The Hostile Hostel!

The Hostile Hostel!

Here is an excerpt from the first known Pashto poem that I translated into English. I am still working on the rest as it uses very ancient words and is tricky to figure out. This was written by Amir Kror, a tribal king hundreds of years ago in central Afghanistan.


Pride By Amir Kror

 I am a lion in the world. For me are no hero. In India there were, in Sindh there were, in Takhar and Kabul there are none. Also, in Zabul there are none-for me there is no hero.

Pray for this land to find the only true hero who can save them.

 

I spent some time visiting with a believing family who to me, live in a restricted area where foreigners are not allowed. They did not tell me until after I got there, but I had quite the journey there! I ventured out in a taxi, thinking I could easily reach there in 40 minutes or so. We arrived at the gate to the city area, which had “restricted area” written in bold letters across the arch. The officer told the taxi driver that taxis could not take people through. I would have to walk through and get transportation on the other side. The driver relayed the information to me in English, and knowing that if they heard I was a foreigner I would not be allowed in, I pretended I did not understand English and started speaking in Pashto. Being in the Punjab region, most people don’t speak Pashto, so I had him use Google translate from English to Pashto to tell me I would have to walk through the gate. Being a woman, the officers will never ask you questions, so I walked through the gate easily. I found myself walking along a road in the hundred degree weather without any cell service to call the people I was visiting or call another taxi, with several pounds of mangoes in my backpack, and no language skills on this side of the Indus River. I was trying to find the transportation they were talking about, but all I found was a few vans sitting there without any intention of moving and some guys there who did not speak Pashto. So I continued walking along, hoping to a find a bazaar or somewhere where I could ask a shopkeeper to connect to Wi-Fi to be able to phone my friends or flag a taxi, or hoping I would see a taxi along the road. Finally, I came to a “shuttle” stop. (Where ten passenger vans come to pick up as many people as physically possible to take to the other stops along the road.) Not knowing what it was, I was trying to ask a lady there if there were taxis coming. Nobody around spoke Pashto, and I couldn’t try English because of the area I was in, so I could not get much help from anyone. Finally, a van came, and having no real address, I showed him the coordinates to the house I was trying to get to. I could not tell if he knew where it was or was planning to head in that direction, but everyone kept motioning for me to sit in the van. They were saying something about the 26th gate that apparently the van could not go to, but maybe they could get me close. Sardine packed into the tiny van with way too many people and no AC. I kept frantically showing the driver the coordinates in the hope he would know we weren’t driving in the wrong direction. No one understood what I was trying to say, but at the next stop there was an old man who spoke some Pashto whom they asked to translate. He asked me what I wanted, and I said I was trying to go to my friend’s house, and he said just stay in the van. Finally, we got to the last stop, and he motioned to another van driver and said I only spoke Pashto, and he again mentioned something about the 26th gate. Not knowing where that van was going either, I was again frantically showing the driver coordinates, hoping he wouldn’t take me in the wrong direction. Finally, we got to the “26th gate” along a row of shops, and he told me to get out there. I went into the gate, and it appeared to be a neighborhood. There was a security guard there who spoke Pashto whom I explained the situation to. He was very sorry that I had no brothers and trying to figure out what he could do.

After maybe twenty or so minutes of fruitless discussion about what to do, he finally realized where the coordinates were-in a neighborhood about five minutes away. He called some neighborhood kid to take me on his motorbike. On the way, a Pak army officer stopped us. I don’t know what he was saying, but obviously, I did not look related to the boy on the bike, so maybe that was the question. I prayed, and the officer passed us along. Finally, I arrived at my friend’s house and was all worried as by now I was a couple of hours late. I thought maybe I would have been scared of being somewhere where I didn’t speak the language and had no cell service, or annoyed by the intense heat of the Pakistani sun and other people squishing all around me in the van with my heavy backpack, but it was quite the adventure I really enjoyed! Interestingly enough, when I went out to dinner one night with the family, the second van driver picked us up, and he remembered me and was happy to see I had found who I was looking for. There are many believers living in that area and many Christian schools pray they will be salt and light to their neighbors.

 

Lord willing, I will be going back to college at the end of August, and I am enjoying resting in Islamabad with my many Pashto books and many new friends. Pray for my new friend downstairs. Her husband is a brother but she is not. Pray she will join her husband in the hope he has.

 

Pray for my time going back. Pray for the inhospitable hostel conditions that have been unaddressed by the authorities despite many empty promises of fixing the situation. Pray for justice for the girls, as all the boys’ hostels have proper accommodation and only the girls’ hostel suffers lack. Pray for new relationships to form as newcomers will join and many of my friends graduated last semester. Pray for old relationships to grow and wisdom as to where to spend my time as there are so many people.

 

Pray for some ads a friend of mine ran about the gospel in Pashto to try to find seekers. I was looking at some of the responses and some were just curious but not open, others were calling us infidels and saying inappropriate things about our female relatives, and still fewer were some who wanted the book itself and willing to meet to talk. The guy running the ads met with one in a nearby city with another believer to discuss some things. Two other women and I also went along (jokingly I was saying we were their bodyguards, there to witness what happened to them if it was a setup) and we three women sat by the riverside enjoying themselves while the men went to talk with the seeker.

Pray for my friend “Aisha”. She became lame in both feet and infertile from a mishap in one of her operations and her husband decided to leave her and her two kids and get remarried. I tried to console her last night by telling her that God loves her and her kids and she said how can God like her? She’s a bad woman. I shared with her the words of Jesus promising rest and she was not receptive. Pray she finds her rest and love in the promises of God.

 

Thank you all for praying! Khoda haafiz⁩

Kendall Freeman

July 29th 2024