West of Kabul, East of San Francisco: An Autobiography

By Ehsan M. Entezar

West of Kabul, East of San Francisco is the highlights of my life story. Keeping a diary is not common in developing countries such as Afghanistan, and this makes autobiographies less common in these countries. The existing biographies and autobiographies in the Islamic countries are mostly those about the Prophet Mohammad and other important religious figures or monarchs. These biographies, however, are full of praise.

This historic precedent has also had its effect on autobiographies written by Western-educated Afghans. They too are full of praise and criticisms of rivals, rarely talking about their own problems and weaknesses. In other words, they are mostly self-centered and egotistical in nature. In West of Kabul, East of San Francisco, I have tried to be as objective as possible in avoiding such pitfalls. I describe events and relationships as realistically as possible. But I realize that no one can entirely escape the influence of their mother culture.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Oct 7, 2016
• ISBN: 9781524547400

Ehsan M. Entezar

Dr. Entezar received his PhD from the University of Texas at Austin in applied linguistics, his MA from Columbia University Teachers College in teaching English as a foreign language and his BA from Kabul University in English. He has taught at Kabul University; Ibn Saud Islamic University in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia; the University of Nebraska at Omaha; Arkansas State in Jonesboro, Arkansas; and Fayetteville Community College in Fayetteville, North Carolina. He wrote the first Dari book, Farsi (Afghan Persian) for the US Peace Corps in 1964. Subsequently, he wrote Intermediate Dari (1965) and Dari (1969). Professor Entezar has written numerous articles on the nature of language, bilingualism, and language teaching methodology. He is the author of Afghanistan 101: Understanding Afghan Culture (2008) and Dari Grammar and Phrase Book (2010).

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CONTENTS

Foreword

Preface

1.   Early Childhood

2.   Home Education

3.   Formal Education

4.   Marriage and University Education

5.   Going to America

6.   Columbia University

7.   Teaching at Kabul University

8.   Studying at the University of Texas

9.   Kabul University and the Ministry of Education

10.   The Decision to Leave Afghanistan

11.   Escape from Afghanistan

12.   Peshawar, Pakistan

13.   Arriving in America

14.   Settling in Nebraska

15.   Invitation to Visit Saudi Arabia

16.   Teaching in Saudi Arabia

17.   Back to the University of Nebraska

18.   Back to Saudi Arabia

19.   Moving to North Carolina

20.   Back to Afghanistan

21.   Settling in Modesto, California

22.   My Brother’s Terminal Illness in Kabul

23.   India

24.   Conclusions

Appendix

To my parents.

FOREWORD

John W. Bing

The United States of America was created by immigrants who, like my own father, came to this country to create a life of promise for themselves and their neighbors. Historically (at least in the best of moments), the country has stood for the acceptance of those newer arrivals, whatever their origin, their faith, or their background, so long as the newcomers have been willing to contribute to their new land. America has served as a bridge between a past that, for one reason or another, had to be abandoned, and a future that, however uncertain, promised relative safety and a new start. Although at the moment I write this the political talk is about building walls to keep people out, it is refreshing to read stories such as this one that speaks to how America is still a gateway and how immigrants contribute so much to a country that is renewed by their efforts.

I first met Dr. Mohammed Ehsan Entezar in Vermont as I was training to become a Peace Corps Volunteer for Afghanistan. We were both at the beginning of our professional lives, and the work that both of us did later in life was profoundly influenced by our experiences in those early years. (I went on to make a career in cross-cultural learning in academia, government, and business.) Ehsan was head of the Dari language program at the School for International Training (of the Experiment in International Living) for the Peace Corps. I had attended some fairly decent schools, but upon joining classes led by Ehsan I immediately recognized that he was one of the most effective teachers that I had encountered. He not only had a thorough knowledge of the linguistic subtleties of language learning; he also had a unique intensity and commitment to the learning process and to those who were learning. He was also unassailably honest in his dealings with his fellow Afghan teachers, his American counterparts, and his students. As he writes in these memoirs, this honesty sometimes made things more difficult for him as his career developed. His father also taught him to stand up for himself and his beliefs, and he would not be bullied, either by his schoolmates in Afghanistan or his colleagues or bosses in the United States.

