Snowball fights, Ethnic clashes

On Wednesday we returned exams. Everyone was excited to get them back and I have the impression that students seem to better understand the expectations we have for the class. I’m not sure they have had a class like this before where they have to…do stuff. I gave out some chewing gum and playing cards to the students who scored in the 90’s. At lunchtime, one student has been inciting some serious snowball fights. AS is one of these naturally bright guys who is also very socially adept. He organized the students to photocopy the English version of our text. Mary thought he was going to flunk the first exam, I think because he’s so suave you think he won’t be bright. Anyway, he is the one who tries to get the snowball fights going. I’m starting to think I created a monster. Other people sometimes go in and out of the library that’s resulted in some collateral damage… After class one of the students, N, was telling me that his father went to Minnesota to study public administration. He also told me his Dad went to a hockey game that was “room only for standing.” He’d also visited the “provinces” of New York and Washington. About that time, D, the Office Manager for Pragma here, showed up. I introduced him to N and since N had told me soccer was his favorite sport, I told him about how D had been on something akin to the Afghan national team for soccer. During the Taliban! Yes, D told when I first met him that he loved soccer and had played at a very high level in Afghanistan. I thought that kind of thing was outlawed by the Taliban, but D maintains that he has photo proof—someone took a photo of him secretly after a match or something. I couldn’t read N—if he was incredulous, impressed, or kind of scared. Anyway, the conversation moved on and we talked about the future of Afghanistan. N expressed doubts but D piped up that things were improving “every day—just look at two years ago compared with today,” he said, “We’re optimistic about the future of Afghanistan…” That morning on the ride to the university, A (the Massoud-hat guard) was trying to explain in hand motions and a few words in English the way the fighting was in one part of the city: “A” and he made like an airgun shooting; “R” and he shifted to indicate the other side also shooting an airgun. A is our cook, who is Hezara. R is sort of our housekeeper, and he is Pashtun, I think. So I asked D and R about this on the ride back (they had come to the university to see about fixing a couple things in the classroom). They laughed, so I gathered that A had been having some fun with me. But what he had been explaining was that the different ethnic groups had fought—just not A and R specifically. R left the country for Pakistan during the fighting, but D was in Kabul the entire time. They tried to explain a bit about the different factions and the fighting. Calm, helpful, handsome D talked about how he’d seen lots of people killed “with my own eyes…they used a special, long nail through the head…” “…” What the hell do you say to that? God willing, I will never see something like that. Are you the same person afterward? How does that change a person? How many people in this country have seen that kind of thing? And how can they live with the people who perpetrated it? And I just can’t understand how a person could do that to someone else. I can pretty much understand shooting someone. You have a gun, you pull the trigger and over there somewhere the person falls dead. I’m simplifying, but it’s a quick, slight movement. But this stuff coming out of Iraq, bodies found with drill holes, electro burns, fingernails pulled off…how on earth do you build up the hatred to do that? Or is it hatred? Maybe total detachment? I just cannot fathom that kind of darkness existing in someone’s heart… And you wish you could say it’s just “them.” I remember being so upset about the story of James Byrd, Jr. Daud went on to say that the people would start killing each other again if the ISAF left the country—only 15 minutes after he had just been expressing optimism about the future of Afghanistan!