From Silk Route to Route 66: My American Journey

Mohammad H. Qayoumi

I was born in Kabul, Afghanistan. For my first sixteen years, I was raised there. Afghanistan is roughly the size of Texas; despite it’s relatively small physical size, the country is ethnically very diverse, consisting of Pathans, Tajiks, Uzbecks, Turkmens, Hazaras, and others. Similarly, several lan¬guages are spoken there, including the two official ones, Dari and Pashtu, which are derived from Germanic languages.

For centuries, Afghanistan had been at the crossroads of many cultures. When travel by land was the primary means of moving from one place to the next, Afghanistan’s location along the Silk Route, which was the main thor¬oughfare between China, the Middle East, and Europe, was a blessing as well as a curse. While it gave the region exposure to many peoples and cultures, it also was a prime target for invading armies – Alexander the Great, the Arabs, the Mongols, and others – that overran the region and in each instance caused major carnage and human suffering for the local inhabitants.

With the advent of sea transportation, the dependence on land routes de¬creased quite significantly. Since Afghanistan was a landlocked nation, it was no longer along the main thoroughfares; over time, it became a very remote lo¬cation. Ironically, however, during the past few centuries the country became important in other ways. In the 1800s, when it was the buffer state that sepa¬rated the Russian and British empires, the local people were subjected to bru¬tal military campaigns by these two nineteenth-century superpowers. In the twentieth century, it was perhaps the only nation that was bombed by both superpowers: the former Soviet Union as an occupying force and the United States as a liberating one.

My father was a carpenter with a grade-school education; my mother did not have the opportunity to go to school or to learn how to read or write. My father had an insatiable thirst for education. He did his best to help my sib¬lings and me get a good education. Despite very limited formal schooling, he deeply believed in lifelong learning. One of his preoccupations was following world events and listening to the radio for the news. For him, the evening news was like listening to a sermon; that was not the time for anyone to have a conversation. He always wanted to know what was happening in the world, and he instilled in me a deep sense of curiosity about other lands and cultures.

My family was somewhat religious, but my father and many Afghans of his generation were very suspicious of the clergy. As a child, I heard many sto¬ries about British spies impersonating Muslim clergy in many parts of Afghanistan. My father always viewed most clergy as people who were opposed to the nation’s progress and modernization. As I grew up, I learned the reasons for his views. In the 1920s Afghanistan had a benevolent monarch, King Amanullah, who had played a pivotal role in securing independence from the British. He had a deep passion for modernizing the country and had begun implementing a very ambitious and fast-paced program to Westernize the nation. Unfortunately, the clergy declared these reforms blasphemous, and King Amanullah was forced to abdicate in 1930. Subsequent regimes, which were very regressive and Draconian, assured that the country would re¬main a traditional society with limited opportunities for development. The succession of many suppressive regimes and the lack of progress led to several coups and ultimately the Soviet invasion of 1979. Then followed two decades of civil war and political unrest, until the U.S. Army liberated Afghanistan in late 2001.

Years later, when I read more of the regional history of the area, I learned that in the late 1800s the British Empire used its social scientists to assist the government in perpetuating its colonial rule. Based on their recommenda¬tions, the British started a number of fundamentalist Diwbandi Islamic reli¬gious schools in the Western frontiers of the Indian subcontinent (now Pak¬istan). Through these schools, the British were able to train many of its agents, disguised as the Muslim clergy, who were then dispersed as infor¬mants. The irony is that after India and Pakistan gained their independence, these religious schools not only survived but thrived and multiplied. By the 1980s, at the time of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, they had become the cradle that produced the Taliban and the menace of Islamic fundamentalism. That is why many Afghans of my father’s generation blame the clergy and the British for the nation’s lost opportunities for progress and modernization.

