Afghan family’s grief turns to joy

KABUL, Afghanistan — The Afghan war takes about five dozen lives a day.

Sometimes, after intense explosions, there is no body left at all.

Every once in a while, the dead turn up alive.

Last Monday, on the edges of a crowded Kabul cemetery, friends dug a grave for Ahmad Tameem, 22, a police officer.

Mohammed Qaseem, Tameem’s cousin, was buying groceries for a meal after the memorial service when he received a call.

“Tameem is alive,” one of Tameem’s brothers said.

“I just got a call from the intelligence agency hospital,” the brother continued. “He has become conscious, and he borrowed the doctor’s phone to call me.”

Qaseem rushed to the hospital. There was his cousin, badly burned and breathing with the help of a ventilator.

Speaking from his hospital bed as a nurse attended to his neck wound, Tameem said he does not remember the moment of the blast. When he regained consciousness, he said his first thought was to make sure his mother did not hear about his wounds — not knowing his family had already given him a burial.

Tameem was on duty Jan. 27 in Kabul when a Taliban bomber drove an ambulance past two checkpoints on a busy street and detonated explosives. More than 100 people were killed and at least 200 wounded.

After each attack in Kabul, the bodies arrive at the city’s forensic medicine department. Families go there to identify and collect the remains. Often, there is not enough to identify — just a torso, or limbs. The department does not have the capabilities for DNA testing.

Once it became clear that the explosion had happened near Tameem’s duty station, relatives went from the site of the attack to every city hospital.

They found no trace of him. Mohammed Roeen, another cousin, said they managed to reach the company commander. “He said: ‘Look, he was standing here. This is the container. This is where the car bomb detonated. How can we expect him to be alive?’”

After two days of searching, they returned to the morgue. The bodies that remained were in bad shape. Qaseem said they settled on a torso that was skinny and young — like Tameem’s. The forensic staff members did some blood tests and said it was him.

No one really knows whom they buried.