nTalibs as they call them there are pretty honest people … I thought they would be ferocious raw-flesh eaters like … but what I saw … they were pretty humble … sweet-tongued and most importantly hospitable.
That is how Tamal Bhattacharya one of the evacuees from war-torn Afghanistan who late on Sunday evening returned to Kolkata depicted the “good Talibans” so to say. Tamal who hails from Nimta area of North 24 Parganas was among the 150 people who were allegedly abducted by the Taliban militia before being released later.
“It was not abduction as such … we were detained and taken to a location where our identity proof and other documents were checked by the Talibs, said this teacher from an international school in Kabul.
“The only offensive thing about them was perhaps their automatic rifles … otherwise they looked pretty calm, friendly and behaved well and respectfully with the women in the group,” he said.
On the dread of being shot he said “we had initial apprehensions but things turned out to be quite opposite … in fact we told that the Taliban people apprehending attacks on us and so they had decided to shift us to safer places … a school in this case … as Taliban apprehended that many splinter groups could attack the us they took our charge to protect us … they hosted us in a school and even played cricket with us … one of them even asked me to teach him English … then they treated us to Kabuli Pulao before seeing us off.”
On the general atmosphere in Kabul, Bhattacharya the only son of his aged parents said “there is tension … roads are empty, shops are closed but nothing like the way we thought earlier happened … there was no mass killing etc.”
On the most remarkable change he witnessed in Taliban 2.0 he said jeans and western attires vanished overnight from the shops and women went behind the burqa as immediately as the prices of general products including eatables came down with their quantity increasing by almost 50 percent.
“We loved taking Nan and mutton in the food corners which came for about Rs 160/- per plate. Now with the coming of Talibans the price had not only come down but also the quantity had increased by half … this is because the traders are not allowed to make extra profit or cheat people,” he said.
Abhijit Ghosh from Behala said he and the entire lot of foreigners with him passed dreadful nights. “I was working at a NATO base as a cook … my employers immediately shifted us on priority basis after the Talibans entered … we heard that some people were being searched for … the people who had backed the western forces.”
On whether he would return to Afghanistan again he said he would prefer not to “but for that our Government has to make some arrangement for us … I am the only bread-earner in my house … I will expect that the government does something for us or else I will have to go out.”
But the family of Sanghamitra Dafadar from Behala is not as lucky as the Bhattacharyas or Ghoshs.
Sanghamitra a mother of two children has been working as a nurse in Kabul. “We are in touch with my daughter through facebook. She is in trouble and we are worried … her job has gone and being a woman she cannot go out of her house … her elder son is 19-year-old and he has to be sent out to bring daily ration … one day he was caught by t he Talibans and they were asking him to join his ranks … they told him that ‘you are handsome and well built … why don’t you join us … he ran back home saying he would first take permission from his family … since then he has not come out of his house … I heard that they will be evacuated soon … but how soon we do not know,” Ruby Dafadar her mother said.