The eyes peer back at me through the burka's mesh. This is a forbidden act, a secret rendezvous. My camera
set up in a discreet bathroom in an attempt to unveil a hidden aspect of the world
of Afghan women. This probably sounds like the beginning of some risqué fling
or a dodgy porn film. However, all is not as it appears and perceptions are
deceiving. Images so evocative. If I wrote about a woman who fled to our
guesthouse after being abused by her husband, this veiled figure would
represent all that offends western sensibilities about the rights of women in
Afghanistan and the various ways in which they are oppressed and treated as
dehumanised chattels. What if I said that the photo shoot was contrived so I
could steal a glimpse from the other side of the burka and get a feel for the
claustrophobic and sensory deprivation experienced when you cannot see properly,
keep bumping into things and risk tripping on its edges or catching them on
door handles. Who is this person beneath the burka and what is it that we see
when we observe this distinctly Afghan item of clothing? The point is not to
talk about the burka per se, not how
it came into usage under the Taliban or remains a daily reality for a large
percentage of women in Afghanistan, but to use the image (above) to comment on
being known. Let me simply say that I have known very few Afghan women and the
barriers that exist between the sexes are significant. However, human beings
and their desires will always find a way to defy even the most severe societal
strictures. We will not be regulated even if that means risking a dangerous
liaison or harming ourselves in an attempt to escape bad relationship. Possums
have been known to chew off a leg rather than remain trapped by a paw in a claw
trap. Every year Afghan women immolate themselves to end the torment of
loveless marriages. Some are happy. We were made to thrive, not merely survive,
to know and be known. We long to belong.
I am profoundly grateful for friendships made during my time as an
aid worker. Above all these are perhaps the things to treasure most and yet our
disparate lives will probably not cross that often. This saddens me and leaves
me feeling empty. There are so many kind, good and capable people in all the
countries I have worked. Many of the national staff I know could make things
much better than I ever could, if only they had the chance. Whatever we have or
have not done as a humanitarian community over the past four years, the
question that is beginning to trouble me is what I have become. We never stay
the same and all these experiences have shaped me in ways I cannot comprehend. I
thought I could "make a difference" and a difference has been made
for every action has its reaction but was it even remotely like what I hoped
for or believed possible? I have not seen enough change for the better. Returning
to Afghanistan gave me an opportunity to revisit the place where it all
started. In the end I went back not for the projects or 'mission', I went back
to make sense of my connection to this troubled, beautiful land that captivated
me. It has felt a bit like Joseph Conrad's Heart
of Darkness when Kurtz is found deep in the Congo interior, talking to his
demons "oh, the horror, the horror". We see so much suffering in this
world and nobly attempt to tackle injustice, poverty and death but sometimes I
wonder who are the real monsters. Perhaps the brute to be exterminated is me. I
seem to have become on some levels like the people I tried to serve, an
emotional, intellectual and spiritual refugee, traumatised by exile.
The landscape sweeps away behind me vast and barren, formed over
the ages it has seen everything and shed no tears. It only soaks up the hate,
hurt and hopes to keep on giving life and passage to all who pass through,
accepting that people, always with a capacity for tremendous love will tread
their unmistakably human footprints upon it forever, doing their best and worst
to it and one another. And then you meet someone amazing and it's simple, you
want to be with her. Wrapped up in your response to the suffering of this
broken world, lonesome journeys full of heartbreakingly
beautiful views was all along a thinly veiled longing to share this adventure
together, a fitful search for a companion to affirm what these eyes have seen, the
devastation and the joy, and even whisper that everything will be alright. But
she is headed in as you are getting out, or you are stuck in the DRC while
Syria steals her affections. Love doesn't happen. Shitty timing, the off key
melody plays. And you knew it would be that way.
She pushed her finger assertively up my anus and it was then I
knew that I was back. These contracts abroad always end with such medical
assessments and while the purely physiological can be dealt with swiftly, the
psychological effect is more difficult to probe. A necessary reality check to
assess what really happened inside while I was 'out there', a context so
different that it feels like another world. Hard to imagine I was ever there,
even a day or two later. Awaking from that dream to find myself 'back here' is
disconcerting. Moving so often in and out of strange as well as familiar
cultures I feel estranged, detached from any single context. I am most
uncomfortable in the familiar. The idea of home is alien to me. I am dislocated
like a bearded man beneath the burka.
C'est la vie humanitaire.
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