Only about ten days, and already almost no one in Kabul is talking about Iraq any more. If they do, sometimes sympathy shows through, for those who are defending themselves and making life hard for the powerful coalition. The fact that it’s a dictatorship seems to count for little: to the poor, who are always forced to obey, every government is despotic.
They have plenty of experience of that here. What you can sense very clearly is that Afghans are afraid of being forgotten. The only important thing about Afghanistan is its geographical position as a link between East and West. No other wealth, no oil.
“If we’re abandoned, we’ll stay a third-world country”, comments Kabir, the principal of our school for children with disabilities. “With all the attention focused on new conflicts, the aid promised won’t arrive, there’ll be no reconstruction and there’ll be more power in the hands of the local lords. Things will be worse and worse for us.”
He complains that so far he’s seen no sign of real change. Take health, for example. And he points to his friend Ayub, the one who was convinced that everything was going to be fine in Afghanistan very soon and was happy to have got back his job in the ministry, which he’d lost under the Taliban. Two weeks ago, Ayub came to the orthopaedic centre to get a new leg. “I haven’t much time for physiotherapy and tests. My wife’s going to have a baby very soon and I need to be with her. Can you be quick?” But a short time later he disappears.
Today he’s come back to apologise. He tells us they’ve taken her into the maternity hospital. That everything there is so dirty that patients bring their own sheets and pillow cases and food from home. He’s been going back and forth, and doing the rounds of the relatives to get a loan.
In Afghanistan, woe betide you if you get sick. In a health system which officially provides for free hospitalization and treatment, Ayub pays everyone from the porter to the stretcher-bearer, from the nurses to the doctor. “We have to operate”, they tell him suddenly. He buys gauze, anaesthetic, suture threads and disinfectant. After a few minutes in the operating theatre, the nurse announces that the baby has been born with no problem at all, no Caesarean, a miracle. Naturally, he won’t be getting back the money he paid in advance, or the surgical equipment.
“A tried and tested scam, that works”, comments Ayub. “Never mind about the money, I’ll sell the TV set. Mother and baby are fine, and that’s what matters.” We give him a present of rice, flour and tiny clothes for newborns, which we got from the Italian soldiers. The bootees, which are beautiful – crocheted pink, blue and yellow ones – don’t match, but Ayub doesn’t mind. Much moved, he says his will be the most elegant baby in the whole of Kabul – “titanic”, which means at the height of fashion. He thanks us and goes off with the old prosthesis under his arm.
“It’s going to take him a year to pay off his debts. It’ll always be like this, and even worse if the world forgets about us”, concludes Kabir, shaking his head. That’s what I’m afraid of myself too.
Alberto Cairo
