Tim Thompson's Private Cold War
Viorst, Milton
Tim Thompson's Private Cold War MILTON VIORST Kabul, Afghanistan Tim Thompson is a slight, blond, intense young man who, for a year, has been a target of a private cold war waged against him by...
...Sex is out of the question," he says, "unless I want to sleep with men...
...The school in which Thompson works is, like most Afghan buildings, built of mud bricks covered with mud plaster...
...He finds gratification in his dynamic involvement in the community, and in the achievement of stimulating in some of his students an interest in the outside world...
...It seems unstylish to write about the Peace Corps these days...
...At night, the Russians lock themselves behind the walls of their compound, and remain as secluded as Afghan women...
...I found on the floor a thin mattress and faded oriental rugs, a portable radio and record player, a stack of paperbacks in a corner, and candles on the table for evening light...
...The other teachers, he says, at first looked upon him as a threat, but now treat him with affectionate curiosity, knowing he will go home one day and take his bizarre ways with him...
...Thompson's way of life is much like that of the other volunteers in the Afghan countryside...
...Thompson, the only American in the village, teaches English in the local school and lives alone in a small rented house near the bazaar...
...Except for a trip every month or so to Kabul, he almost never leaves the village...
...He eats his dinner at nightfall, most commonly soup and rice and some kind of native stew prepared by his servant...
...No one has any idea what the Peace Corps is., or why it sent him...
...In Sheberghan, he says, the men do the marketing...
...Thompson makes no claim that, as a teacher, he is generating much change from the old ways in Sheberghan...
...His house has no electricity or running water and, though he boils the water he draws from the well, he has had several touches of dysentery...
...In its early days, Peace Corps volunteers were often assigned to "community development," which led to disruption of the social and political equilibrium of many villages, Now, most governments insist that the volunteers stick to teaching...
...Afghanistan seems to have no concept of personal privacy...
...You have to remember," he said, "that an Afghan will never tell you what he thinks...
...He admits he is bewildered by the sexual signals, having yet to master the subtleties of the society's sexual practices...
...The school is glad to have him, Thompson says, because he is a free teacher...
...Occasionally, Thompson says, he has received what he perceives to be sexual advances from men, usually in the public bath, which he visits every few days...
...None of them speaks Farsi, either, which has forced the merchants to learn Russian...
...But they soon learned the difference...
...Now we are suspicious of the missionary spirit, wary of paternalism, cautious about the good will the Peace Corps was meant to spread...
...There is one telephone in Sheberghan, but he usually must wait most of the day in the post office just to get a line...
...At first the villagers thought he was part of them, because his blond hair and fair skin led them to take him for a Russian...
...Theoretically, primary education is compulsory in Afghanistan but, because of the shortage of facilities, the choice of whether to send a child to school is normally left to each family...
...It's not that he's dishonest, but that he doesn't want to give offense...
...Thompson says that, though lonely, he is not at all sad...
...They always move in groups, he says, even when engaged in such mundane tasks as shopping for groceries, and whenever they see him they immediately turn around and walk the other way...
...With detente elsewhere in the world, why not detente in Sheberghan...
...They seem puzzled that I am willing to be alone...
...Tim Thompson has become the object of some affection in Sheberghan, but most of the villagers remain unsure of who he is...
...Since he has no refrigeration, he must go to the bazaar every day to buy his food, unless the shopping is done by his servant...
...They seem to know he is American but, unlike Russia, whose barbed-wire frontier is only forty miles away, America to them is an abstraction...
...Sometimes he gives English lessons to the village carpenter, who has built furniture for him in return, or he meets with some of the other teachers who have come to depend on his help in preparing their lessons...
...there is no place else to go...
...Most Americans think the Peace Corps vanished with the 1960s...
...For a year, Tim Thompson has served the Peace Corps in Sheberghan, a Moslem village of 5,000 inhabitants...
...The women in the village are so repressed, he says, that there is not even female prostitution...
...He is the only teacher in the school whose methods are different, and students compete for admission to his classes...
...He encounters them a dozen times a day or more, in the streets or the bazaar...
...Otherwise, the villagers consider him a curiosity, but seem to enjoy having him around...
