One fine day, he asked one of my classmates, named Qais, where in Afghanistan he was from. Now, I don’t have the exact account or know the context of the conversation, but I know that my Dari teacher didn’t think very highly of him because he was not only lazy but also facetious – the two qualities Afghan teachers never appreciated and looked down up from time to time.
The boy sharply replied:
“Kabul!”
The teacher glared at him with emotionless expressions and started fuming in fury like a charcoal heater’s chimney. These were his exact words.
“Kabul isn’t a menstruation pad or cloth that everyone uses it to clean their dirt. It is a place of some rare-breed individuals.”
He paused for a while and then continued:
“I had rented one floor of my two-story house to real Kabulis (natives of Kabul). I would only see the men in the family at around evening time when they would arrive home and switch off their car lights and turn it off.”
Then, he paused again and said:
“Those were the real Kabulis. Unfortunately, they have left (immigrated to the west).Everyone in Afghanistan pretends to be Kabuli, but they aren’t.”
I was only fourteen years old by then. His words sounded harsh, but because of the school system we were exposed to and the fact that we had to be obedient, I, and I am sure all my classmates excluding Qais, thought that Qais was being silly and the teacher had every right to get mad and say what he had to say. After all, the teacher was a real Kabuli and had every right to criticize Qais for pretending to be Kabuli. After the incident, a few questions were raising in my mind and always made me uncomfortable. Needless to say that I found the final description (switching their car off) weird. I asked myself:
“Does being out of the house the whole day make you a Kabuli, or was the teacher's reference meant that Kabulis owned cars?”
“What is it that Kabul and Kabulis have while other people and their provinces don’t? So what if Kabul is the capital!”
“Why did the teacher get so mad at Qais for calling himself Kabuli?
“How could he tell he wasn’t from Kabul? What Kabuli quality did he lack? After all, he spoke Dari with a Kabuli accent (or that is what I thought), dressed like Kabulis and acted like them”.
I didn’t ask anyone the questions that were bothering me, nor had I lived in Kabul that long (we migrated to Pakistan when I was 7) to digest my teacher’s comments. Though, I remember the incident and the questions even after 13 years has gone by.
Now that I think about it, the reason why I plied myself with so many questions had two reasons: The first one is stated in the paragraph above, but the main reason for all those questions was the tone in which the teacher criticized Qais and the underlying message that his fury was sending – SUPERIORITY! In deed, he was mad at Qais’ calling himself a Kabuli, but a sense of superiority lashed at us while he was describing Kabulis – as if Kabulis were the best breed of people in Afghanistan and every other Afghan was below them. He was being racist and was victimizing us, but we didn’t know it, couldn’t discern it, yet I am sure many of us bought into his mentality and used the same act of racism against Afghans we thought were inferior to us.
As I was growing up, I figured out that in Afghanistan it is not important where you are born. It is important which province your great grandparents, grandparents and parents relate themselves to. A key factor in determining one’s belongingness is social status, which is determined by property, assets, wealth, job, reputation, fame and ranks (especially in public sector). For example, no matter where someone’s forefathers is from, if their grandfather was a key figure during King Zahir Shah’s reign, his children and grandchildren will claim to be from the same province where the grandfather claims/claimed to be from. If one’s forefathers have a considerable amount of farmland in Helmand province, no matter for how many generations the very family has lived in Kabul, they will still call themselves Helmandis.
I was born and raised in Kabul, spent the first seven years of my life there, went to a relatively modern school, spoke Dari with a Kabuli accent although it wasn’t my native tongue and did everything like an average Kabuli would stand for and do, yet I never called myself Kabuli at all. Our dynasty comes from Wardak, so we are all Wardakis. Even the women in our dynasty who have been married to non-Wardakis jokingly ask their kids to call themselves Wardaki. For some very odd reasons, the idea of having non-Wardaki cousins really stunned me as a child.
“He or she is my cousin, yet he is not WARDAKI. How is that even possible?” Often times, I kept saying that to myself.
I pressed myself hard to figure out what Kabulis had that I, Qais or anyone born in Kabul, but not from Kabul, didn’t have. Below are a few things that real Kabulis (and the ones who aren’t Kabulis but get away with calling themselves Kabulis) do differently than the rest of the Afghans. I am not being sarcastic or disrespectful to anyone here, nor are my ideas biased because of my Dari instructor. They are an account of my personal experiences. Some of them will make you laugh and ring a bell. Moreover, I must tell you that I have nothing against the Kabulis, nor does my Dari teacher represent an average Kabuli.
