Writers on Wednesday--Anna Badkhen
Something completely different has fallen into my path--the incredible writing of war correspondent Anna Badkhen and her latest book, Waiting for the Taliban. While my second novel is finding its way out into the world, I began researching and scribbling notes for a third which has several pieces, scenes and ties to Northern Afghanistan. This is a first for me, writing out of place, and I settled in for some armchair research, because let's face it: I don't have the stones to go to Afghanistan. Frankly, J stresses out every time I go to Manhattan to meet with publishers and there is of course, the passel of our kids and animals here. For someone who once led a nomadic life shaped by wanderlust and the quest for adventure, I am surprised by how deeply I have laid roots here in Pennsylvania.
On Monday, the whole house returned to school and work after our break, a strange and melancholy event that had everyone talking homeschooling and waxing nostalgic about last year while they tried to linger over breakfast. In the quiet that followed, my biggest worries were the eight loads of clean laundry I had mounded on the couch to be folded, an itching curiousity about whether my vegetable-averse kid would detect the butternut squash and navy beans I had secretly blended into his lunch of mac and cheese, and some niggling anxiety about whether or not I would be able to pull off the premise of this newest novel.
Instead of matching forty pairs of permanently dingy sports socks, I settled down with Anna Badkhen's stunning read, Waiting for the Taliban. It was my first time reading electronically, and I kept flitting from the iPad to my chores and writing, (because most days reading feels too decadent) until finally I couldn't stand it. I abandoned my house and my kids and my manuscript and just let Badkhen's story sweep me away to a foreign place with a story that is at times tragic, lyrical, hard and heartbreaking. How had I never heard all of this before? How had I never thought about the farmers, the child laborers, the rug weavers, the civilians of this country?
There is some discomfort in this, in the notion that my Jan 1 resolutions included a sit-ups regime to bring my abdominal muscles back to pre-Piper proportions once and for all, when I am reading about two little Afghan boys sorting through a pile of fetid garbage for the least yellowed and rotten green onions to eat. There is also some guilt that I have used my years of motherhood and career-chasing and higher-education-pursuing to explain away my lack of curiosity, of knowledge in what is really happening in Afghanistan.
Sept 11 coincided with Hayden's birth and medical struggles, which I document both in an essay and on my blog, where I mention that the tunnel vision that accompanies the anxiety of a mother whose baby is fighting for his life forever-colored my experience of September 11th. But when he got better, how had I not followed up on this? How had I not wondered more at what life was like there? I was once the young woman who had traveled alone to work in the post-Revolution orphanages of Romania. How had I not thought of the children of Afghanistan, so often the victims in conflict zones?
Within the day, I had finished the book and found her website and read most of her articles for Foreign Policy. By Tuesday we were emailing and she had given me a reading list to take me farther and deeper into this subject and the invitation to talk over dinner when I am ready. If my third novel has any verisimilitude, it will be because of finding Anna's writing and the works of the other authors I am inhaling.
I asked Anna if she would be willing to answer a few of the many questions that came up as I was reading her work and digging around in the history of Afghanistan. The interview follows. Enjoy...
CKH: You are an incredibly talented writer--you could write circles around many in the field and spin stunning tales of lyrical, literary fiction. Why did you choose to use your notable skill for journalism and enlightenment?
AB: Chandra, I am a storyteller. I am honored to be able to tell stories of people who otherwise would not get heard. I care about the word deeply, perhaps that is what you are referring to in your kind compliments. I believe that language can, and must, be used with precision, and strive to do that.
CKH: One of the reasons I left my work in the orphanages in Romania was that the solution that many perceived to be the answer--filling a suitcase with children and spiriting them to the United States--was shown to be complicated by the fact that most of these 'orphans' had families, and many were visited regularly. How do you define what 'help' is when you are in countries in the capacity of journalism? Is it enough for you to shine a light on these lives?
AB: Sometimes. Sometimes it is not. Most of the time, probably, not. But I do believe that my work is important--and hope that the people of means, if relative, read the stories, and follow up. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it does not.
CKH: How do you maintain boundaries in these intimate situations? You live with the people you write about, sleep with the hands of their children enfolded in yours, sit with grandmothers who cannot afford the medication that may save their sick child. I just read your article from Sept 2011 where an Afghan man you have lived with, who calls you his sister, says his life is at risk. How do you resist the urge to use resources to rescue those in crisis?
AB: Why, Chandra, should I resist this urge? Storytelling is important, it's what I live for, but it's not the apex of a writer's existence, or shouldn't be, in my opinion. Being human is. When I can, I do what I believe is right as a human.
CKH: When I went to Romania, I took my toiletries in a Ziploc bag. The woman in the house where I lived asked if she could have it, and in all the months I was there, would carefully rinse it out and hang it up to dry after each use. Now I pack my kids' lunches in these and they get tossed daily. How do you reconcile our lives of wealth with the poverty you encounter? How does it shape the way you live in the US?
AB: I grew up in the Soviet Union. We didn't have Ziploc bags. We had a handful of plastic bags that lasted us years--we would wash them out over the sink (we had no dishwasher, and I still don't) with soap made of animal bones (all natural! no preservatives or artificial colors!), and hang them out to dry. The bags that we used to buy fresh meat felt disgusting. But they, too, were reused for years.
I don't live in wealth. I live in one of the poorest neighborhoods of one of the poorest zip codes in the United States: a quarter of Philadelphians live at or below the established poverty level. I live on very little, mostly books and coffee. I have lived in poverty, though not, of course, of the kind of poverty I see in parts of Afghanistan, or Somalia, or India. I have hungered. I don't advocate it, but humans can live without food for a very, very long time. I try not to waste resources. I try to teach my son to do the same. I try to find a balance between needing little and being able to focus on work. It works, most of the time.
CKH: What you are doing, the reporting from these war-ravaged places, is important but undeniably dangerous work. How difficult is it for your family to let you go when you travel?
AB: Please keep in mind that where I travel millions of people live, without any hope of leaving. Millions--Afghans, Iraqis, Somalis, Palestinians, Chechens--who endure violence and privation on a daily basis. I, usually, have a return ticket, a way out. They don't. So that's something to think about when we talk about western journalists who travel to war zones.
My family right now is my 14-year-old son. I have been doing this almost all of his life. I think he's proud of me, though he, of course, prefers it when I'm home (he eats better then). I know he worries about me. And I worry about him. So, there is an equilibrium, of sorts.
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With thanks to Anna Badkhen and an urging for everyone to read both Waiting for the Taliban and Peace Meals.
There is more to war than the macabre—the white-orange muzzle flashes during a midnight ambush; the men high on adrenaline scanning the desert through the scopes of their machine guns as their forefingers caress the triggers; the scythes of razor-sharp shrapnel whirling through the air like lawnmower blades spun loose; the tortured and the dead. There are also the myriad brazen, congenial, persistent ways in which life in the most forlorn and violent places on earth shamelessly reasserts itself.
Photo: KAEL ALFORD
BIO:Anna Badkhen writes about people in extremis. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, The New Republic, Foreign Policy, the Boston Globe, and other publications.