Uncle Janan
As the instruments of war plays its tune, death dances.
I walked into a landmine of emotions today, it wasn’t my intention.
I had prepared a grand evening of writing, several drafts made ready only a few last paragraphs left to complete, today was going to be a quirky and funny story from my dumber days.
However, I had the misfortune of getting distracted for a brief moment and opened Instagram what greeted me was a short video of about 25 seconds and a 3-hour introspection.
An elderly Afghan man, Uncle Janan as I would later learn is a nai player which is a wind instrument native to the region. Prior to learning his name, I didn’t know much of his story and the video I stumbled across was extracted from a larger video of an interview spoken entirely in the native language in which he plays the flute for half of its length and proceeds to tell his story in the other half.
The only subtitles were in the small video extracted for Instagram. However one didn’t need more detail to understand that Uncle Janan had lived a difficult life. His eyes were old and weary, you could see that as the years went by they etched their mark on his skin as wrinkles formed across his brow, besides his eyes and his beard were rugged, white, and grey, Uncle Janan lived his life and carried it on his body and face and they bore sorrow like no other.
After learning his name, I learned he had lost both his sons who were policemen in the Afghan Government before its recent takeover. They were ambushed by the Taliban and Uncle Janan lost both his sons in one day.
Towards the end of the interview, all semblance of a man trying to live by picking up fragments of his life existed no longer. He was broken and broke down in quiet tears.
Quietly he composes himself and narrates the following few lines by the Persian poet ‘Saadi’
if I tell of the sorrow of my heart, I am afraid it will burn my tongue.
If I keep it in my heart, I am afraid it will burn me from the inside.
If I let it out, I am afraid it will burn the whole world.
I cannot let it out
so I let my sorrow stay inside.
My home is going through a similar situation and it saddens me to see how things are seemingly repeating themselves albeit in different countries and different circumstances, employing the means of extreme violence and intolerance somehow always leads us all back to meaningless deaths and a repeat cycle of fathers burying their children and fathers burying their children.
The Afghan story is one we should question ourselves with regardless of our proximity to the conflict. A serious re-evaluation of the things we would give our lives for and more importantly take from.