Misunderstanding Hope…
Ahmed stared at the Russian book for some time, wondering if the same had to be done: show, don't tell.
He saw Mongolia long ago, so many years ago, with that man from the factory, his name lost to faded memories. He had a story like Ahmed's of struggle and misunderstanding hope. One that took him places he didn't know existed. One that changed him forever changed something. Ahmed understood this years ago, sitting inside a library in East Berlin in 1975 or 1976. The years blend into one another with age, like sediment mixing with this river of space and time. He read a book about the history of communism in Russia, yet he had a book in German about the history of socialism. There are two sides of the same coin in his mind: one political and one societal, except he couldn't read German, only Russian. He flipped the page, imagining the impossible again.
Afghanistan needed communism, socialism, and a true welfare state for all. Something, some ideology to wipe away all the hate and pain, the religious maelstrom of indoctrinated fear and hope, however misguided it sounded to any Soviet official. His superiors, his comrades, and his subordinates, also, his comrades. Forced equality for all; no one was seen as different anymore. A new age of equality was brought about by an ideology that was educated to the masses. Ahmed frowned, agreeing with his imagination. He could change the future with the past, with history, and with education. He saw it as his crusade, his drive to endure all the microaggressions aimed at him as an Afghan. He knew his crusade held truth, could convert millions, and he would spearhead it. He so hoped.
He closed the book, weary from constant reading, sitting in a wooden chair for hours, making him stiff and rigid. He scratched his clean-shaven face, thinking of an alternative reality, a place no Soviet propaganda could go, demanding and persistent as ever. He looked at the cover of the German book, not understanding it. A flaw, his flaw, his ignorance, as with Russian. He read about this revolutionary from the Middle Ages, Martin Luther, who changed Christianity forever, and how he translated the Bible from Latin into vernacular German. Ahmed stared at the Russian book for some time, wondering if the same had to be done: show, don't tell.
He checked out both books, then bought them, and initiated a new direction of his crusade, aimed at himself: learn German, translate Russian, and spread the ideologies of communism and socialism. He took them back to his hotel room, and for the next few years, right until the 1979 invasion of Afghanistan, he spent an excessive amount of time translating Russian into Afghan languages. Exhausted by it, he forgot any German he studied, his hope placed elsewhere. But how he would exercise that hope came from the most uncomfortable step forward, into Afghanistan, into a nation that would reject any invader, even himself, no longer a boy from a village. He had changed so much, been through plenty, and given himself a poignant education.
If he couldn't beat them, join them. If he couldn't succeed on his own, he needed help. He knew.
