Photo: Farzana Wahidy (AFP)Formalities become meaningless when you call an old friend who has survived a suicide bombing that took the lives of dozens. My friend Massoud Hossaini understood that just as well as I did.
It had been years since I spoke to him. But last Tuesday, I saw his images of the aftermath of the suicide bomb at the Abul Fazl shrine in Kabul, a bomb that hit metres from where he was standing and killed and maimed those to whom he had spoken moments earlier.
Were we from a different country, I might have called to congratulate him on his photographs on the front pages of The New York Times, The Washington Post, and any other major newspaper you could name. But we are from Afghanistan, and I just wanted to know how he was. At the age of 30, the tenor of our discussion is not about celebration but about life amidst tragedy.
I started with the usual, "How are you?"
Massoud said, "I'm OK." in a way that translated, "About as well as a child who has just been orphaned."
We spoke about the incident. "The bomb went off 45 feet away from me," he said, "I lived only because there were too many people, between me and the bomb, who didn't." Were you injured? "No, I'm fine. There was shrapnel that went through my left hand --- just a flesh wound." He explained how that 'flesh wound' bled for hours while he was taking pictures of the casualties, blood kept dripping down his fingers, covering his camera.
He asks, "So who is publishing this interview?"
I reply, "Why? You thought I'd call an old friend so I could interview him for a newspaper?"
"Isn't that what we do?"
"I want to know how my friend is doing, not how the photographer that got published in all the major newspaper did his job while surviving death mere seconds ago."
He is insistent: "But that's what we do!"
And he's right. He went on to explain to me in detail what he has already explained to The New York Times and other publications. I listened intently, even though I'd already read those interviews.
"I don't care about the pictures, how are YOU?" I asked.
"I'm fine. I mean, I'm fine. I had a few nightmares about it. I see it here and there. It's hard to sleep, but I'm fine."
This isn't really the Massoud with whom I used to go to Chief Burger, a little restaurant that offered burgers and some Pakistani and Turkish cuisine, back in the day. A hangout where we would order chicken karahi, my favorite dish, and he always grumbled about how we never ate anything else. We would smoke cigarettes all the way from Shahre Now to Aina in Deh Afghanan, where we both worked. On the way, we would talk about how he would manage his photo agency in 10 or 15 years and how I'd be publishing my own newspaper, interspersed with comments about the colour and shape of the burkas that passed us by. He'd tell me I was going crazy with my consumption of vodka and I'd blame his girlfriend for his abstinence.
That was 2004.
He'd arrived from Iran and I from Pakistan, after spending most of our lives as refugees thanks to the never-ending civil war. It was a time when there was still hope in the air. Massood was always the hopeful one. Always talking about a new shot he'd snapped.
I ask him seven years later, "Remember that old waiter in Chief Burger? Is he still there?"
He answers, "I don't go to those places anymore."
"Where do you go these days?"
"Mostly to Serena or this place or that in Wazir Akbar Khan."
"I miss hanging out in Chief Burger."
"You left."
I asked him when he was leaving --- after all, what is left to do in Afghanistan anymore but wait for the civil war to move into Kabul when NATO leaves?
"Where should I go and what should I do?"
"I don't know, somewhere safe."
He says, "Farzanah [his fiancee] is in Canada. She's been looking for a job for three months. There's nothing there for her. I have looked for a scholarship to study abroad for years. I've found nothing. So I don't know. Circumstances are terrible here, but there's nothing for me to do out of here either. I'll just stay here, I guess."
I prodded him more.
He challenges, "Look. There are no jobs out there either, are there?"
I agreed.
"So what should I do if I come there?"
Mop the floors of a McDonald's, I thought.
"I work with AFP here. Will I get this kind of a job there?"
I told him about a friend, perhaps Afghanistan's most brilliant investigative journalist, who is now in Europe and has been reduced to blogging for an obscure newspaper. I told him about another friend who came here recently with a world of journalistic experience and is currently unemployed. I told him about how I'm now a character on Twitter - not a senior editor in Afghanistan's largest newspaper. I wanted to tell him more, but I didn't. He knew and I knew that he knew.
Instead I ask, "And how is it there?"
"I don't know. Every day, someone from Pakistan or Uzbekistan and I don't know, some other place comes here, kills people, then you can't find them. Then, more of them come, kill more of us, then nothing. It will go on forever like this. I'm where this is going on. What do you think it's like?"
I wanted to say things like, "But it will get better. There are new plans you know. This Bonn Conference and all." But I know better.
"This is our fate," he confirmed.
Massood's story is unique only if you are reading this outside Afghanistan. Otherwise, his fate is the same as that of much of the population. Hope, fear, suffering, more hope, more fear, more suffering --- a cycle we have all been stuck in for too long to remember. He is part of a generation that remembers nothing but a war that has been going on for three decades and is likely going to continue for many more years.
His answers were philosophical. Gone was my friend, replaced by someone I barely knew. Someone who lives, knowing that he's a suicide bombing away from death.
"You've been through this before, though, right?" I asked him as if he hadn't just cheated death, but as if he had been dumped by his girlfriend or something.
"Yeah, but this was too close. I could see it very clearly. It was too loud. Too many people died in front of my eyes. I took pictures."
"You take pictures in your sleep!" My attempted sense of humour, like his pragmatism, did not fool him.
And that was it. I did not ask him more about what had happened. He did not talk about it himself. He expected me to understand what had happened and I did.
Can I convey this so that anyone else who is not Afghan and does not have a fate tied to Afghanistan would understand? I hope not. The burden of that understanding means that Massoud Hosseini is now a subject about whom I write, not a friend whom I once knew and with whom I laughed.
We tried to find pleasantry in stories of my philandry. It didn't work. The conversation kept coming back to the same conclusion: Afghans are fucked.
"Yeah, it is our fate," I said, "Will you be okay?"
He paused, then laughed, "Yeah, I'll be okay, I guess."
And we hung up. I realised that I had forgotten to tell him, "Happy Birthday".
Editor's note (February 13): Massoud Hossaini's photos from the suicide bombing eventually did win him the First Prize in Pictures of the Year International (POY) contest and the Second Prize in the Spot News Singles category of the World Press Photo of the Year 2011 contest.