The Afghan’s reality, the American’s dream

Saadat left his country craving safety, security for himself, his family; Barnard left his, seeking freedom from it

It was recently reported in the press that Afghanistan's former IT and communications minister Syed Ahmad Shah Saadat is now a delivery man in Germany. A local German journalist is said to have captured him on camera while Saadat, dressed in the ubiquitous bright orange uniform of a driver for Lieferando service, was on his way to deliver pizza in Leipzig. It took no time for the photograph and the story to go viral online.

Forty-nine-year-old Saadat, who holds two master’s degrees in communications and software engineering from Oxford University, was a cabinet minister in the Ashraf Ghani-led Afghan government. Having served for two years, he resigned in December 2020 following differences with Ghani. He soon left Afghanistan, perhaps with a sense of foreboding of an imminent takeover of the country by the Taliban, and its bloody agenda that would plunge his landlocked country into despair once again.

“At present, I am leading a very simple life,” Saadat has reportedly said. “I feel safe in Germany. I am happy to be with my family in Leipzig. I want to save money and do a German course and study further." Before choosing the food delivery company, he apparently applied for many jobs but received no offers. “My dream is to work in a German telecom company.”

Saadat’s tale brings to mind Somerset Maugham’s short story, The Fall of Edward Barnard, published exactly a hundred years ago (in The Trembling of a Leaf: Little Stories of the South Sea Islands).

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In the story, Edward Barnard travels to Tahiti after his respectable father, ruined by a bank failure and rendered penniless, shoots himself in his study. His sojourn in Tahiti is not expected to last more than a couple of years. He hopes to return to his hometown Chicago after gaining experience in varied trades under professional managers and marry his beautiful lover and fiancée, Isabel.

Things change, of course, once he settles down on the island and is smitten by its natural charm, abundant leisure and unbridled pleasures (“I never knew I had a soul till I found it here”). He begins to despise Chicago and the ceaseless, meaningless turmoil it represented (“What is the use of all this hustle and this constant striving? … And what does all the activity amount to? Does one get there the best out of life?)

Bateman, the final link in the triangular love story, goes to Tahiti, hoping to persuade Barnard to return to the waiting arms of Isabel in Chicago, only to return empty-handed.

The tales of Saadat and Barnard do not necessarily follow the same line and curve. The former is a married man with children on a self-imposed exile from a country that is now literally and metaphorically in flames. Unmindful of his seemingly ordinary occupation, he is presently in a safe and comfort zone. Being a qualified person, he has every right to dream of a bright future in his adopted habitat. One can even visualise – Mashallah! -- in a few years from now, he being part of a rich and prosperous German enterprise, enjoying all the material benefits and status it would bring him.

Barnard, on the other hand, rejects that very notion of richness, prosperity and comfortable living. For him, Chicago is nothing but “a dark, grey city, all stone – it is like a prison.” Having discovered a new worldview, he yearns for a laid-back and carefree existence. He wants to build a nice little home with a garden on a coral island. He wishes to marry a dusky Tahitian girl, have children, and spend the rest of his life in the tropical paradise. “The years will pass insensibly, and when I am an old man, I hope I shall be able to look back on a happy, simple, peaceful life. In my small way, I too shall have lived in beauty.”

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Saadat and Barnard are separated by a hundred years but share the ‘choice’ of having to leave their respective countries. Both, for different reasons, choose a ‘simple’ life; both want to embrace a new social and cultural environment so vastly different from what they were brought up in. Saadat’s choice is driven by a craving for safety, security, and a better life for himself and his family. Barnard’s choice, on the other hand, seeks freedom: a release from his country, from his past, from his fiancée, and from the accepted notions of money, power, busy-ness of life. He is a willing refugee in a parallel universe that promises “the infinite variety of the sea and the sky, the freshness of the dawn and the beauty of the sunset, and the rich magnificence of the night.”

“We are our choices,” said Jean-Paul Sartre. He also said: “Better to die on one's feet than to live on one's knees.” Saadat and Barnard seem to exemplify these in their own ways.

(The writer is a Bengaluru-based art critic, curator and columnist)