It wasn’t just the couch where we had spent so much time during the war that was missing. Everything had been destroyed or stolen: the furniture, the wiring, the pipes, the sinks and tubs, the cabinets, even the glass in the windows. The roof, walls, and front door were all that remained. But there was one thing that could not be destroyed: my memories. My house was now an empty, battered shell, but in my mind’s eye it was full of people and voices. I could hear the cook yelling at Baba Naeem and Baba Naeem yelling back even louder. If I could bring back these memories, surely I could bring back the house itself.
I bought a padlock for the front door.
As I sat in the Kabul Bank waiting to talk to the loan officer about a loan to rebuild my house, I overheard him talking. “Send 100,000 to my account in Switzerland.” He was stealing the money intended to rebuild our country. I was outraged and wanted no part of this corruption. I borrowed money from a private lender at a much higher interest rate.
With the money I received, I hired Pakistani workers who had come to Kabul in large numbers because there was much work to be done and much money to pay for it. They did good work but would often return to Pakistan after earning some money, so I constantly had to replace them. And there were other problems as well. After eating, they would toss their leftovers in my front yard.
“You’re throwing your garbage in my garden,” I said one day, pointing at the soggy tea bags, banana peels, crusts of bread, and clumps of other food. “Do you do this in your own yard?”
“Baleh, we do,” one replied. “It’s good for the grass.”
Eight months later my house was finished. It had taken over twenty years to realize the dream of returning to my house and to feel the happiness of being home once again.
I should have been content, but as long as Hazrat Ali occupied my house in Jalalabad, it meant the warlords were still in control. I had recovered my house in Kabul because the government had more guns. Hazrat Ali had thousands of men with guns—far too many for even the government to take on. But if Afghanistan was to have a future, it was necessary to restore the order of the past. I would not rest until I recovered my house in Jalalabad. The United States was supposed to be helping Afghanistan, a country destroyed by war for which it was partly responsible. But whatever good was being accomplished in Afghanistan, whatever good faith was being won, was destroyed when the United States invaded Iraq in March 2003. The Afghan people viewed America as its savior. But the people of Afghanistan are Muslim. When the United States invaded Iraq, it lost all credibility in the Muslim world.
The United States thought that by driving the Taliban from Afghanistan, they had defeated them, but it failed to understand how the Taliban had infiltrated Afghan society. In the Afghan tradition there is a separation between the laws of the mosque and those of the tribe. Religious matters are dealt with by religious leaders. Social matters are dealt with by tribal elders. But the Taliban had assassinated tribal elders, even in mosques at wedding parties and at funerals. They educated the youth in the schools of the mosques and taught them that strict Islamic law controls not only religious issues but social issues as well. The Taliban destroyed respect for the tribal elders and undermined their authority. The Iraq invasion reenergized the Taliban and gave them new support among radical Muslims intent on retaking Afghanistan.