I did not know it then, but over time and over many planned and chance meetings with him in many different places, we would become lifelong friends.

For me, when I reached Afghanistan as a Peace Corps Volunteer, I began to see the country and its people as an immense classroom in which I could learn about culture and cultural differences—and how to bridge them—a subject that would become my lifelong passion and career. For Ehsan Entezar (not then yet having earned his PhD) and later for his family, the cultural transitions were enormous. Of course these transitions are difficult for all immigrants, but because Afghanistan and the United States are so different in culture and language, the hurdles are high. Yet Ehsan earned a PhD in his chosen field from a first-rate university in the United States and served his new country in many ways since then, including as a civilian in the U.S. military and writing a number of significant books about Afghan language and culture, works which have been used by a generation of Americans and Afghans as they work to build bridges between the two countries under the current very difficult circumstances. As with other immigrant families, Dr. Entezar’s children have gone on to successful careers in many different fields, and his wife, Pushtoon, has supported him through all these transitions.

Dr. Entezar has written an important book. First, of course, it is a book for his family. How many of us wish that our forebears had written the history of our families, their origins, the early struggles and triumphs. These histories, these stories, are essential to understanding the origins of our identities, especially important for future generations. In addition, in reading their father’s or grandfather’s work, his family will come to understand the traits of character that have, like DNA, formed themselves and their children.

This work will be an excellent source for anthropologists and other cultural specialists. The chapters on growing up in Qala-ye Qazi, a small village west of Kabul, contain details of what life was like in that part of Afghanistan at that time. His description of how the families of that village lived, what foods were common, what diseases were prevalent, which resources were available or scarce; of birth, wedding, and funeral ceremonies; of the names and uses of household implements—all these and more are a rich source of information about an Afghan village, a source of information that perhaps exists nowhere else. The descriptions also provide perspective on the small businesses, the economics of village life, the educational system, religious matters within and between ethnic groups, the sources of political issues, the role of government—in short, a source for scholars looking into that period of Afghan life. In fact, in some ways, village life there had not changed for centuries. I remember speaking with a farmer in Baghlan Province in the 1960s and asking him about the state of his crops. They have not been good since Genghis Khan destroyed our water system, he replied. Dr. Entezar in this work is able to have the perspectives of both the insider, growing up in Afghanistan, and the outsider, observing the past with dimensional perspective, providing depth and clarity to the landscape and to the society of which he writes.

The chapter Going to America is replete with examples of the cross-cultural challenges faced by everyone who crosses borders and should be read by foreign student advisors and government and corporate human resources professionals to better understand the challenges faced by those newly arrived in the United States. The section on Separation, about filling out forms by Afghans (and of course other visitors) for colleges or work, is a case study of its own.

At the same time, the writer of this memoir is not a typical Afghan; there are no replicas in cultures. He represents his country in certain ways, in his values of family and loyalty to others, and in his identification as a member of a minority ethnic group in Afghanistan. No doubt his father, who is described in this memoir as a person who went his own way and seldom hewed to village norms, was a lodestar to his son, who, in his own honesty, transparent behavior, and sense of rightness, displays little of the instrumentalism of some of his countrymen.

Dr. Entezar is more of a scholar than a politician. He is not one to modify his opinions or findings according to received wisdom or to advance himself or to satisfy someone with more status. His views both of Afghan and of U.S. aid initiatives can therefore be acerbic when these approaches are not based on the welfare of the people they are supposed to help. Too often, as I know from my own work in the Peace Corps and with government contractors, these efforts, whatever their stated goals, often help the helpers more than those who are supposed to be assisted.

