About me!

I was born in Deh Khodad, the God-given village—a name that felt less like a blessing and more like a truth, carried on the breeze that stirred the leaves of the ancient chinar trees. Nestled between the Maranjan Hills and the Kabul River, our village seemed eternal, a world unto itself. The stream that wound through its heart was a silver thread of life, binding the land and the people in ways words could scarcely capture. To the north stretched the fields, golden with grain, and to the south, the homes—modest, mud-walled sanctuaries that opened into courtyards alive with color and fragrance. Grape trellises hung heavy with fruit, beds of murcel roses swayed in the breeze, and herb gardens bloomed in neat rows—basil, mint, and coriander, their scents mingling as though the earth itself was preparing a meal for the soul.

Life here flowed with the rhythm of seasons and the quiet blessings of the land, guided not by spoken wisdom alone but by something deeper, a shared understanding passed from heart to heart. Every dawn began with the murmuring of the stream and the rustle of the orchards, while the well of Akhund Ji Baba stood as a silent witness to our days. Its cool, sweet water was more than sustenance; it was a symbol of our unity, a reminder that we were one people, bound to one place. Here in Deh Khodad, we knew who we were: a community woven tightly, like the finest tapestry.

Poetry was the heartbeat of our village, as essential to us as the bread we broke or the water we drank. The art of verse was cherished equally by men and women, though it lived differently in their lives. Men sought Hafiz and Mawlana Rumi, reciting couplets that turned the air sacred, while women found their voices in quatrains sung in soft tones, weaving their daily joys and longings into words. These verses were rarely written down; instead, they passed from chest to chest, shaped by the rhythms of life and the breath of the moment. Together, they formed a tapestry of emotion and memory, an inheritance shared across generations.

But even the most blessed places cannot remain untouched forever. Shadows crept into Deh Khodad, first as distant whispers, then as storms that shattered the life we had known. In the 1980s, the Soviet invasion cast a long and merciless shadow over Afghanistan, and our God-given village—so close to Kabul, so rich in its fields and orchards—became a prize in a war we never sought.

By night, the Mujaheddin came down from the hills like restless spirits, their faces hidden in the dark. They left behind whispers and footprints, and the dreaded shab namas—night letters—pinned to doors, scattered in mosque courtyards, or tacked to the trunks of the chinar trees. These letters, trembling with urgency and fierce conviction, demanded loyalty to their cause. ”This is jihad,” they said, ”your sacred duty.” Yet their words carried sharp edges, wrapped in threats. To refuse was unthinkable, to resist was fatal. We had no choice but to provide food and shelter, though our hearts quaked with fear.

By day, the communists arrived, bearing pamphlets printed with glossy promises. They spoke of progress, equality, and collective prosperity, urging us to embrace their vision of a better world. But their words rang hollow in the face of their actions. Soldiers marched through our streets, and the orchards we had nurtured for generations were cut down by their bulldozers, claimed as collateral for a future we neither wanted nor believed in. They burned the fields, accusing us of harboring insurgents, and left behind barren earth where golden wheat once swayed. They called their mission progress, but they destroyed the very essence of our communal life—our meeting square, where disputes were resolved; our mulberry and walnut trees, which belonged to everyone and no one.

Caught between the Mujaheddin and the communists, we were a people without refuge. By night, the rebels demanded allegiance at the point of a spear, urging us to destroy the bridges and schools that symbolized our connection to the world. By day, the communists labeled us traitors, accusing us of conspiring with the rebels. Both sides claimed to fight for our future, but all we saw was destruction. They sought to remake us, yet they could not see the harmony we had already built. Our lives had been communal long before their doctrines and decrees, our land shared, our laughter and tears bound together by the rhythms of the seasons. They came with promises of paradise but left behind ashes and ruin.

Even the well of Akhund Ji Baba, our source of life and connection, was poisoned, a bitter reflection of the hatred and division that seeped into our soil. The mulberries and walnuts that once shaded our gatherings were uprooted, their roots left exposed to the merciless sun. The stream, which once sang to us of life and abundance, seemed to weep.

The deepest wound, however, was the one we inflicted on ourselves. As the war ground on, it tore at the fabric of our community. Cousins and brothers took opposing sides, not out of belief but out of desperation, survival. The names we had once called each other—khala zada, child of my aunt—gave way to labels that carried only pain: Mujaheddin, communist, collaborator. The village that had once been our strength became another casualty of a war we never wanted.

Deh Khodad, the God-given village, began to slip away. The fields lay barren, the orchards were no more, and the songs of our women were drowned in silence. The shab namas still came, pinned to the charred remains of homes, but no one had the strength to heed their words. The promises, whether of faith or progress, had lost their meaning. All that remained was a hollow shell of what we once were, a place that bore the name Deh Khodad but no longer carried its spirit.

Some say the land remembers, that its stones and soil hold the stories of those who once lived upon it. If that is true, then perhaps somewhere beneath the ash and rubble, Deh Khodad still whispers of what it once was—a village where poetry bloomed alongside the apricots and almonds, where the stream sang and the well united us all. But for those of us who lived its fall, Deh Khodad exists only in memory now, fragile and fleeting, like the last quatrain of a song carried off by the wind..

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