Ahmed Sultani is a small 70-year old man with a soft-spoken voice and lines etched deeply into his tanned face. On July 22, 2006, his 18-year old son, Zalmai, was blown into small pieces by a suicide bomber who had been targeting Canadian troops in the centre of Kandahar city. In this attack, twelve civilians were killed and twenty-eight were injured. Ahmed told me how his neighbors came to his house in a village outside Kandahar to tell him that his son was dead. The women of the house started screaming and wailing in grief. Ahmed rushed down to the city and found his son “on the ground and he was torn up and burned and we took him. Half his body was missing.”
I asked him what he missed most about his son and his eyes filled with tears. “Every time I think about him, my heart goes to pieces. I cry hard. I miss everything about him. He was a good son. He was married and he had one son and then another baby was on the way when he was killed. Now he has another son but he never saw this son.”
Zalmai was a taxi driver and the main earner for his family. His income supported ten family members, including an older brother who was shot by the Russians and is paralyzed down the right side of his body. Now the family, which includes four children under the age of three, is finding it extremely difficult to survive. They borrow wheat and vegetables from relatives and depend on their neighbors’ generosity.
Things only began to look a little more optimistic for Ahmed when one of his relatives told him about the USAID-funded ACAP program. “Finally,” he told me, “I began to feel that there might be hope.” ACAP has agreed to buy the family a cow. “With the cow, we can manufacture milk, yogurt and we will sell this in the bazaar and get income.” As he told me this, a smile finally broke out on Ahmed’s face. He is still clearly grieving for his son, but now at least he can start building a future for his family.
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