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May Allah Bless You, Naim
By Judy Pavlak, Winsted
We met Naim Dindar in the mid 1960s, while my husband was employed in his first teaching job at Wamogo Regional High School #6. Naim, who was in his senior year, came as an exchange student from Afghanistan to study agriculture at Wamogo. This was one of the few schools that taught vocational agriculture in Connecticut at the time. Moreover, being a new facility, it had the latest equipment, as well as a skilled staff led by a veteran in the field, Bob Bennett.
Naim looked much younger than his seventeen years, because he was smaller and thinner than the American boys in his class. He was just starting to grow a fuzzy little mustache. Naim dressed like any other American boy, but his darker skin and big, dark brown eyes gave him away as not being a native. That year Naim worked very hard on his studies, but he still made time to attend the school dances and other social events. He wanted to learn as much about U.S. life and culture as he could. In fact, I met him at one of the dances that Raymond and I chaperoned.
Naim came to our house a number of times for dinner. Usually I served some kind of lamb, which is commonly eaten in Afghanistan and which was his favorite meat. While he was at the house he seemed to really enjoy playing with our three-year-old son David, probably because he was use to playing with his many younger brothers and sister at home. Naim was very proud to show us pictures of his large family and his country.
Both his father and uncle worked in the king's administration. His uncle headed the agricultural department, which faced constant challenges in a nation that was very dry and hot in the summer and bitterly cold in the winter.
Most of the farming families live in the valleys between the Himalayan Mountains. Water from melting mountain snows fills the rivers and is used for irrigation, drinking and sewers. It is a wonder how these people are able to survive under such harsh conditions.
Naim lived in the capital, Kabul, a large city which had many of the benefits that we take for granted in the western world, including electricity. In the 1960s the American government had sent experts to help bring the people of Afghanistan into the twentieth century.
The king was favorable to democratizing his country, giving women the right to work outside the home and dropping the veils they had worn since the peoples' conversion to the religion of Islam many generations before. He even allowed a two-chambered parliament that gave the people the opportunity to vote for representatives.
Naim wanted to eventually return to his country to help democracy grow and to improve the lives of his people. He had many hopes and dreams for the future. After he left Wamogo, he attended the American University at Beirut. For several years he wrote us interesting letters about Lebanon, and told us that he was impatiently awaiting his graduation so he could return to Afghanistan.
The letters stopped. Yet, every time I wore the scarf woven by his mother that Naim had given me, I thought of him and wondered how his life had turned out. We knew the king had been deposed and many of his people had been killed. Naim was a kind, gentle young man that any parent would have been proud to call his son. I have no doubt he could have helped lead his people and country into happier times. Had he been killed?
After the horrible terrorist attacks at the World Trade Towers and Pentagon, little-known Afghanistan has taken a spotlight in the news. It seems that these attacks were directed from that nation by Osama bin Laden, and that the ruling party of Afghanistan, the Taliban, is helping to protect him from facing justice.
Americans watching the TV reports in recent days have seen the awful warfare that is taking place between the tribes for control of the nation. All of us will have seen the poverty being suffered by the people of this war-racked land, and the anguish of the average families as they lose their sons in this struggle for power. These lost sons were their hope of building a better Afghanistan.
Seeing all of this flashing before my eyes makes me wonder about the fate our friend Naim. If he is still alive, may Allah bless him and give him the opportunity to help fashion his country into the better place he envisioned during the 1960s.
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