1. Kabulis are mostly soft-spoken while non-Kabulis' accents mostly make them look they are in a hurry or are mad (while they aren’t).
2. Kabulis use Kabuli slangs only (If they use slangs of other Afghans, they either copy their accents or tell the listener where the accents are from) while non-Kabulis use both Kabuli and their own slangs while speaking, too.
3. Kabulis' fights are usually verbal. They don’t resort to exchanging blows unless they are forced to. Non-Kabulis' fights are usually verbal, too. Only, the possibility of exchanging blows is more.
4.There is usually more plates than food on the dinning cloth of Kabulis while there is usually more food and the number of plates is as many as needed on non-Kabulis' dinning cloth. The less amount of food on non-Kabulis' dinning cloth makes them pass around food many times.
5. French fries is considered the trademark food of Kabulis while home-made yogurt, dry curd, cheese, bread, different dishes etc are non-Kabuli trademark food.
6. Kabulis usually wear suits, jeans and western outfit. Prefer them over Afghan apparel while non-Kabulis may wear suits, jeans, western clothes, but prefer the Afghan apparel.
7. While greeting, Kabuli men and women shake hands. Close relatives (men and women) kiss each other, on their cheeks, too. However, shaking hands amongst non-Kabuli men and women is uncommon. Kissing is out of question even amongst close relatives.
8. No matter poor or rich, Kabulis don’t forget to celebrate Afghan cultural holidays, go to concerts, picnics etc. On the other hand, the rich amongst non-Kabulis celebrate Afghan cultural holidays. They aren’t big about concerts, picnics etc, though.
9. Usually, at the parties and social gatherings, Kabuli men and women sit together. On the other hand, non-Kabulis host their men and women separately for their comfort at parties and social gatherings.
The million dollar question is... do these minor differences make Kabulis superior to other Afghans, or vice versa?
The irony of whole the incident is that he was our Dari teacher. His job wasn’t only teaching the language. He had to make sure that we learn the language, our culture and understand the ethnic tensions that were at high time rise by then (remember, we had past a devastating civil war thanks to ethnic tensions between different factions). And here we had a teacher who was filtering our identities under his own radar.
Imagine an English instructor in a Wyoming university getting upset and lashing out at an African-American over him/her stating he/she is from Wyoming. Also, imagine a Christian teacher telling a Jewish student in a German college he doesn’t belong to that land. What will happen if a White-American gets mad at an African-American who claims he is from the South? Qais’ situation may not be the same as the situations described in the aforementioned examples, but the act was probably as racist as described in those examples. While leading a life full of hardship with pretty much not seeing much in store in our fates for us, we would certainly appreciate it if our Dari teacher were not racist, or at least suppress those evil feelings, but that wasn't to be… … …
It wasn’t that he couldn’t. Two of his teeth (I think lower incisors) had gotten displaced. As he opened his mouth, those two teeth would move from their roots upward and then back. It definitely meant that he was overcautious and was doing a good job with his teeth. Hence, they weren't falling out. After all, how long can you keep falling teeth in your mouth? Yet, he didn’t realize that his statements would make us fall apart and disunited. He didn’t teach us to take pride in our roots. Instead, he indirectly taught us to look down at our fellow Afghans.
I am sure that he is in Afghanistan right now teaching somewhere, or he must have found a more lucrative job. If he is teaching, he is of course amongst those who claim that the government isn’t paying them much and are overlooked. While I can’t agree more with them on their pay and would definitely stand shoulder-to-shoulder to them to ask for a better pay, I pray that racist individuals like him never become educators as the damage they do to the society is irreversible.
I can’t end this blog on a negative note. He was my teacher, regardless. I pray that he be fine no matter wherever he is and live a happy and healthy life!
The subject of my next blog will be one of his comments – “Real Kabulis [and Afghans] aren’t in Afghanistan anymore. They left and went to the west”. So, stay tuned.
May God bless us all!
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Click the links below if you want to read my other blogs:
Want to read my other blogs:
1. http://afghanism.blogspot.com/
2. http://loveinmyperspective.blogspot.com/
3. http://6yjokes.blogspot.com/
4. http://afghansingers.blogspot.com/
5. http://innercalls.blogspot.com/
6. http://afgiw.blogspot.com/
7. http://afgman.blogspot.com/
8. http://afgsecurity.blogspot.com/
9. http://theindianvisa.blogspot.com/
10. http://nazeerstory.blogspot.com/
11. http://ustadrasool.blogspot.com/
