Afghanistan. The very first time I heard
about the country was when the giant statues at Bamiyan were destroyed by the
Taliban. The deed by itself was disturbing but the nation’s name kept
resonating over and over in my mind, obliterating the values and the purpose
behind the attack.
Fast-forwarding onto post 9/11 when the US
mounted retaliatory attacks on the mountainous nation, my intrigue with the
nation rose up to such proportions that I used to sit glued before the National
Geographic channel in the hope that the historic nation would be the topic at
hand. It was ironical that the country which shared borders with two of India’s
neighbours – Pakistan and China – was left outside the immediate mental
geographical loop.
While growing up, we were recounted tales
of tall Pathans standing in their traditional caftans and turbans, bearded and
speaking Hindi with an accent completely different to the ones generally
spoken. These were people who placed higher regard for their honour and
principles– what the author Khaled Hosseini refers to as nang and namoos
in The Kite Runner, people for whom the promised word mattered a lot and
who valued friendships over even their lives.
These anecdotes came from those heydays of
grandparents and perhaps even great-grandparents, when India was one and
partition was an inconceivable idea, where borders didn’t exactly matter
because colonisation was as common as neighbours sharing plots without picket
fences. But post-partition in the sub-continent, things changed, India and its
other neighbour drifted miles apart while the metaphorical mythical cord
between Afghanistan and Pakistan remained as bound and strong as ever. And not
just with Pakistan but with China and Russia as well, if not equally so.
Culturally rich and ethnically diverse,
history recounts that Afghanistan has paid a heavy price for being centrally
located and geographically well-connected. A land-locked nation it is, but over
countless centuries it has attracted many a super-power wanting to control and
bind it. The Greeks and the Mongols, the Russians and the ethnically dominant
Taliban – the nation has seen and imbibed it all.
Indeed, it is in spite of all these anarchies
that the nation offers something alluringly intriguing. Maybe it’s because of
Hosseini who created a different spectrum about the nation in the global
mindset with his two bestsellers or maybe the country’s ethnicity has attracted
the world’s eyes upon itself. Irrespective of the reasons, fact remains that
the land known as ‘Land of Afghans’ remains a highly sought after destination
to read, see and even possibly explore – and not always negatively.
And there is so much to learn and
understand about. Of kite fighting and buzkashi, of the cultural divide
between the Pashtuns and the Hazaras, of the Bamiyan statues’ legacy, of the
legendary silk route that gave the nation the earliest roadway connectivity
with the world, along with bringing in Oriental scholars like Fa Hsien to the
subcontinent and of the notorious opium fields that give the nation yet another
reason to bemoan.
The more one delves, the more one unearths.
A tiny nation, first to be displayed in the alphabetic list of countries of the
world, Afghanistan is like any other war-torn country. But where warzones reach
a ceasefire at some certain date, it’s perhaps the nation’s constant tryst with
destiny and the resultant fusion of culture that emerges which makes it so appealing
–even though the plethoric volatility makes reaching out almost insurmountable.
