MIDDLE
Afghan Replay

the first bengali to visit afghanistan and work there was syed mujtaba ali. in the 1920s ali worked there as a teacher after graduating from santiniketan. years later he wrote deshey bideshey, his memoirs of those days which were also the last of king amanullah's benevolent reign. the book found ali a place in bengali literature, a place consolidated by his other works. reading the book today one finds strong similarities between then and now. ali speaks of the fiercely independent people of the north west frontier province who would rather die than bow down to anybody's dictates. president musharraf is realising this today. in kabul he saw on the one hand a king determined to modernise his people and, on the other, the mullahs up in arms against him which ultimately led to his overthrow by bacha sakao. didn't very much the same thing happen when the reformist rulers of afghanistan had to ultimately give way to the forerunners of the taliban? true, the soviet union's military intervention was also responsible but here too a kind of similarity can be found in what happened during the days of amanullah. the soviet embassy had extended full support to the progressive monarch against the mullah-backed, 'proletarian' bacha sakao. even at that time, as ali recorded, religious fundamentalists were busy spearheading a campaign against moscow. perhaps the most glaring similarity can be had in what happened in kabul after sakao's entry. all educational institutes were declared closed, books and equipment burnt and foreign dress banned as the attire of the infidel. the taliban did the same thing. and if things in afghanistan have not changed in nearly one hundred years what guarantee can there be that over the next century things will not remain the same? mujtaba ali of course did not write only about the days of strife. he wrote of the bracing atmosphere of the panjshir valley, as described by his man friday, abdur rahman, the bazar in kabul where came traders from all over central asia and the education minister of king amanullah who had great respect for rabindranath tagore whom he had wanted to invite to kabul. one can say with certainty that his successor today is not even aware that there existed such a poet who had done the entire continent proud. deshey bideshey had assured any would-be visitor that in kabul he would not have to run hither and thither looking at ancient monuments for there are no such things in kabul. the visitor of the future may, of course, see a lot of ruins which all over the world are also labelled as 'tourist attractions'. or, he can remain in his hotel room and through the window see the snow-capped peaks of the pagman mountain as ali used to do from his bedroom and become homesick thinking of his mother in distant east bengal.