In contrast to the clergy, my father had a deep respect for scientists and inventors like Thomas Edison, Albert Einstein, and the Wright brothers, who contributed to the world’s progress and quality of life for humankind. Simi¬larly, there were two old French nuns who lived in our neighborhood and who worked as volunteers at a local hospital. My father had a deep admiration for them, since they were only in Afghanistan to assist their fellow human beings regardless of faith, color, or creed. My father used to recite a Persian poem that roughly translates as follows:

Prayer is nothing but serving humankind
It is not in holding the rosary, or kneeling at the altar.

At my birth, I became the first child of our extended family. Growing up, I interacted with elders far more than with children my own age. As the center of attention, I was quite self-conscious and was required to measure up to the high expectations of my elders. Over time, I developed a strong inner drive to excel.

My full legal name is Mohammad Humayon Qayoumi. In the Islamic world, one’s first name is actually just a prefix. Nobody in Afghanistan, and certainly no one in my family, ever called me Mohammad. Growing up in Kabul I was called Humayon, which in Persian means “fortunate” and comes from the Emperor Humayon, the great grandson of Genghis Khan, who ruled most of India in the 1530s.

In formal settings in college, I was called by my last name, Qayoumi. Con¬currently, some classmates called me Mohammad while others used Hu¬mayon. This pattern continued when, after college, I was working in the Ara¬bian Peninsula. When I began working in the United States, on my first day on the job, my boss took me around and introduced me as “Mo.” That name stuck as my de facto identity and, with the exception of my Afghan acquain¬tances, for the past 25 years practically everyone has referred to me as Mo. Sometimes I have found it quite amusing and comical when I have introduced myself as “Mo” and immediately have had to respond when someone else has called me “Humayon.” I sometimes reflect upon my names and consider how each of them represents the “real” me.
Although our family’s economic status was quite modest, it was one of those accidents of history that our home was in a relatively affluent part of Kabul, where the majority of the foreigners lived. From early childhood I in¬teracted with people from all over the world. About a block from our house, for example, there was a huge mosque. I enjoyed going there for Islamic feasts and for prayers, since the diplomatic corps from the other Muslim countries would also come to pray. I was fascinated by the differences in clothing styles and yearned to experience the cultures they represented.

As I began attending elementary school, two subjects – history and reli¬gious studies – particularly aroused my curiosity. I remember many history lessons that explained how gallantly the Afghan armies fought on the battle¬fields and how they were constantly defeating their enemies. I was curious about what was being covered in the history books of the nations that Afghans had defeated. I wondered how embarrassed the students in those communities were to learn that their people had been defeated in battle. Later, as I began to read history books from neighboring countries, I realized that they all made similar claims of victory.

In the religious courses that I took as a young child, the readings argued very explicitly for the supremacy of Islam over all other religions. I was curi¬ous about why people of other faiths did not see these clear arguments and embrace Islam, until I began studying other religions and became painfully aware that almost every religion claims to be the one and only true path to salvation.

Experiences such as these had a profound impact on my thinking and cul¬tural outlook. I realized that practically every society perpetuates similar fa¬bles to glorify their history and justify their view of the world. This realization not only shattered the myths of my childhood, but it also created an insatiable curiosity to learn more about the cultures, peoples, and beliefs that differed from my own. I also realized that I could learn more about my own culture by learning about others.

After finishing high school, I received a scholarship to attend the Ameri¬can University of Beirut (AUB), in Lebanon. In the early seventies, Beirut was a very fast-paced, modern, and exciting city. As a teenager, I was fascinated by the natural beauty of Beirut as well as by its dynamic business environment. AUB was a very diverse community of roughly 4,000 students from about 100 countries. Moreover, the faculty came from almost every comer of the world and from more than 40 countries. Every day, walking on campus, it was com¬mon to hear more than a half-dozen languages. In fact, just among the Arab speakers, one would typically hear more than a dozen Arabic dialects.

