midst of such desolation. Today, they provide state-of-the-art outpatient and inpatient services, emergency care, radiology and lab capability, major surgery, and—so vital for the women here—expanded obstetric services, including blood transfusions.2 It is the best thing that could have happened there, and someday I hope to see it all for myself.
Although tragedy and danger still linger in Afghanistan, triumph does as well. The long drought has finally ended, farmers are harvesting crops again, and though there is a long way to go, there are an estimated three million children now attending some form of school. The literacy rate for girls is only 32 percent, compared to almost 62 percent for boys, but there is better access to health care for everyone, including women, throughout the country.3
And the children I came to love so are still with me, their precious images running through my mind—Hamid with a sturdy walk and a steady smile, Amir clutching his UNICEF notebook, Zara, Hussein, Noorem, and the other children from the village, and little Nasreen—always ready to pick a fight with any boy who dared her, and who reminded me of the inspiring tale of the lady warrior. Perhaps the lady warrior does exist after all. It is certainly her legend that continues to inspire the people of Bamiyan and beyond, because despite its persistent miseries, Afghanistan is a place where even in its darkest hours, hope lives, and, for me, that hope is never more evident than in the legend of the lady rebel.