Holy Books

In Afghanistan, villagers often asked me if I were a man "of the book." I told them that I owned a Bible, and that pleased them enormously.

"The best is if you were a Moslem," they often said to me. "But if you are a Christian or a Jew, that is good also, because you have a book. The worst would be if you were an infidel (کافر)."

I thought about this recently when we were cleaning out my old apartment and sorting my books. My kids discovered that I had kept two Bibles from my boyhood in Michigan, one from Royal Oak and one from Bay City.

They decided to save them as family heirlooms.

As a teacher in Afghanistan I learned to speak, read and write the local dialect of Farsi, which is known as Dari. The language is not difficult to learn, as languages go; it follows the pronunciation rules of Arabic largely, which has only a few guttural sounds that prove difficult for native English speakers to master.

There were three main radio signals that reached our village -- the BBC, Radio Moscow and the Voice of America. There also were occasional government broadcasts from Kabul and Beijing. There were no commercial stations like back home. So for me, no Motown, no rock 'n roll, no country.

As I listened to the BBC's proper English and compared it to my dialect from the Midwestern U.S., it became easy for me to identify with Dari speakers. I, too, spoke a colonial version of my mother tongue.

Takhar (تخار) Province is far to the north and east of Kabul, on the other side of the mighty Hindu Kush (هندوکش) mountains. The name means "killers of Hindus," and history reveals they are well-named. It was a deeply religious region, where Islam was embedded in every aspect of daily life.

Peace Corps Volunteers were carefully trained in cross-cultural sensitivities and in Afghanistan that included religious sensitivity. Before arriving in Central Asia I knew very little about Islam, so I decided to read the Koran (Quran).

It reminded me of the Old Testament of the Bible, which naturally stirred my curiosity about the historical accuracy of accounts of the lives of Moses, Jesus and Muhammad. So I read other books as well. 

Anyway, once I had read the Koran, and could quote from it, I gained major street cred with my students. (The literacy rate was extremely low in Afghanistan at that time; even today it stands at less than 50 percent of the adult population.)

Interestingly, it was some of my other readings -- Marx and Lenin -- that helped me with the most precocious students. Education was doing what it does best, opening up their minds, and they were playing around with idealistic and in my view unrealistic ideas like Communism and socialism.

It was clear to me that some of their ideas originated with those radio broadcasts from Radio Moscow and Radio Beijing, because I recognized the talking points. These were the boys who frequently ignored or even belittled the Mullahs who taught their religion classes.

At that time, circa 1970, Afghanistan was a kingdom with a benign monarch, M. Zahir Shah, who had been educated in Europe and favored Western-style reforms. No one knew it at the time, but he was to be the last Afghan King. Before long he would be overthrown and a pro-Communist regime installed in his place.

Subsequently, the Soviets invaded and a long era of war without end ensued, which has not subsided to this day, four decades later.

***

All of this history, including the personal aspects, rushed back to me yesterday as I watched the President walk from the White House to a nearby church, where he held up a Bible for photographers.

In order to accomplish this photo op, the law enforcement forces guarding the President from protestors fired tear gas and rubber bullets into the peaceful crowd and forced it to vacate Lafayette Park, across from the White House.

Once the protesters had been chased away, the reality show commenced.

***

The sun is out, the light is bright. Birds are singing, my grandchildren are dancing into their summer. The coastal sky is blue, the fog of recent days is a distant memory, and a gentle breeze flows in from the west.

My reporter friends have sent me videos they shot with their cellphones over the weekend in Atlanta and Oakland. I've seen other videos from all over the country courtesy of CNN and other purveyors of the news.

Sheltering in place has become a lifestyle. Multiple cups of coffee are noticeably more important to my mornings. Romantic movies span my afternoons and sometimes leak into my dreams at night.

Life proceeds. The elderly, the poor and minorities are disproportionately being weeded out of the human race. Memories only they can give voice to are being lost, one family at a time.

I'm the custodian of memories only I can give voice to for my family. You are the same, at any age. Cherish your memories, cherish life and if you are a religious person, cherish your faith. Don't let a charlatan steal that from you.

These are the times we all need every prayer we can get.

-30-