Since at that time Beirut had the most open and free press in the Middle East, it was the hotbed of the region’s politics as well. The early 1970s were a time of student unrest in the United States and in many other parts of the world; naturally, AUB was affected by these events. No matter where individ¬ual students stood in the wide political spectrum, it was hard for any to re¬main indifferent to world events. For me, the learning environment outside the classroom was at least as important as the encounters in class. My under¬graduate experiences at AUB not only provided me with excellent technical knowledge, but they also gave me a uniquely valuable learning environment in a genuinely multicultural context. As a young man, I was able to develop a global perspective in such an environment, and it challenged my remaining traditional and parochial biases.

During my last semester at AUB, the Lebanese civil war broke out. This fundamentally shattered the existing way of life for the people of Lebanon, and it resulted in many tragedies and much human carnage. In the summer of 1975, sniper attacks became very common. One had to listen to the radio every morning to know which roads to avoid and which were likely to be safe. It took more than a decade for things to quiet down and a sense of normalcy to return. Even today, when I listen for the traffic alerts on the radio, I think of Beirut in the summer of 1975.

After graduating in the mid-seventies, I began working on the Arabian Peninsula, first in Saudi Arabia for a year, then for almost two years in Abu Dhabi, which is in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The most fascinating as¬pect of these experiences was again the multicultural environment that both places offered. In my office in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, no more than three of my coworkers were from the same country. Business was conducted in a combina¬tion of English and Arabic. Since my work took me all over the Kingdom, I had a unique opportunity to see all its major cities as well as many remote areas.

The work environment in the UAE was even more interesting. For in¬stance, in Abu Dhabi only 20 percent of the population were UAE nationals; the rest were expatriates from every continent. The staff that I managed came from ten countries, spoke seven languages, and practiced various religions. At times, operating round-the-clock shifts for the power generation plant and keeping track of religious holidays for all of the staff had its challenges, but the lessons these experiences taught me, and the sensitivities that I acquired, were invaluable and have assisted me in many ways.

I recall one incident that I still cherish. One evening, as I was checking a construction site generation plant, I ran into one of the plant operators who seemed quite tired and sleepy but was pulling double duty by working two consecutive shifts. Looking at the frail and tired condition of this man, I asked why he had to do this. He responded that since tomorrow was Good Friday, he wanted the other operator, who was a Christian, to enjoy the time off; he was a Muslim, he said, and the next day did not have any particular significance for him, so he did not mind. Though most of the plant operators had very lim¬ited education, I was deeply touched by the cultural sensitivity they had de¬veloped for one other.

After working for three years in the Arabian Peninsula, I grew quite rest¬less and was very anxious to continue my education and start graduate school. I started graduate studies in a major city in the Midwest. One of the first things that I experienced in the Midwest was hearing only English as I walked around the campus and in the streets. Since I had lived in more di¬verse environments before I moved to the Midwest, it felt strange and surreal, both initially and for several months thereafter, until I grew accustomed to hearing only English. I spent close to eight years in the Midwest. Over time, I developed deep and lasting friendships that I still cherish and maintain, al¬though I left the area about twenty years ago.

In 1979, while I was in the Midwest, the Soviets invaded my native land, which resulted in more than two decades of chaos, bloodshed, and political in¬stability. During this period, there was hardly an Afghan family that did not lose loved ones. My family had to leave all its worldly possessions behind and flee to Pakistan as refugees. Because we did not lose any immediate family members in the fighting, my Afghan family might be considered as one of the fortunate ones. But like every family there, we lost cousins and other ex¬tended members. The fighting continued for two decades, until late 2001, when the United States invaded Afghanistan as part of Operation Enduring Freedom. Only then, for the first time in twenty-six years, was I able to go back for a visit.