In parts of the book, you will find personal history woven into the larger fabric of both Afghanistan and the United States. Dr. Entezar’s recounting of his family’s difficult and treacherous escape from Afghanistan, after being told he had been placed on a death list by the Communist government, is as dramatic as any movie and illustrates the great obstacles he and his family had to overcome to reach their goal of a new life.

In short, readers of this book, whether they be professionals in the fields of anthropology, linguistics, education, international aid, or friends and family members, will find much to learn.

PREFACE

West of Kabul, East of San Francisco is the highlight of my life story. Keeping a diary is not common in developing countries such as Afghanistan, and this makes autobiographies less common in these countries. The existing biographies and autobiographies, in the Islamic countries, are mostly those about the prophet Mohammad and other important religious figures or monarchs. These biographies, however, are full of praise.

This historic precedent has also had its effect on autobiographies written by Western-educated Afghans. They, too, are full of praise and criticisms of rivals, rarely talking about their own problems and weaknesses. In other words, they are mostly self-centered and egotistical in nature. In West of Kabul, East of San Francisco I have tried to be as objective as possible in avoiding such pitfalls. I describe events and relationships as realistically as possible. But I realize that no one can entirely escape the influence of their mother culture.

Just like the biographies of religious leaders and statesmen, almost all the recent biographies, written by Afghans as Khaterat, or memoirs, that I have read lack any criticisms, mistakes, weaknesses, regrets, and so on. In other words, they discuss achievements and successes, making them sound more like brag-o-graphies rather than biographies. Also, more seriously, these biographies are full of incidents discrediting rivals and settling past scores. Life experiences have both good and bad that must be mentioned. This is why West of Kabul, East of San Francisco describes not just my achievements and successes but also mistakes and problems in my life.

Since I lived in both Afghanistan and America, I talk about cross-cultural experiences my family and I went through. More specifically, the reader will learn what an Afghan immigrant goes through in this melting pot to survive and to adapt to a culture 180 degrees different from Afghan culture. As an example, dating is a serious challenge problem for first-generation Afghan immigrants—and their parents—in America, causing all kinds of problems for children and their parents alike.

People’s lives are affected by others and by institutions. Here, I would like to give credit to those who changed my life significantly. They are family, friends, teachers, students, and colleagues. The first individual I am indebted to is my father, Mirza Miralamkhan, who provided me with functional literacy and math and shaped my personality in my early childhood. The second most important person who affected my character is my mother, Bibee Durani, who taught me to be generous and hospitable. The third is my wife, Pashtoon, who encouraged me to go to college and endured the hardship of supporting a family of five during my college years and beyond.

I am also thankful for friends. The first I am grateful to is David Champagne. It was David who gave me the opportunity to do research and academic work and travel to Afghanistan and some Central Asian countries. The work I did for him provided me with the tools to publish books and articles. The second individual is John W. Bing, who encouraged me to write and provided me with invaluable advice on various aspects of my life in America.

Charles T. Scott, my former Kabul University professor, is another person whose excellent teaching style I have adopted. My passion for teaching is due to his excellent teaching. My sincere appreciation goes to my former student at Kabul University, Abdulqadeer Karyab, for protecting me and my family from the dangerous cross-current of Afghan politics in Peshawar, Pakistan, following our escape from Afghanistan in 1980. I am also indebted to Prof. Wasif Bakhtary, a well-known Afghan scholar and poet for forewarning of my possible arrest by the Communist Government of Afghanistan prior to my escape from Afghanistan. Finally, my sincere appreciation goes to Abdul Aziz al-Subaihin, a Saudi national and my former student from Kabul, for helping me obtain a teaching position at Imam University in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

Last but not least, I am grateful to the U.S. Peace Corps and its first wise and talented director in Afghanistan, Robert Steiner, for giving me the opportunity to serve in different training programs both in the United States and in Afghanistan. Additionally, it was because of my involvement in the Peace Corps that I wrote my first language book and, more importantly, I had a doctoral fellowship to study at the University of Texas at Austin in 1966. Finally, it was the ex–Peace Corps volunteers who helped with my search for employment when I immigrated to America in 1980. Finally, I am indebted to USAID for awarding me a scholarship to study at Columbia University in New York City.