...They refer to him in Farsi as "the foreigner," and some assume he is a spy, or at least up to some mischief...
...One young man invited him to his sister's wedding, a festive occasion in which the men danced and the women danced, but never with each other...
...He is twenty-five years old and a volunteer with the Peace Corps...
...I encountered an airy two-room "apartment," which I entered through a courtyard enclosed by high walls...
...But it still has almost 7,000 young men and women in the field —half the number of a decade ago—and 100 in Afghanistan alone...
...After all, the Peace Corps was founded, and presumably remains, as an antidote to the acrimony of the Cold War...
...The villagers consider them disagreeable and strange...
...I visited the home of a Peace Corps volunteer in Istalif, a mountain village two hours from Kabul, on the Tashkent road...
...The average class contains fifty pupils, crowded four or five to a desk...
...Though the Russians bring money into Sheberghan, they are too abrupt in their manners to please a society that takes great pain to avoid giving offense...
...In a year they have never exchanged a word or a smile with him, or in any way acknowledged his existence...
...He Milton Viorst, a Washington writer, frequently reports from abroad...
...He will tell you what he thinks you want to hear...
...Thompson has made friends with other young men in the village, and he takes particular pride at being received with great warmth by the families of some of them...
...They are there to tap the natural gas deposits in the region...
...Loneliness, Thompson acknowledges, is his most persistent problem in Sheberghan...
...More often than not he eats alone, and is in bed by 8:30 or 9 o'clock...
...Thompson says that the villagers in Sheberghan feel sorry for him because he is so often alone...
...He lives on a salary of 8,500 afghanis a month, which at the current rate of exchange is about $150...
...I was not disposed to take the ten-hour bus ride to the hot northern plains to see Thompson in Sheberghan, so he seized the opportunity for a holiday in Kabul to come see me...
...It has no glass in the windows, and in winter he wears an overcoat and gloves while teaching...
...Thompson says he has lost his sense of the precious-ness of time since he has been in Afghanistan, and when he wants to make a call he does not mind the wait...
...But he is not sure they are intended as advances...
...Several villagers amicably led me on a 300-yard descent down a steep hillside, over rocks and through shaded alleys, past small pottery and textile workshops, across fetid drainage ditches...
...It's a society in which sadness is interpreted as being away from your family," he said...
...Thompson would be grateful for a movie to break the routine, and a glass of vodka...
...From behind those walls, however, Thompson sometimes hears the sound track of a movie, and he admits he would like to be invited to attend...
...It enjoyed its heyday in the euphoric Kennedy era, before Vietnam made us, re-examine the meaning of American involvement in the lives of foreigners...
...Yet even with these friends, he acknowledges, he rarely gets beyond mundane talk...
...The entire educational system, Thompson says, is based on the rote memorization of Farsi texts...
...He has contemplated writing to Secretary of State Kissinger, asking his mediation in calling off this foolish conflict...
...needs the servant, whom he pays 1,500 afghanis a month, if only because strict Moslems will refuse food prepared by an infidel, and Thompson must occasionally entertain his neighbors at dinner in his home...
...Tim Thompson's Private Cold War MILTON VIORST Kabul, Afghanistan Tim Thompson is a slight, blond, intense young man who, for a year, has been a target of a private cold war waged against him by the Russians...
...Thompson spends much of his spare time in Sheberghan in the bazaar...
...There are some 400 of these Russians, men and women, living in a walled compound in a corner of the village of Sheber-ghan in northern Afghanistan...
...If you're alone, they reason, you must be sad...
...Thompson says he now speaks excellent Farsi, a form of Persian, which is the local language...
...The few times he has attempted to bring up the subject of sex with his friends, he says, have led to long, embarrassed silences...
...It is because of his loneliness, he says, that he is upset that the Russians in the village are waging cold war against him...
...Men are determined that their women remain hidden and, even heavily veiled, they are rarely seen on the streets...
...They cannot imagine that he is there willingly, he says, or that he finds satisfaction in the experience...
...But, lonely or not, he likes his work, and is seriously considering signing up for a second tour after the first runs out later this year...
...After school is out in the afternoon, he usually goes to the tea house, where he is sure to find someone for conversation...
Vol. 40 • September 1976 • No. 9