My first trip back to Afghanistan was a bittersweet experience. I was very excited to be able to go, since for so many years I could not. I recalled two ear¬lier trips I had taken. On the first one, in 1986, I went from Europe to Pak¬istan to visit my parents, and the flight path was over Kabul. I had a strange set of emotions as I watched from a commercial airliner at 35,000 feet and knew that an actual trip there was impossible. While looking out the window I saw several flashes of light; living in the Midwest then, I associated the light bursts with lightning. By the next day, in Pakistan, I realized that it was not the season for lightning in Afghanistan, and the light flashes I had seen from the aircraft were skirmishes between the Soviet occupation forces and the re¬sistance forces. A decade later, I was on a similar flight from Nepal to Europe. Again, part of the flight path was over Afghanistan. By then, after so much time away and with such continuous fighting there, the hope of ever being able to return to my birthplace felt quite remote.

Therefore, when I arrived in Kabul in early 2002, I was filled with intense and intensely mixed emotions. After such a long absence, I was finally visiting the place where I grew up, and I met many people that I knew from long ago, which was very exciting. Though a lot of Afghanistan’s destruction had been in the news for the past two decades, experiencing it firsthand while keeping one’s eyes dry was a difficult challenge. The western part of Kabul was practi¬cally a ghost town. Because of land mines, it was not advisable for anyone to venture in a car or on foot beyond the main roads. As I was seeing the physical destruction, I was imagining the level of carnage, death, and human suffering that must have accompanied each fallen structure, and I was thinking of hundreds of thousands of innocent men, women, and children who lost their lives in vain.

In the midst of this tremendous destruction, however, there was still a sense of optimism, as many smiling faces projected a feeling of hope for a bet¬ter future. One of my cousins told her story of being beaten by the Taliban’s vice police because she had not covered herself fully with the burqa. Before the Taliban took over Kabul, she had never worn a burqa and didn’t know how to wear one properly. In telling her story, she was able to laugh rather than feel victimized by the atrocities. This showed me that, though the Afghan people suffered tremendously from the savagery of the Soviets and the tyranny of the Taliban, their spirit had not been broken. Experiencing this firsthand was a source of tremendous inspiration and optimism.

As I walked around the streets of Kabul, in the areas where I spent the first sixteen years of my life, I experienced both nostalgic familiarity and a sense that everything had changed: the way the place looked, the way it felt, and the people who lived and worked there, compared to what I remembered of them.

Since 2002, with the liberation from the Taliban, I have traveled to Afghanistan several times. Many there refer to me as “Doctor Sahib,” which literally translates as “Dear Doctor” and is used both as a sign of respect and as a term of endearment.

During the past twenty years, one of the significant opportunities to ex¬plore differences in values, culture, and Islamic fundamentalism occurred with the publication in 1989 of Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses. That book drew strong reactions from certain Muslim fundamentalists, including the Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran. Unfortunately, many in the Western media merely jumped in to support Rushdie, defending his right to free speech. They did not seize the opportunity to understand the issues that had resulted in such sharp criticisms. Such a dialogue between the followers of Islam and those who hold Western values would have been very fruitful in understand¬ing the cultural differences. We lost a tremendous opportunity to learn better why some in the Muslim world were having such a strong reaction to some of the ideas raised in the book. With the exception of a few meaningful discus¬sions, the book has been largely forgotten.

One of the turning points in our recent U.S. history was the horrific events of September 11, 2001, which dramatically changed everyone’s lives. After the 9/11 tragedy there was a renewed sense of curiosity about Islam and the rise of Islamic fundamentalism. In America, non-Muslims were learning about Is¬lam, and most Muslims were speaking out against the 9/11 travesties. When some Muslims were attacked by thugs in various U.S. cities, many Americans spoke out against such travesties. As a Muslim American, it was heartwarm¬ing to feel the overwhelming support and solidarity of the people for these vic¬tims, for their families, and for those who died in the initial assaults on Sep-tember 11. However, there were those who questioned whether Muslims like me could be true to their religion and be patriotic Americans as well. Let me briefly examine this issue.

