Friends from Afghanistan

Memories and prayers have flooded my heart in recent months.

My connection with the Afghani people dates back to the early 90's. Our business, MacroSun International, works directly with artists and craftspeople in South and Southeast Asia. Part of our mission is to find artists in need, make a direct personal connection, and establish a market for their goods at our retail gallery and website in the States. While traveling in India in 1993 fairly close to Pakistan, I heard stories from local friends of beautiful jewelry, textiles, rugs and trinkets available from the large Afghani refugee community in Peshawar, Pakistan. From North India, I went first to Lahore, Pakistan, working with local craftspeople, including some Pashtun tribesmen. I then made my way overland on a crowded midnight bus through the capital city of Islamabad and on to Peshawar.

The buses and trucks of western Pakistan have to be seen to be believed. They are like a motorized version of the caravans of old, a kind of Middle Eastern circus look. Colorful verses of the Qur'an interspersed with an Arabian looking rock star decorate the sides of over the road trucks, set off with spinning pinwheels and a kind of hula skirt of chains. Driving is the most extreme game of "chicken" one can imagine, with millimeters and milliseconds separating the bus from a direct hit with oncoming traffic, and almost certain death. Horns are more like greetings, and lights and windshield wipers are turned off even in midnight rain, as the driver explained it, to conserve gas.

Peshawar is by any account an intense and colorful place. It is in the northwest "frontier" of Pakistan, just across the Khyber Pass from the Afghani border. It has the look and feel of what I would picture the "Old West," a true frontier town - but with a Middle Eastern twist. Bazaars are spread throughout the city, with each concentrating on a particular trade or craft. I headed to the silver bazaar, which is densely packed with stall-like shops filled with silver trinkets. I walked through narrow passageways into courtyards, in ancient buildings, up multiple levels. Each stall had a cousin or uncle in an adjoining shop. To get to the silver bazaar from my modest guesthouse, I walked past the shoe bazaar and what was apparently the "dental bazaar." I determined this after a half-mile of shops featuring sign after sign of a set of cartoon-like false teeth choppers and brightly colored Arabic script. In another part of town is the "Smuggler's Bazaar" and the gun bazaar.

Whenever traveling to a new country or region, I have found the best rule of thumb is a simple one: if you treat people with respect and courtesy, you will also be respected. It is also the best strategy for building a business - and certainly makes travel and life more enjoyable and meaningful. This does not imply being naïve or frivolous; one must be mindful, with eyes clearly open, moving slowly, aware of local customs and dress. Of course, there are times when prejudice by some small segment of a population can arise - in American, Asia, Africa, Europe - and make life difficult. But I found building relationships and partnerships based on mutual respect was not an especially difficult task with the Afghani refugee community.

The hospitality of the Afghani people who became my friends and "business partners" at the time is like nothing I had ever experienced. In a funny, cross-cultural kind of way, the closest comparison was the hospitality I witnessed growing up in a small farming community in north central Missouri. Before Afghanis even discussed any business in all of the tiny stalls, a cup of tea and conversation was offered. The conversation was personal; of greatest interest was what my life was like, how my family was, how many children I had, etc. There was never any talk about abstract global politics. When the topic of religion came up, I explained that I was the son of a Jew and Baptist. There was more interest in the fact that my parents were of mixed religious background than any reaction to the nature of my faith.

When a meal was served, I was immediately included. Almost awkwardly for me, I would be given the nicer bits of meat, delicious Afghani rice, and naan bread, and treated as an honored guest. It is an injunction of the Islamic faith to treat guests and travelers well. I have experienced this hospitality in many Muslim communities, but there was something especially deeply moving about being a "guest of honor" by extremely poor refugees driven out of their homeland, and living in tents by the side of the road.

