An Afghanistan Picture Show: Or, How I Saved the World by William T. Vollmann

with them. (The population of Peshawar had doubled since the refugees came.) Here’s case number fifty speaking: “But United States is a very good country for me; it’s a very big country; if I found someone to send me a visa …” —This fellow bears an interesting resemblance to case two, but differs from case seventeen in ways x, y and z; and now, safe on the High Ledge of Generalizations, the Young Man has become me, who is quite satisfied to raise enough money here in Oakland to maybe send the Mujahideen one machine gun, d and then let’s call it quits and go on to some other project.
“A VERY GOOD COUNTRY FOR ME,”
or
, HAPPINESS [3]
     
    When the relatives of my friend H. arrived in California, they were kept in custody for several days, and then assigned to a foster family. The parents were treated as servants by the family. The children were made to eat out of dog bowls. When the parents protested, their five-year-old son was placed in an institution. They were not allowed to visit him. (I did not quite believe any of this when H. told me—how could such things happen? Had they entered the country illegally? Was H. exaggerating to get my sympathy? But why would he do that? He had more money than I.) They did not see the boy for six months. H. hired a lawyer and filed suit. Eventually they succeeded in getting custody. The boy had become very quiet. They did not know what had happened to him in the institution because he would not talk about it. Meanwhile, the parents awaited a judgment as to whether they would be allowed to stay in the United States. At length the Immigration official assigned to their case summoned them. He put leg irons on their feet. He made them shuffle after him down a long corridor. He told them that he was going to put them on a plane back to Afghanistan. When they landed, the Russians would execute them, he said. It is not hard to imagine how they felt as they walked toward that unseen airplane; they
had
to walk down the hall, just as my friends and acquaintances in Afghanistan must go over the mountains at night to the place where the Russian soldiers had cut their pipeline and stand there selling gasoline or trading it, so much gasoline in a dirty cup for so much hashish, the Russians too stupid to see that they are selling to their enemy one of the things needed to go on killing Russians, and that Russians who use hashish are easier to kill! (Yet I wonder why the Afghans even bothered to pay, why they didn’t just go farther down in the moonlight and kneel beneath the leak where the gas came dribbling out; or why they didn’t set it afire?—but of course it was their own gas; why should they blow up their own country’s gas?) —To H.’ S relatives, of course, it did not seem evident that there was anything left to buy or sell or negotiate.—Then the Immigration man smiled and set them free. It was only a joke. They could stay. When I met the family a few days later at a restaurant, they smiled and picked at their food. They spoke hardly any English; they had no money. I gave them two hundred dollars—all I had. They smiled and told me how happy they were to be here. They insisted on paying for the lunch. I think they really were happy. What had happened to them
here
was insignificant.
ANOTHER TWIST OF THE WORM
     
    Let’s suppose that the Young Man had been able to give everyone he saw exactly what was asked for; that, being the American that he was said to be, he truly was the genie in the Sprite bottle. After all, their expectations were modest (most of them). They did not want to have EVERYTHING that the Young Man had. By and large, they wanted money and guns. If he gave them those, then the Soviets would feel obliged even more often to violate Pakistani airspace with their low-flying planes that grazed Peshawar so teasingly and then swerved back toward the border to bomb another refugee camp or drop another load of toy-shaped butterfly mines where Afghan children