Some individuals also helped me with West of Kabul, East of San Francisco. I am grateful to John Bing for writing the foreword and reading this manuscript. My special thanks also go to David Champagne, Robert Pearson, William and Fran Irwin, and Joseph Arlinghaus for reading the manuscript and making invaluable suggestions. I am also indebted to Julia Zarankin for editing the manuscript. Last, but not least, I am grateful to my wife, Pashtoon, for putting up with me during the writing of this book. Although these individuals made suggestions and criticisms, I am responsible for any flaws in West of Kabul, East of San Francisco.

Modesto, California

June 30, 2016

ONE

Early Childhood

1935–1941

Qala-ye Qazi

I was born in Qala-ye Qazi, a village twenty miles southwest of Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan, on April 15, 1935. The village name literally means Judge Fort. It is said that a certain Qazi (judge) built the first Qala (fort) in the area, in the mid–nineteenth century, hence the name Qala-ye Qazi. Subsequently, other individuals had built their own Qalas. The village as a whole is divided into three subvillages: Qazi, at the foot of the Qoregh Mountain; Mohib, at the foot of Khojadaryabad Mountain in the north; and Naw in between. Of the three, Qala-ye Qazi is the largest, which includes Qala-ye Pirmohammad Khan, where I was born; Qala-ye Wakil; Q ala-ye Sarfiraz; Qala-ye Qazi Kona, the first built in the village; Dara; Qala-ye Khan; Qala-ye Pakhchak; Qala-ye Poostindoza; Qala-ye Azad; and Qala-ye Zargar. Qala-ye Mohib, about seven or eight miles to the north, consisted of only two Qalas. Qala-ye Naw is the smallest in the village.

Qala-ye Qazi is famous for its Ziyarat-e Shagha (the Shagha Shrine.) It is not clear who Shagha was or when he was buried there. It is possible that he was the judge who built the first Qala in the village. He must have been a holy man of good reputation, as it is said that King Amunullah (1919–1929) would often visit this shrine for his blessings.

Among these Qalas, other than our own, I am most familiar with Qala-ye Mohib because my mother was from there. She would go there at least once every two months and always took me along, leaving my sisters behind to make meals for my father. A one-way trip there was about two hours’ walking distance. Qala-ye Naw was halfway, and we would stop to have a drink of water and refresh. Every time we went to Qal-ye Mohib, we would spend at least three or four nights. The main reason I enjoyed such trips was that we would be invited at a different relative’s house each night and eat fancy food, which I would only have at home on special occasions such as Eids. My dad’s in-laws were a lot richer than him. Most of them were landowners, making it very difficult for him to compete with them. This is why my dad would try to avoid visiting them to avoid reciprocal obligation to have them visit us. But they would come to our house to see my mother nonetheless, making my father very upset in the process. My mother, on the other hand, loved guests of any kind.

On average, each Qala had at least ten extended families. Each extended family in turn had an average of fifteen to twenty members. Thus, the population of the entire village was probably about 1,700 people. The majority of the villagers were farmers with smaller numbers of craftsmen—carpenters, barbers, china repairmen, blacksmiths, and others—followed by the clergy-mullahs and mawlawis (more educated than mullahs)—teachers and scribes or mirzas.

Almost all the villagers served the landowners and the well-off. In fact, the individuals who built these Qalas had to be rich and well-off to build such elaborate structures. The landowner in each Qala had the best quarters; his compound would be surrounded by the residences of his servants, farmers, carpenter, barber, and others together with the mosque mullah.

Almost all the villagers were illiterate; there were probably no more than five individuals in the entire village who could read and write. Those who could read and write were referred to as mirza (scribes) of whom my father was one.

