Different world: Las Vegans recall their native Afghanistan

Stacy J. Willis

Friday, Oct. 12, 2001 | 9:55 a.m.

This is not how Diba Hadi remembers Afghanistan.

The televised images -- somber, scarfed women crouching in the desert, men with unkempt beards waving machine guns -- this is not the Afghanistan of Hadi's childhood, nor of her mother's, nor of her grandmother's.

Sitting in her suburban Las Vegas home -- a home recently visited by an FBI agent -- Hadi leafs through black and white family photos. In them, clean-shaven Afghan men sport crisp suits and women with bouffant hair pose in dresses that fall above the knees.

"I don't remember Afghanistan being a ghost town. I don't remember so many women being covered up. When I was growing up in the 1970s, Kabul was very much like a European city. A modern city," Hadi, seated next to her mother and grandmother, said.

"I had a normal childhood. We were not rich, but people had jobs and were comfortable. As children, we went swimming, we went roller skating and biking. There was so much life, so much laughter.

"Now it is a killing field."

Afghanistan is a complicated place to be from. Ravaged by war for 24 years, today it is in economic ruin -- a place that has endured so many political and military upheavals that its identity is associated more with war and poverty than any type of civilized culture.

But what Hadi -- who left the country in 1979 -- wants people to know is that Afghanistan should not be considered a wasteland. It is, for her family, a source of pride -- a place with a rich history dating back 5,000 years, a heterogeneous country with traditions in art, literature, cooking and music.

Hadi and her husband Abdul, also from Kabul, named their children after their homeland: Yama, their son, is named for the first king of Afghanistan; Arya, their daughter, is named for the Afghan race -- which was once called Aryana.

The family is Muslim, and Hadi says her faith never mandated that women be treated as secondary to men, nor did it teach that suicide attacks would be viewed by Allah (God) as acceptable.

"That is not Islam," she said. In fact, she said, when she was young they practiced Islam in an already westernized atmosphere.

Hadi's family owned a nightclub in Kabul; she remembers learning to dance standing on the tops of her father's feet.

"We were very happy there," Sofia Aziz, Hadi's mother, says. "All the neighbors knew each other. We were educated, civilized people. Now what they show on TV sometimes makes us ashamed."

Today the Hadis struggle to instill cultural pride in their children while acknowledging present-day reality -- poverty and destruction.

"We hate the Taliban," Hadi says. "These are not Muslim people, these are not Afghan people. But Americans don't always understand that. My children don't understand that."

Yama, 8, interrupts to ask, "Mommy, do I have to wear a beard in Afghanistan?"

Hadi takes a deep breath.

"You will never go to Afghanistan as long as I have something to say about it," she says, and turns her head away from him.

"We are proud people from a beautiful country. But it is no more." ]

Hadi's childhood was interrupted by the Russian invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. She remembers that the water was poisoned, the neighborhood endured several terrorist bombs, her house was searched by soldiers, her brother was arrested and her father disappeared into hiding.

"Under Russian occupation there were searches and surveillance, it was really unbearable," Aziz says. "All of our family's men were in hiding or in jail. So I just made a plan to run away."

One third of Afghanistan's population fled during the Soviet occupation, which ended in 1989. More than 6 million of those refugees went to Pakistan or Iran -- and in the year 2000, 2 million Afghan refugees remained in Pakistan and about 1.4 million in Iran.

Aziz took her children and fled to the U.S., where they have been for 22 years and have established typical, middle-class American lives.

Today Hadi is an executive at a local non-profit organization; her husband Abdul is a floor manager at a Strip casino, their children are natural U.S. citizens.

FBI visit

Last week, there was a knock on Hadi's front door. An FBI agent. Someone -- someone who wished to remain anonymous -- filed a report suggesting that the Hadis had hosted one or more of the Sept. 11 terrorists in their home last summer. Hadi said the agents have been visiting numerous Afghan and Arab-American families in Las Vegas because of such "tips."

"I understand he was doing his job. He was very nice about it. But we don't know the terrorists," she said. "We are not angry about it -- people are concerned, and so are we. But it is very sad."

Abdul changed his casino nametag, which used to say that he was from Afghanistan, to say that he is from Las Vegas.

"I just don't want any trouble," he says.

Nightly, Hadi sits in her living room and translates CNN's narration of the further destruction of her homeland for her grandmother. Hadi's mother stays awake nights -- afraid of war and afraid of misguided anti-Afghan violence. The children sleep in their parents bedroom now.

Although the family says it was devastated by the attacks on the U.S., Hadi, her grandmother and mother all oppose the bombing of Afghanistan.

"Two wrongs do not make a right," Hadi says.

Her grandmother folds her arms across her chest and says, through Hadi's translation, "This is not right. I am watching my home ruined. I am watching people die in the U.S., and in Afghanistan, and this is making more and more tragedy."

Hadi shakes her head.

"I am very paranoid. I think, 'Is history repeating itself?' " Hadi says. "I think, 'We already escaped this once when I was a child. Now I have two children. Is history chasing us again?' "