"In this essay, Jamil Jan Kochai takes us to a landscape he left behind years
ago--Logar, Afghanistan, a river valley south of Kabul. His story unfurls in a
field behind his grandfather's compound, set against the splendor of a Logari
sunset. It's a stunning essay, teeming with the particulars of rural
Afghanistan--the smell of woodsmoke, the mountains' dark silhouettes--while
rendering a universal human experience: bracing against a stranger, hoping
they'll "pass by without a word," only to be surprised by what happens once the
stranger says hello. Or in this case, Salaam."
Kochai was born in an Afghan refugee camp in Peshawar, Pakistan, but
originally hails from Logar, Afghanistan.
Read his evocative essay here.