Originally, these Qalas were sufficient in meeting their own needs including the defense and protection from outsiders. Qalas had thick (at least three feet) and high (fourteen feet) surrounding walls, one watch tower on each of the four corners of the walls, at least one well for drinking water, a mosque, a gate wide enough for a loaded camel to enter or leave, storage facilities for grains, animal feed and other necessities, and stables for animals; each Qala had its own cemetery located just outside the walls.

Initially, inside each Qala, there was a mosque located at the center, surrounded by nine or ten houses near the compound walls. The mosque is a place not just for worship but also for studying, meetings, and gatherings on special occasions. The imam or mullah had a room adjacent to the mosque.

The houses were one or two stories with rooms for living, storage, and stables. Household members used the same room for living, sitting, cooking, and sleeping. The living rooms had a hole in the ceiling for the smoke to escape; ursis and windows were later additions. An ursi is made of wood about three feet wide and six feet high. It consists of four separate palas, or parts, one of which has a window frame to let the light in. To close the ursi, the palas are pushed down one by one. To pen, they were pushed up one by one.

In addition to the mosque and houses, each Qala had its own prison in the form of an underground cave. In our own yard, for example, there was such a cave where I saw with my own eyes human bones. In short, these Qalas were self-sufficient and well protected against enemies. Even during my youth, these Qalas were essentially unchanged for centuries; the living conditions were similar to those in Europe in the Middle Ages.

When I came along, however, only two of the original towers in our Qala were still standing. Some of the walls in the west and south had collapsed. The mosque inside was in ruins and a new one built outside the Qala for praying and social gatherings and studying the Quran. The wells had dried up. We had to fetch water from the stream or Jowy outside the Qala. The stream was part of the Karaiz, an aqueduct system common in Afghanistan and other countries for centuries. It was a clever way to bring water down from the mountains underground so it would not evaporate on the way and could be directed to the fields for crops.

Although my great-grandfather, Pirmohammad Khan, had built our Qala three generations ago, my father had no land whatsoever. My grandfather or great-grandfather must have sold their land for one reason or another. My father never told us what had happened to his grandfather’s land and wealth. What I do know is that they must have been very cruel, as in the cave in our house I saw two skulls and some skeletons as well as human bones.

Who are the people of Qala-ye Qazi? The people in Qala-ye Qazi refer to themselves as Furmulis, someone from or related to Furmul. But where is Furmul and who are these people? There are two theories. According to one, Furmul is a town in Paktia Province, south of Kabul, and since people in this province speak Pashto, Furmulis are ethnic Pashtuns.

The other theory states that these people are of Turkic origin. I believe the second theory to be more plausible. For one, if they were Pashtuns, why don’t they peak Pashto, one of the main languages of Afghanistan? Unlike languages such as Arabic or Turkic, brought to Afghanistan by invaders and gradually forgotten, Pashto is one of the native and dominant languages of the country. In other words, if they were Pashtun, they would be speaking Pashto instead of Dari. The Pashtuns who migrated to northern Afghanistan still speak Pashto even though they were and still are surrounded by native speakers of Farsi and Uzbeki. For another, the village is not very far from Kabul City, the capital of the country. There are some Pashtuns in Charasya, not far from Kabul, who speak Pashto as their mother tongue. Therefore, the Furmulis cannot be Pashtun.

Instead, they are more likely Turkic. Joe Arlinghaus, a scholar on ethnic groups in Afghanistan and my former colleague in North Carolina, says the Furmulis are Persian-speaking Turks. In his e-mail on April 8, 2016, he writes,

In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the Furmulis were part of a caravan trade with India, when the Lodi Pashtuns brought horses to Panjab for sale … The migration of many Lodis and Furmulis to India allowed other Pashtun tribes to move in and take over land in what is now Paktika Province. As a consequence, many Furmulis who remained in Paktika then moved to Logar Province where they settled around Baraki Barak. The word Barak is another name for Furmuli. [My] ancestors probably then moved to southwest of Kabul [Qala-ye Qazi]. The medieval sources say that Furmulis were Persian-speaking Turks who were once linked with the Ghaznavid dynasty. They may have called themselves Turks not so much because of ethnicity but because they were martial as distinct from the Tajiks who were not considered martial.

