The Afghan Queen: A True Story of an American Woman in Afghanistan (31 page)
Read The Afghan Queen: A True Story of an American Woman in Afghanistan Online
Authors: Paul Meinhardt
The Great Game of Cosmic Energy Recycling
I suggest that the entire Cosmos is alive, because all forms of energy are alive, from the smallest energy string to the Cosmos itself, IT’S ALIVE! What does it mean to be alive? No real agreement exists on defining life, so my theory is as good as any other. For an energy particle to be alive it must move, reproduce and have some degree of intelligence or code.
The Great Cosmic Game is the story of recycling energy in the Cosmos. In my view, the Cosmos is a perpetually recycling, living, totality of energy:
The Cosmos expands from a compact, unstable singularity (consisting of all weakened energy) into a new cosmos at
0
° curving, cooling and expanding over a 14-billion year cycle. We are now at about
180
° or 7-billion years, half-way through the current cosmic cycle.
At
360
° or about 14-billion years, black holes attract all weakened energy and each other, like big fish consuming smaller fish, until there’s only one “singularity,” super-concentrated Cosmos without space-time or dimension. The singularity remains in an extremely unstable geometry.
Like a tanker of gasoline compressed into a thimble, the singularity expands instantly at trillions of degrees of heat, cooling rapidly and expanding until the point of the next cosmic singularity, 14-billion years later. This is all speculation, of course.
The point is that we are all part of the Great Game of information-energy exchange. Your Great Game in Afghanistan is a real part of the Cosmic Great Game. At least that’s my take on it. Yours in horniness, Love, Paul
In February, 1979, the U.S. ambassador was murdered while a swat team stormed his kidnappers’ hideout. Since then all sorts of changes had taken place. My son brought a notice from school. The American school grades nine through twelve were going to be moved to Pakistan, probably just over the border, in Islamabad. It would be a boarding school, but the students would be bused back to Kabul on weekends. Lower grades would be moved out of Kabul.
My Afghan friends thought the shooting would initiate some type of military action. Looking across Chicken Street, I saw dozens of soldiers with rifles and bayonets. Rosy, Kim, Kit and I met for breakfast at the Neptune café. They assured me that there would be no military response and that it would all be settled diplomatically.
[After the April, 1978 coup, relations deteriorated. In February, 1979, U.S. Ambassador Adolph “Spike” Dubs was murdered in Kabul after security forces burst in on his kidnappers. The U.S. then reduced bilateral assistance and terminated a small military training program. All remaining assistance agreements were ended after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
Before the 1980’s Soviet war, Afghanistan pursued a policy of neutrality and nonalignment in its foreign relations, being one of a few independent nations to stay neutral in both World War I and World War II. In international forums, Afghanistan generally followed the voting patterns of Asian and African non-aligned countries. During the 1950s and 60s, Afghanistan was able to use the Russian and American need for allies during the Cold War as a way to receive economic assistance from both countries.
However, unlike Russia, America refused to give extensive military aid to the country as the government of Daoud Khan developed warmer ties with the USSR, while officially remaining non-aligned. Following the Marxist coup of April, 1978, the government, under Nur Muhammad Taraki, developed significantly closer ties with the Soviet Union and its communist satellites.
After the December, 1979 Soviet invasion, Afghanistan’s foreign policy mirrored that of the Soviet Union. Afghan foreign policymakers attempted, with little success, to increase their regime’s low standing in the noncommunist world. With the signing of the Geneva Accords, President Najibullah unsuccessfully sought to end the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan’s isolation within the Islamic world and in the Non-Aligned Movement.]
*
My sixteen year old son Kirk, told us about his day. The Americans, and especially the students, had been strongly cautioned about kidnapping. They were told to stay in groups, to go only to public places, no solo dates, and they had been drilled about avoiding kidnappers or giving out information as to their goings and comings.
I suspected they were cautious about Kirk, since he and I had many Afghan friends. For my information, Kirk wrote the following in my journal:
Boy-o-boy, everyone is going mad. To start my exciting story, I’ll tell you how I rushed to school even though it was closed. The International School for American Students was closed for the preparation of a government festival tomorrow. They were closed late this morning. Even the baseball game was canceled at Newman field.
