My Afghanistan-زما افغانستان

“I am from Afghanistan,” every time i say that to someone, his or her expression changes immediately. its has become something natural for me; just by mentioning Afghanistan people get shocked and surprised. At many instances i was asked whether i was with the taliban or not right after introducing myself-i am from Afghanistan- and then it is followed by many others like: how many guns i have with me at home? do i know how to use a gun? and many stereotypical questions similar to these. these are huge doubts about my country that almost everyone outside afghanistan has and some times i spent hours to clear these doubts in some people’s minds-which i love to do and am very good at it too. Now what bothers me is, where do they get this image of Afghanistan?All these doubts and questions about an Afghan come from every book written about Afghanistan. most of the books are written by outsiders who have once or twice or never visited the country. those that have visited my country have stayed in five star hotels or army bases; they have never bothered to go out from the capital city to see the real picture of Afghanistan but why would they? its easy for the writers to portray an Afghan as a barbaric stereotype since everyone like it that way. When talking about unreliable authors; its very difficult for me to ignore one name, Robert D. Kaplan. “you rarely see women in Afghanistan; you do see some moving tents with narrow hole for the eye,” writes Kaplan in his book ‘Soldiers of God’. Kaplan is one writer who has visited most of Afghanistan but still hasn’t seen the real picture of the people, especially the pashtuns. For Kaplan Afghanistan is a male dominated, tribal, and a wild society that needs to be either fenced or the people should be tamed so that the rest of the world can live in peace. There are many writers that create a sort of imaginary, barbaric and wild society within Afghanistan for only one reason, people want to read about it. Because of these western writers and the so-called “world affairs experts”, no one knows what is the real Afghanistan and who are the people living in it? If someone like me writes about Afghanistan or criticizes  the books that dont state the truth about the people of my country is just considered not qualified to challenge writers like Kaplan.After a lot of consideration I have come to this conclusion that we-Afghans- should just sit back and listen to whatever the outside world wants to call us or say about us.

The very name Pakhtun spells honor and glory,

Lacking that honor, what is the Afghan story?

                                                            Khushal Khan Khatak