A Place That Shines With Light
By David Snyder ’92
Soft-spoken and insightful, gracious and patient, Sayed Kazem is in many ways the voice the world has not yet heard from Afghanistan. Sitting cross-legged on the floor of a rented room in Pakistan, Sayed shares candidly his reflections on why he fled Afghanistan—reflections colored, as with much he says, by the tragedy of the country he left behind.
“When you are in the dark,” Sayed offered as explanation for leaving Afghanistan, “always you are looking for a place that shines with light.“
For now at least, that place is a small apartment in Peshawar, a dusty city in northern Pakistan where I met Sayed through my work with Catholic Relief Services. Less than 40 miles from the Afghan border, Peshawar now hosts thousands of refugees who have fled the recent airstrikes in Afghanistan, a country battered by 22 years of continuous conflict.
By the standards of most refugees, Sayed and his family are lucky. They have warm clothes and wool blankets, a critical need in this region as winter approaches. A pharmacist in the western Afghan city of Herat before coming to Pakistan in September, Sayed and his family are now renting three small rooms in Peshawar which he, his wife Zia Gul, and his three children share with five other family members. It is a basic arrangement, but Sayed acknowledges that for many Afghan refugees it is a dream beyond reach. “It is difficult for a lot of people here,” Sayed said. “We have some money and a house. For many, there is nothing.”
While hardship under Taliban rule was a common theme among the refugees with whom I spoke in Pakistan, the difficulties faced by Sayed and his family in Afghanistan were unique to the minority of educated Afghans, a group often at odds with the Taliban government and its strict interpretation of Islamic law. Sayed, employed by an international non-governmental association before working as a pharmacist, described years of discrimination under the Taliban for his links to a Western organization. Because she is a woman, Zia Gul was forced to leave her job as an electrical engineer when the Taliban took power in 1995. Against that backdrop, Sayed explained, their reasons for leaving were simple. “We left Afghanistan because our children should have a safe life and an education,” Sayed said. “Everyone must look to their future, and we are looking to our children’s future.”
Despite the problems facing Afghanistan, both Sayed and Zia Gul are eager to go home if the fighting stops. Both spoke often of their desire to help rebuild their country. But both the process of rebuilding and the peace necessary to make it possible remain elusive. Afghanistan remains desperately poor, riddled with land mines and burdened with one of the highest infant mortality rates in the world. As long as conflict continues, Sayed explained, his family and the millions of others displaced by more than two decades of war will share the fate of Afghanistan’s vast majority—victims of a conflict not of their making, brought on by a government not of their choosing.
“When two bulls are fighting, they destroy the sand beneath their feet,” Sayed explained. “We are that sand.”
Deep into the afternoon, I again thanked Sayed and Zia Gul for the many hours they had spent with me. Rising to return my handshake, Sayed paused thoughtfully before recounting a dream he had during the years of internal conflict that followed the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, a simple summary of the hopes he had shared so openly with me over the past several days.
“In the dream, a train came down from the mountains and stopped in my country,” Sayed said quietly. “I asked what it was and everyone said, ‘That is Peace.’ Now I pray that that train comes down from the mountains again.”
David Snyder ’92 is the media relations adviser for Catholic Relief Services’ Emergency Reponse Team. Based in Nairobi, Kenya, since 1999, David recently spent a month in Pakistan.
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