Many people would assume that immigrants who fled their country must now think lowly of their country… I find this to not be true, at all. Just recently I spoke to a man from Afghanistan. He’s the father of one my daughters’ classmates. He remarked that her first name is also common in his country. The two of us talked for quite a while.
He told me his mother-in-law was ill, so his wife had recently taken a trip from Europe to Afghanistan to spend time with her. “And before you worry,” he said, “don’t, because it’s actually completely safe there…”
Of course, I was curious. Completely safe, in Taliban-held Afghanistan? “Yes,” he said, “because before the Taliban was there, everyone had to lock their shops, lock their houses, and be careful where to travel and where not to… now? You can leave your door unlocked in my home town. No one will steal a thing. Because if they do, Taliban will cut off their hands… they kind of had to, you know? Bandits used to be everywhere.”
He said it so casually, too. Like it was a completely normal, even practical solution to the issue of theft. Please note, this is a man who left for the West as a child. Still, he has many friends and relatives in his country of birth. Most, he told me, actually support the Taliban. This surprised me.
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