I remember my father telling me that his mother was a Chinese from Turkistan. The northern region of Afghanistan-Kunduz, Baghlan, Takhar, and others used to be called Turkistan, or the land of Turks, until very recently. Some of these people speak Turkic languages, such as Uzbeki and Turkmani, in addition to Dari and Pashto. Foreign invaders of Afghanistan brought their native languages along. Arabs came to the country in the seventh century, as well as Chenghis Khan/Genghis Khan in the twelfth, not to mention Tamerlane, an Uzbek and a descendant of Genghis. Arabic eventually died but not the Turkic languages.

Other important characteristics of Qal-ye Qazi include the existence of only one primary school for boys, two tiny grocery stores and three butcher shops, one hydraulic mill for grinding wheat, one for extracting oil for lamps, and three maliks. The stores, located mostly outside of the Qalas, carried tea, sugar, candy, salt, pens and paper, notebooks, raisons, tobacco, grapes, and other fruits according to seasons. These commodities were placed in small baskets or other types of containers that were moved inside the owner’s Qala in late afternoons. The stores never sold vegetables, only seasonal fruits. A pound of lamb with bones was 2 afghanis and a dozen of eggs 1 afghani. I don’t recall the dollar rate to the afghani at the time, but 1 afghani was probably a couple of cents. There were no butcher shops in the winter because no sheep were available for slaughtering. These butcher shops were active only in the spring, summer, and fall because of the nomads who had their herds of sheep and goats for sale.

The entire village had two or three maliks. The word malik is Arabic, meaning king. In this context, however, it means a village head elected by the elders in the community for a fixed number of years. These village elders had two functions. One was to be the intermediary between the villagers and the government. In the event of a crime, the government officials would contact the malik first to locate the criminals and proceed from there. Some maliks also had another function: loan money to the needy at times of deaths, weddings, and other emergencies. The borrowers had to pay annual interests as high as 20 percent. Usually, the borrower had to have some collateral, such as land, to obtain the loan. It’s worth noting that interest is prohibited, or Haram, in Islam. That was why they were referred to as Soodkhore, interest seekers, a derogatory term. Thus, maliks were both middlemen and village banks.

As for religion, almost all the villagers were Sunnis with only a few Shiites who were engaged in farming. Some people of Qala-ye Qazi, primarily the rich, were followers of the Qaderya Sufi order.

Finally, farmers in Qala-ye Qazi used no modern technology whatsoever. Everything from irrigation to planting to harvesting was done by hand and using animals, like the Middle Ages in Europe.

Our House

Our house was unique in our Qala. It was located on the west side, and we had a small yard in the house and a backyard on the west outside. The house had four rooms, two of which faced south where we lived. As you entered the front door, on your right was a platform about two feet high. Here was the Tandoor, a mud ground oven about three feet deep and two feet wide in which my mother baked bread. The Tandoor had a passageway at the bottom so the air from the outside would fan the fire. It was heated mostly with animal dung. Then, the dough was made into half-pound balls and flattened before attaching them to the wall of the oven. This was our summer and fall Tandoor; there was another Tandoor in our kitchen located on the west of our compound, Hauli, for winter use.

Next to the platform for baking bread was a storage room for animal dung and other materials needed for the fire in the Tandoor. As you turned left from here, you saw two rooms on the right. To enter the living room, you had to go to the covered hallway and turn right. The living room had two windows and an Ursisi facing the yard. Next to the living room was the Paskhana, or backroom, where we stored flour in two huge mud containers, or Kandus, together with ghee, rice, lentils,