Memory boxes capture war’s pain
KABUL — It was an evening like many others. Faisal teased his mother, Adila, before leaving for the Kabul pharmacy where he worked to earn enough money to pay for math and English classes. The 17-year-old dreamed of becoming a doctor.
After kissing his mother goodbye and telling her he loved her, he left the home for the last time. Moments later — in a scenario that has played out in similar fashion throughout Afghanistan for years — a suicide bomber detonated his explosives nearby, killing Faisal and his 15-year-old cousin Ahmadullah, as well as three others.
“He ran out the door. He was laughing. Then just five minutes later I heard this big explosion,” Adila Hamidi said of her son’s last moments in a recent interview, choking back tears.
War and death have dogged Afghans like Hamidi and her family for the past four decades, giving birth to a project known as the Memory Box Initiative, designed by the Afghanistan Human Rights and Democracy Organization. The project pays tribute to the millions of Afghans killed and wounded in 40 years of relentless war and to help heal the wounds of the living, said Salim Rajabi, project organizer.
Stacked in a room in Kabul and padlocked against intruders are about 300 of the memory boxes stuffed with mementos of Afghanistan’s war dead. Each is decorated with an Afghan flag, created by owners of the boxes to depict the country they hope Afghanistan will become. Inside the box is a second Afghan flag, this one reminiscent of the time in which the killing occurred. Afghanistan has had dozens of flags, including the white and black of the Taliban. Still, many of the deaths commemorated in the memory boxes happened since the collapse of the Taliban, most killed in horrific suicide bombing attacks.
As Hamidi recalled her son’s death, she toyed with a small container of rice she had chosen to place inside her memory box dedicated to Faisal and to Ahmadullah as well as to her husband, Zabiullah Abdali, who is alive, but lost his hand and eyesight in two of Afghanistan’s earlier wars.
Each memory box takes four days to prepare. It’s more than just bringing in a favorite item of the dead, said Rajabi, the project organizer. Survivors meet with other survivors, they talk of their loss, they exchange stories and then they are asked to write two letters — one to the loved one who died and the other to the larger Afghan community, telling about themselves and about their disappointments and desires for their country.