A year ago I found myself trotting through the streets of Kabul on my way to work at headquarters, International Security Assistance Force (ISAF). Like many other international personnel who entered and exited the base, a cluster of small children often greeted us. I was amazed at how westernized these children were and how much they embraced skateboarding down the neighborhoods of Kabul. Even the girls, who in other neighborhoods would have been confined to their homes, demonstrated their proficiencies.
I was overwhelmed and implored my brother, Joe, and his colleagues at Skate Park of Tampa, to send their used skateboards, extra wheels and other mounting tools to provide better equipment to the children.
It wasn't out of some need to demonstrate a benevolent act of charity. No, these children had become my family. We would exchange greetings in Pashto or Dari. Watching them board and stupefy the crowd with their abilities reminded me of watching my young brother thrash through downtown Tampa or Washington, D.C.
A beautiful little girl, Parwana (which means butterfly in Dari), would hold my hand on the way into work and declare that she was my "body guard." Impressive for someone who barely stood 36 inches, probably not many more pounds, had ratty hair and wore the most charming dusty smile you've ever seen. As a big brother to four younger sisters, you can't help but attach yourself to this type of embrace and familiarity between otherwise distant strangers.
More importantly, you attach yourself to the innocence that has been missing for generations in a war-torn country. You attach yourself to the idea of hope and a future in these young children, many of whom speak at least three or four languages, and are desperately trying to improve their quality of life by selling trinkets to the visitors. These children, my bodyguards and surrogate brothers and sisters, would make sure I was safe as I walked to work and greeted me happily as I returned in the evening to my temporary home in Kabul.
Parwana was a little pistol of energy and delight. She and her sisters, Basira and Khorshid, were as loud, rambunctious and touching as any other kid on the street, and could thrash as well as any boy on a skateboard! Khorshid, in particular, would display all of the tricks she had learned while visiting Skatistan, a charity which provides a safe venue and equipment to Kabul's children to learn and practice the sport.
These were magnificent sights and sounds to absorb each morning and evening. Their embrace grew, my familiarity with their language and families expanded, and friendship replaced the continual hustle of selling me trinkets. Instead, we would practice ordering food in Pashto, bartering with the local shopkeepers for better prices on pomegranates for breakfast. There are few expressions more luminating than an Afghan child's face when they bite into a pomegranate ("anar" in local dialect) the size of their dusty little heads. The only moment that seemed to top the breakfast runs to the market was the day Skate Park of Tampa forwarded more than dozen skateboards for these young Kabul riffraff.
Passing out the skateboards my brother sent and watching the amazement experienced by these kids was the highlight of an otherwise disparaging deployment. It was a glimmer of hope and true joy in a city that has experienced far too many atrocities.
Atrocities such as those that happened just a couple of weeks ago, on Sept. 8.
It was Massoud Day, a national holiday in Afghanistan marking the day of martyrdom for the famous Ahmad Shah Massoud, who was a mighty mujahidin during the Afghan resistance to the Russians and ardently opposed the Taliban. On that morning, several of the aforementioned children stood outside of the base, waiting to greet other individuals, like me, who resided off base. It is a heavily secured area, with the constant presence of Afghan National Security Forces. Yet, that did not matter.
It was the alarms raised by a few tiny voices, their shouts at the guards, that something terrible was under way, which signaled another horrific example of the enemy we are fighting in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
A young suicide bomber, 13, integrated amongst the other children, was waiting for ISAF personnel to leave the base. When the little ones who normally greet their friends with smiles realized the boy was wearing an explosive-laden vest, they screamed for help.
Parwana, always the consummate 8-year-old bodyguard, her sisters and many other children warned of danger with their very last breaths.
The children could have remained quiet. They could have walked away from a danger and allowed those of us who frequent their paths to meet the demise of unspeakable pain. Instead, the little bodyguards alerted the foreigners of danger; they sacrificed everything to save strangers who had become their friends, their surrogate big brothers and sisters.
And as such, six of their little bodies lay sprawled across an Afghan street, four more rushed to a hospital with life-threatening injuries, and a radicalized teenager, brainwashed in a perverse religion among them, reaping his martyrdom while his masters continue on to a new recruit.
These little strangers, tiny butterflies of innocence, placed the lives of strangers above their own. They sacrificed their lives because, in their own way, they were scared of what this wanton individual would do to those for whom they cared.
When some cower from the horrors of this war, those like Parwana, Khorshid and Basira take up arms against the monsters who would destroy this country.
May we all have the courage of an 8-year-old, someday — for the sake of a better Afghanistan.