There is no question that the need of the Afghani refugee community was then, and is now, great. Many of the people I encountered then had fled the country of Afghanistan with literally just the clothes on their back and a few small trinkets. These people were from all types of backgrounds, many of them well educated and cosmopolitan. One man from whom I bought silver trinkets in a tiny stall had been the Minister of Agriculture in the former Afghani government in Kabul. Another had been a professor at the University. Others were farmers, shepherds, shopkeepers, fierce and chivalrous Pashtun tribespeople. They were from Mazar-e-Sharif, Herat, Ghazni, Kondoz, Kandahar, and other villages in a small country suddenly thrust into the front pages of today's international newspapers. Many had stayed for a full decade during the horrors of the Soviet invasion in the late 1970's. The vast majority of people simply wanted peace and freedom. Year after year, there was no peace in Afghanistan. In two return trips to Peshawar in the mid 90's, a horrific situation in Afghanistan was getting worse. The Taliban was coming to power. Civil war was raging. More people were fleeing by the millions back and forth through the barren, desert passes. There were more guns, and more innocent people dying, more farms and homes bombed and destroyed, leaving more refugees with no place to go. What had once been primitive skirmishes between rival tribes, were now fortified by heavy artillery and the tools of modern warfare. Afghanistan by some strange fate had become the final pawn in the last showdown between the superpowers. The fallout affected innocent people from all parts of the country for decades to come.

One young fellow in his early twenties, named Geldi, became my buddy during my initial trip to Peshawar. He lived with his uncle and a vast extended family in a tent by the side of the road, filled with carpets and little else save a few cooking utensils. Geldi had spent most of his life as a refugee. He taught me a great deal about the different areas of Afghanistan and its recent history - not from the perspective of a Western journalist or academician might, but as one who lived it. I respected him a great deal, not just for his survival skills but for his resilience and quick wit.

I bought many carpets from Geldi and his family - beautiful, densely knotted patterns of old organically dyed colors and tribal kilim flat-weaves. The textiles, once traditionally produced in Afghanistan, are works of art of the highest level, truly reflections of the Almighty, and the beauty and depth and intricacy of the culture. The carpets being produced at that time were ironically often depictions of Soviet helicopters, tanks, and bombs exploding. Even the culture at that time was woven into their carpets.

Besides textiles, the most beautiful and richly blue semiprecious stone lapis lazuli comes from Afghanistan. Much of the Afghani jewelry is inlaid with lapis, or it is ground down and used as a rich blue pigment. Afghani craftspeople make beautiful, intense fine silver and gold jewelry and chunky tribal headdresses, bracelets, anklets, and jewelry of all types. It is often decorated with verses from the Qur'an and intricate geometric designs. Verses from the Qur'an are also etched in the deep reddish-brown stone, carnelian. Afghanistan is known for especially fine metalwork, particularly from Ghazni. Many of the traditional musical instruments, such as the Rubab (the ancestor of the Western violin), are themselves works of art, with intricate carvings and inlaid bone and mother-of-pearl. Most often the textiles and jewelry are given as gifts for weddings.

Much of the information we get about Afghanistan comes from TV and western journalists with its inherent distortions. Interestingly, the information the Afghani refugees get about our country also comes from movies, eastern journalists and satellite TV feeds, also with distortions. One of the most fascinating cultural interplays I can recall was watching a conservative tribal Afghani looking at a satellite feed of MTV at a Peshawar hotel. A pop video of Madonna was being aired. The Afghani looked on, not in disgust or judgment, but simply trying to make sense of what exactly was happening on the screen and why.

Though it is unclear as of this writing how the situation in Afghanistan will unfold, it is clear that there is work ahead if a sustainable peace is to be achieved. It should be obvious to most Americans that the average Afghani had as much to do with the atrocity in New York as the average American had to do with the atrocity in Oklahoma City. In fact, most Afghans were victimized by a horribly oppressive regime, and thrown into life circumstances shaped by superpower nations and extremists far beyond their control.

To rebuild Afghanistan, something more than charity will be needed. Respect and mutual understanding are essential. Though our business, MacroSun International, is little more than a drop of water in the ocean of international trade, for some few individual human beings, it makes a difference. Their lives also make a difference to our employees in St. Louis, and to those who enjoy the artwork in our shops and on our website.

Simple personal friendship or the powerful medium of artistic expression can help us cut through cultural distortions. Differences in culture and tradition are not threats, but something to be embraced, an opportunity to open our eyes to new perspectives. Underneath the façade of these differences, we experience the common humanity that unites us all. Human beings from Kabul to Kansas share much the same aspirations for peace, care of their loved ones, and sharing good times. We are all equal partners in the global community.