The pathetic thing is there wasn’t even school support for the festival and Mom gave me 100 AFs ($2.25) for a taxi so that I could attend school. It wasn’t so bad since I called Rachelle, a girl from school, to go out tonight. She said at 7 p.m. her friends and I could go somewhere.
I heard that she went to see
Twilight’s Last Gleaming
, at least that’s what her brother said, but she never showed.
This is life in Kabul, no schedules, no sense of time. People here just come and go when the mood takes them. They are taught to be suspicious of Afghans and each other.
The Americans are kind of paranoid of military, pickets, demonstrations, and Afghans in general. The American kids say the Afghans in the bazaars always try to rip them off. But, I am always well treated. Of course, they know I’m the son of the ‘Afghan Queen,’ as they call Mom.
The Afghan merchants say, ‘Oh, I’m just happy to be a poor man, just look into my shop.’ I begin to realize that life goes on here and these merchants are the privileged class. But, outside the cities and towns, most Afghans are impoverished serfs. My Afghan friends tell me they are trying to liberate the serfs by giving them possession of the land.
I phoned Sherry once again, she’s my American connection. I now realize that she has given me many wrong numbers. I don’t know if it’s accidental or intentional. After 30 minutes on the phone, I told her I wanted Jenny’s number not Rachel’s or Lisa’s. She claims not to know who I’m talking about, until I pointed Jenny out at the baseball game.
At the game I learned that my friends would go to Marco Polo’s tonight for spirits. So without warning I showed up as the stalker. Laurie says to me, “How did you know we were going here?” I replied that she spelled it out at the game: “See you all at Marco Polo’s tonight.”
Later that evening we went to the American teen center next to the Datsun place. We danced to a disco. The place was full of big lighting effects, revolving mirrored ball and lit dance floor. I danced with some gals I met for the first time. They were from Germany and Denmark, in their twenties, I think, and really sexy.
On the bus to the hotel I talked with Jenny’s boyfriend Chris. The stupid Hercules movies were fun, we both agreed. Films like the Sinbad series give kids a magical view of the Middle East and that is about as far from reality as you can get.
Chris told me that the embassy kids were given lessons almost daily on avoiding kidnapping. He and the other embassy kids were frightened and lived with an increasing sense of fear. I told Chris that I just finished reading the
Amityville Horror
. I said that I would bring it to school for him. It might take your mind off the kidnapping stuff, I said.
Here in Kabul, the Afghans and the kids at the American School have no sense of the threat of pollution and nukes. At school, we learn about feudalism and serfs in Europe, but no mention is made of serfs in present day Afghanistan.
At the end of the lesson, big mouth me told the teacher that a few miles outside of Kabul we could study serfs first-hand. The teacher, a Mormon, said that we must avoid insulting the Afghan government, and that means avoiding the Afghan issue of serfs.
I told the teacher that the Afghan government is trying to end serfdom. He agreed. We are all aware of the Afghan effort, but bringing up the subject in class might be considered interference by a foreign nation, he said.
As we walked out of class, he offered me a ride to the hotel and said, “The kidnapping and murder changed everything. Now, with the Russian presence, it’s a whole new ballgame, and the U.S. will be kicked off the playing field, I suspect.
“The new Afghan government called in the Russians, and the Kalq party leans toward the Russians more and more. Since your Mom is in business with some of the Kalq ministers, she is suspect. That’s why we are cautious with you, Kirk. We fear that you are passing information about the school to your Mom, and it’s natural for students to keep parents posted about school.”
Kirk told me about this and he told his teacher that he talked with me only about the school work and ball games. He did not provide specific information about students or staff. He explained to his teacher that he was aware of his awkward position as a student and understood why he was not fully trusted by other students.
Today I was a baseball hero. I got a triple and a homer at the game this morning. I was hitting better than I ever thought I would. The next game in the early afternoon was so slow that I was able to play some tapes on my battery tape cassette player. It got so hot and the game became so tiresome that we ended it at mid-afternoon.