I spent days in a lot of places when I was sixteen and seventeen – 32 countries in fact – but that’s another story. This story is one small piece of that larger story.
We, my mom, dad, sister, our Swiss friend, Jacqueline, and I stayed in the home of Tom and Libby Little in downtown Kabul. Tom was an eye doctor who, with his wife and three small children, had moved to Kabul that year. They had been planning to stay just two years, but had now decided to stay there for the rest of their lives.
Somewhere, I hope, in my parents’ garage, is a box containing hundreds of Kodak slides from our journeys that year. Somewhere among them are photos of Kabul. When I find them, I intend to digitize them. Then I’ll update this blog and post them here. In the meantime, here’s a blog I found that talks about Kabul in the late seventies and beyond. This might give you an idea of what it was like. I wish I could show you pictures. If you Google images for Chicken Street in Kabul, you’ll get an idea of the colorful crazy mix that this place still is.
What I remember about those few days in the summer of 1977 was how happy Tom and Libby seemed to be. They had just started this work, and were falling in love with Afghanistan. I remember Libby taking my mom and me down Chicken Street, in Kabul to go shopping. The colors, the smells, the dead animals hanging in the butcher shops, the flies, the women in bright jewel toned shiny flowing burkes that hid their entire face and body, the hawkers, Libby haggling with the shop keepers for everything from butter to scarves, the American tie-dyed long-haired hippies shopping for pot and opium on their way to Nepal on the Kathmandu Trail in search for enlightenment, the men sitting in front of their shops smoking their hookahs, the dust, the music, the crowds, the energy. There were American missionaries who went to Kabul specifically to minister to the American hippy enlightenment seekers. Tom and Libby may have started out this way, I don’t know. But they fell in love with the Afghanis and that’s where they stayed. They warned us in the strictest terms not to mention Jesus, or share our faith with any Afghani. It could be a death sentence for the Afghani and could get Tom & Libby arrested and expelled from the country.
I remember the children who gathered around Tom and Libby’s home waiting for us to emerge so they could smile sweetly, tug on our skirts, and hold out their hands. I remember giving them pieces of bread from a loaf that Tom and Libby gave us.
I remember wondering at the thought that Tom and Libby were going to make this place their home. That they weren’t here for some short-term mission. They had fallen in love with these beautiful people and were moving to Afghanistan, permanently.
We kept up with them for some years through their newsletter, and my dad corresponded with Tom for a while. I wish I had been more self (and others) aware at that time and had stayed in touch with them myself. We heard about them continuing to stay through civil war, the Russian invasion, political uprisings, overthrows, bombings, massacres, the Taliban, and on and on and on…. to bring optical and medical care to the Afghan people.
They had a deep and profound faith in God and exercised that faith by loving the people of Afghanistan. And they were loved in return. In an interview with NPR in 2003, Tom explains why they stayed, even through very dangerous times. He said that he and Libby identified so much with the Afghanis that leaving when it was dangerous, running home to the U.S. where it was safe, seemed cowardly and shameful, when their Afghani friends and patients could not leave.
Three weeks ago, while returning from an arduous trek into some remote mountain villages, Tom and nine members of the medical team he led were executed by the Taliban.
We all believe in something, and that belief governs our actions – whether we are aware of it or not. The Taliban accused Tom of proselytizing, which of course was untrue. Tom didn’t have to tell people about the God he worshiped. He showed them – through his courageous love. The militants who murdered Tom and the rest of his team were also sending a message about the god they worship.
I grieve for Libby and for their daughters. And I grieve for the people of Afghanistan who are being held hostage by this brutal inhuman band of murderers and tyrants, and who have lost a beloved friend who did nothing but give sight to the blind.
Thirty-three years ago they were young and I was younger. I was just beginning traveling down my own road to enlightenment. They had already found theirs giving and loving the people in Afghanistan.