Strikingly familiar

The left-behind, ghost towns, abandoned air fields and ammunition supplies, heaps of them: pick your weapons.

Kabul! Ka-boom!

Warlords, landlords leaving in droves (the elites, the elite wanna-bees – just like those orphans flights out of Saigon decades ago. What we feared most – the end, the destruction etc.. ended up materialized, self-inflicted.

Back then, those C-130’s were seat-less. We squatted on the floor, of barges, boats and buses.

Summer without end, waves and waves of homesickness and hopelessness.

Khanh Ly (our Joan Baez) sang for free on Wake Island (that was, if one cared to board intra-island buses to her side of the Island).

“Band on the run”….I overheard from a neighbouring refugee barrack, then

“la la la la la” Minnie Riperton with her high-pitch vocal in “Lovin you”….

The irony of clear voice and clean beach, yet clouded heads and muddy future.

When we got to Indiantown Gap, PA…things resumed e.g. wedding daily in chapel, and volleyballs daily out in the court.

I got busy, right away. The eagle did not need a push: one unaccompanied minor, then “next” then another one (Child Welfare Bureau interpreter).

Then one toilet to clean, then “next”, then another one (Student Union Building janitor).

Even those jobs are now hard to come by.

Summer 1975. With war (and by extension, homeland) behind, and uncertain future ahead.

Culture shock and future shock (Alvin Toffler). Technological invention for use and misuse. For good and evil end.

The folks on campus who dressed up on Sundays approached a lonely refugee in their cafeteria:” Hi” “how would you like to hear how to get to Heaven – you would like Heaven rather than Hell, correct” (nodding to induce mimicry – Sales trained).

Oh well. Sit down.

Let’s hear. Let’s talk. Anything, but the war.

Anything, but the silence.

Anything, but the loss, and resulting perceived betrayal.

Anything but me, janitor at night, and student by day.

Like used-car salesmen, those students never wanted to make friends. They wanted to make a mark, a number.

Their Crusade Numbers game.

The more doors you knock on, the more critical mass. Like a Billy Graham Crusade, like John Wesley tent preaching.

Ends of Earth (heck, I had just arrived from that other end, which later, Sylvester Stallone uttered “what they call Hell, I call Home”…in subsequent Rambo filmocraphy.

If people tend to repeat themselves, there will be a slew of films about Afghan wars, post-wars and post-scripts….of Honorable Exit, of Decent Intervals…of Presidential revisionist history, of the origins of species and of war….

“in the paper today, there were news about war. and of waste..but you turned right to the TV page”….like in a Six pence none the richer “Don’t dream it’s over”…Hey now, hey now….hey Jude hey Jude….don’t be afraid.

I woke up from a long flight (C-130) just to find my childhood, my innocence, my country, my ideal, my family and friends gone, like a blur – all turned black-and-white without any colors.

Then the bus out of Harrisburg airport, with a STOP sign in the Army barracks turned refugee camp, then the Red-Cross bulletin board (today’s facebook equivalent – perhaps you might know this or that person) and lush-green Pennsylvania meadow.

Here…your section (a dozen toilets)…clean, baby clean…Don’t dream it’s over….Hey now, hey now….

Afghan neighbours….perhaps I can dig out my old manual…the survival manual, for America….

Unless you want to self-actualize right away, before you finished the climb up the Maslow scale i.e. survival, security, love, self-esteem,….(then self-actualize).

99 percent of us don’t even get past stage 3….we’re still figuring out the rope, the climb and the ladder.

No time for the view on top. Long ago, if any, it was from the last helicopter out of Saigon, your today’s Kabul.

Bonjour tristesse! Morning in America, night in your world and mine.