February 16, 2008

So today I had a very interesting conversation with an Afghanistani man. His father is a patient of ours and I saw him sitting in the unit beside his father. Most of our patients need translators to communicate and every time he was approached no translator was in sight. I looked at him closely and noticed tht he was dressed slightly different, he had on jewelry and he spoke fluent English. Later on in the day I began to ask him questions. My curiosity got the better of me. I found out he spoke 6 different languages, he lives in Russia and has lived in places such as the U.K., China, Afghanistan and the US. Apparently this gentleman is a business man whos family lives here. We began talking about his family… his wife, his kids and the culture. It turns out tht his marriage was an arranged marriage, as is the custom here, and he didn’t actually meet his wife until the day he married her. I asked him if after all these years that he has been married, has he fallen in love with his wife and his reply caught me of guard. He told me that he did not believe in love. I then asked him if God/Allah forbid, his wife died tomorrow would he be upset. He replied that he would only be upset because his children would not have a mother. We continued our conversation about the Afghan culture versus American culture. I told him to forgive me for hearing what he had to say but not understanding or maybe even accepting it. He proceeded to tell me that where he lives in Russia he even has a Romanian girlfriend. I asked him if either of his woman were bothered by the fact that he had either one of them and he said that it is an accepted thing in his culture. Oh well, I guess to each his own, right?
Sandy