Time Warp

I've been to Mexico, Egypt, Morocco, Israel, Jodan, China, Korea and I think in all these wanderings I've seen some places that felt like I'd travelled backwards in time. Nothing compares to these remote regions of Afghanistan. How far back in time? Pick a date -- any date. There are truly places that are lost to time.

Remote valleys bordered by combinations of steep cliffs, talus slopes and scree hills. It's late Summer and amazingly there's lots of water. It's as if the land is so hard it rejects hydration. Through the harsh landscapes water runs to irrigating the few strips of flat arable land. Here, where poppies are not the norm, wheat, barley and potatoes are staples. Amazingly, on the steep slopes I occasionally see sprigs of wheat -- so thinly separated and far apart that even when ready to harvest it's barely discernable.

Every part of the environment is used. Every person works hard. There is no such thing as garbage. When talking to one of the shura leaders I commented on how beautiful the landscape was and he said, "You should see how green the mountains are in April". They were stark rock as I saw them so I asked what he meant. He replied, "The children have already picked all the grass so they aren't green anymore". He wasn't kidding. While we were travelling around we'd see persons of all ages up on the steep slopes -- and I could see the piles of bundled grasses and bushes. I'd see children, adults and old men lugging the bundled grass down goat paths to be piled as fuel for winter. On top of the adobe walls of homes buffalo chips (Donkey-dung pies?) were stacked so high it looked like the owner was trying to fuild a new story on the house.

The one metal tool I saw repetitively used was the sickle . Men and women squatting in the field and cutting wheat one handful at a time. Ultimately it would all be laid out to be worked by a team of donkeys working a circular pattern to separate the wheat from the stalks. There's no shortage of wind here so even in the valleys they can throw the grain and stalks high into the wind together allowing the wind to blow the lighter chaff away and the heavier grains to fall to the slowly growing pile below. How far back in time does this go?

We drove for hours each day past this scene over and over again. It evokes images of biblical symbols -- the threshing of wheat to separate chaff on the threshing floor of the temple. Mount Moriah, the scene of Abraham's test of sacrificing Isaac, was ultimately to become the location of Solomon's temple and the temple is surely the finest symbol foretold to sift the good fruit from bad. Timeless symbols in a timeless place.

Alan gave me a copy of the Book of Mormon on MP3 and I listened to quite a bit as we rode along each day. As I listened to chapters after the Nephites transitioned from Kings to Judges I was amazed and how much corruption and war occurred in just a few short years as the new form of government evolved. Brutality was common. Life was not sacred to the wicked; greed was a value. This doesn't seem to have changed much either. To make the government more basic here, families would have to be dissolved and anarchy ensue. Here, each family designates a family member to represent the family in the Shura, or council. Patriarchal. The councils meet to decide pretty much everything. Family, clan and tribe means everything. Loyalty doesn't travel further than one can see. Again, how long has this been going on.

It makes me wonder if elsewhere the pattern is the same but the scenery and technology is all that has changed.