Something to Remember

Trying to catch up with ruthless days and nights that are rushing towards eternity irreversibly with a grey brush to paint our heads. Memories are piling up in my box and squeezing it so that you can see their traces. But since a while ago it seems that we are living the same year over and over again. Same names and same upheavals are filling up our being. Same pictures of cigarette-like twin towers and smoked tube stations with more details on the war of “good” and “evil”. But the loudest explosion in this lot to me was Robert Fisk’s “Finding Osama”. The Independent correspondent has happened to be the only Western journalist to penetrate al-Qa’ida’s inner sanctum and have several chats with the world’s most wanted man. He has survived some awesome moments like Bin Laden asking him: “Mr Robert, one of our brothers had a dream. He dreamed that you came to us one day on a horse, that you had a beard and that you were a spiritual person. You wore a robe like us. This means you are a true Muslim”. R. Fisk admits that it was terrifying. However, he dared to tell that he was not a Muslim. He was just a journalist and his job was to tell the truth. Osama’s withdrawal from his proposal sounded sickeningly diplomatic too: “If you tell the truth, that means you are a good Muslim”. You could imagine that this blood-thirsty creature had never lied throughout his life or any of his followers or big enemies. In reality their jihads and crusades are lie-coated entirely.

Another passage from Robert’s book: “I said to Bin Laden that Afghanistan was the only country left to him after his exile in Sudan. He agreed. “The safest place in the world for me is Afghanistan.” It was the only place, I repeated, in which he could campaign against the Saudi government. Bin Laden and several of his Arab fighters burst into laughter. “There are other places”, he replied. Did he mean Tajikistan? I asked. Or Uzbekistan? Kazakhstan? “There are several places where we have friends and close brothers – we can find refuge and safety in them”. I told Bin Laden he was already a hunted man. “Danger is a part of our life”, he snapped back”.

To me it was a bit surprising that Tajikistan was the first country to come into Robert’s mind as Osama’s second haven.

Osama in 1997 explains how much he detests Saddam Hussein, while “Saddam’s support for Bin Laden” was one of Bush’s justifications for attacking on Iraq.

That was something I added to my last days’ memorable moments.

There is something else to remember as well, of course. My baby has made a favour for me that turned up as a big surprise to me. My short story about Hushyar, the lovely dog of my Dad, has been published. I had completely forgotten that she had taken a copy of it with herself back to Dushanbe. That was a very pleasant moment indeed.