The Child's Question

The Child's Question

Helmand Province, 2014

Her name was Zainab, maybe twelve years old, though malnutrition made it hard to judge. She had enormous dark eyes far too old and knowing for her young face. She appeared at our checkpoint every single day without fail, selling Bolani (*"stuffed flatbread”) the traditional flatbread stuffed with seasoned potatoes and leeks that her mother painstakingly prepared over their small cookfire each morning before dawn. We bought them all, every single time, though we didn't really need them and our translator said we were paying twice the market price. The money fed her family of six living in a mud-brick house with no running water.

One scorching afternoon, hours after a particularly brutal firefight that left two of our team seriously wounded and evacuated, I sat alone outside the compound walls, staring at nothing, questioning absolutely everything. Why were we here? What difference did any of this make? How many more would die before it was over? The questions circled endlessly, finding no answers.

Zainab approached shyly as always, her cloth-covered basket balanced on her small head, offering her daily goods. "No Bolani today, Zainab," I said tiredly in my broken Pashto, unable to meet her eyes. "Not hungry."

She didn't leave as I expected. Instead, she carefully set down her basket and sat beside me on the dusty ground, small and impossibly fragile in her faded, much-patched dress. We sat together in silence for a long time, an odd pair—the armed American soldier and the malnourished Afghan girl-while the desert heat shimmered around us.

Finally, she spoke in the careful, broken English she'd been learning: "Mister, why you so sad today?"

"War is very hard," I said simply, not knowing how else to explain the weight I carried.

That day, a child who should have been bitter and broken taught me about faith that endures impossible circumstances, about finding divine purpose and meaning even in profound loss.

"And a little child will lead them." [Isaiah 11:6]

(This is story/ incident re-told to me by a young American soldier and member of the allied forces in Afghanistan, a dear friend of mine, for security reasons I do not wish to disclose his name, but he was and still is a believer of the faith).

* It is typically filled with ingredients like spiced mashed potatoes, lentils, leeks, or herbs, folded into a semi-circle, and pan-fried until golden and crispy. In fact, I plan to share my recipe on Bolani making, something that I really love and cherish. I recall to have eaten the best Bolani's made at a fast-food stall in Kabul at the Ministry of Information & Culture.  

She nodded with ancient, terrible understanding. "My Baba died in war when I was baby. My brother Hamid too, last year. Taliban killed him because he went to school. But Mama says God still has plan for us. She says we must have ‘sabr’-patience and endurance. And always hope, even when everything dark." She paused, studying my face with those impossibly old eyes, then asked the simple question that would haunt and heal me forever: "You believe God has plan? Even here?"

Out of the mouths of innocent little children come wisdom and truth. This child, who had lost nearly everything, who should have been consumed by bitterness and despair, was asking if I, with all my advantages and safety still believed. Tears stung my eyes, and I had to look away at the barren mountains. "Yes," I finally whispered, my voice breaking. "Yes, Zainab Jan, I do believe." (Jan, is the way one addresses the other with respect and love- be it old or young).