Migration has perhaps a stronger symbolism in Islam than it does in other major world religions. The Islamic calendar is not based on Mohammad’s birth or death; rather, it is based on his migration from Mecca to Medina. When Mohammad migrated to Medina, and the people of that city accepted him as one of their own, he adopted Medina as his home. During the rest of his life, Mohammad went to Mecca only once, for a pilgrimage. He lived the rest of his life in Medina, where he is buried. The people of Medina take great pride that Mohammad adopted their city as his home, and most Muslims view his behavior as an exemplar that they should emulate. So in addition to the many secular reasons why Muslim-Americans take their duties to the flag and the nation seriously and defend their country, they also feel a religious duty, fol¬lowing Mohammad’s example, to maintain a deep loyalty to the country they have adopted.

Now, as a middle-aged man residing at the end of Route 66, I find it nat¬ural to reflect upon my cultural experiences of the past half-century. The rich cultural mosaic of southern California is exciting and is a source of great pride and satisfaction for me. To live in a city with such a rich tradition of ethnic, cultural, and religious diversity is something that I cherish and enjoy everyday. The tolerance and artistic creativity make Los Angeles a world-class city despite all of the challenges that it faces.

From my beginnings along the Silk Route in Afghanistan to my current home in Los Angeles, at the end of Route 66, I have been blessed with many opportunities to explore diverse cultures. Each experience has had positive ef¬fects on me. Each has helped to form my cultural identity, to make me a better person, and to appreciate being a citizen of the United States and of the world.

Culture Concepts

Why Do Cultures Differ?
Cultures look, think, and communicate as they do because they have had to accom¬modate and adapt to the pressures and forces upon them. Among the many types of forces affecting cultural changes, the following six are key: history, ecology, tech¬nology, biology, institutional networks, and interpersonal communication patterns. History refers to the unique experiences that have become part of the cultures’ col¬lective wisdom. Ecology includes the climate and other physical forces in the cul¬ture’s external environment. Technology refers to the inventions that a culture has invented or borrowed. Biology refers to genetic or hereditary differences that arise as a long-term consequence of environmental adaptations. Institutional networks are the formal organizations that structure activities for large numbers of people. Fi¬nal/y, interpersonal communication patterns refer to the ways the culture’s code systems create and sustain relationships.

Competent Intercultural Communication
Interculturally competent communicators integrate a wide array of culture-general knowledge into their behavioral repertoires, and they are able to apply that knowl¬edge to the specific cultures with which they interact. They are also able to respond emotionally and behaviorally with a wide range of choices in order to act appropri¬ately and effectively within the constraints of each situation. They have typically had extensive intercultural communication experiences, and they have learned to adjust to alternative patterns of thinking and behaving.

Language, Knowledge, and Intercultural Competence
Getting along in another language can be exhilarating and a very positive experi¬ence, but it can also be fatiguing and frustrating. Speaking and understanding a new language requires energy and perseverance. Therefore, functioning in a cul¬ture that speaks a language different from your own is often tiring and exasperat¬ing. Making yourself understood, getting around, obtaining food, and making pur¬chases all require a great deal of effort. Recognizing the possibility of irritability and fatigue when functioning in an unfamiliar linguistic environment is an important prerequisite to intercultural competence. Without such knowledge, the communica¬tor may well blame his or her personal feelings of discomfort on the cultures being experienced.

Learning AmongUS

1. Qayoumi says that most religions “claim to be the one and only true path to salva¬tion.” Do you agree with him? If so, how do you think this tendency has shaped the course of history? If not, why not?

2. Qayoumi has lived in many countries and different cultural settings since he left Afghanistan. What are some of the conse¬quences of such cultural experiences on his identity?

3. Would you regard Qayoumi as intercultur¬ally competent? Why or why not?

4. Does the information on the history and current circumstances in Afghanistan pro¬vide any insights into Afghani culture? Explain.

5. What were your experiences on Septem¬ber 11, 2001? What are the insights that Qayoumi provides into the Muslim com¬munities in the United States?

6. Qayoumi’s several names become a critical part of his intercultural experiences. Compare and contrast his experiences with those of Kroll.