PhillyTablet Inquirer Daily News
Mobile
Home Delivery
philly.com
email
font size
comments
1
options
 
Sunday, May 3, 2009

My driver

Jafaar, my driver is a student at the American University of Kabul, who speaks good English and drives a battered Toyota.

His story is typical of many Afghanis. His parents fled the Soviets in the late '70s and wound up in neighboring Iran, thinking they would be there a few months. They stayed more than twenty years.

After the Taliban's fall they returned, because the Iranians didn't permit their children to have good jobs, or in Jafaar's case, to attend university. He is working several jobs to pay tuition and has taught himself excellent English. Like many young Afghan refugees, he is also trying to adjust to a country he never knew until he was twenty-three years old.
Posted by Trudy Rubin @ 2:34 PM  Permalink | 1 comment
Comments   
  • 0 like this / 0 don't   •   Posted 7:15 PM, 05/03/2009
    Ms. Rubin: the correct word is Afghans. Afghani refers to the currency. Tashakur!
    — PennGuy86


1 comments
About Trudy Rubin
Trudy Rubin’s Worldview column runs on Thursdays and Sundays. In 2009-2011 she has made four lengthy trips to Afghanistan and Pakistan. Over the past seven years, she visited Iraq eleven times, and also wrote from Iran, Israel, the West Bank, Gaza, Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Turkey, China, and South Korea. She is the author of Willful Blindness: the Bush Administration and Iraq, a book of her columns from 2002-2004. In 2001 she was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in commentary and in 2008 she was awarded the Edward Weintal prize for international reporting. In 2010 she won the Arthur Ross award for international commentary from the Academy of American Diplomacy.
Advertise Here