You Won't Be Found Until You're Lost

Part Two — Working

After some time I moved to another city — Eskişehir, known as the city of students and friendship. The people there felt warmer than Istanbul. I met Afghan students from Ghazni, Herat, and Bamiyan — people I'd been connected to through friends back in Kabul. We shared a small apartment and I learned a great deal about Turkish culture and customs from them.

I started learning Turkish. Most of my time went into watching TV series and films, especially the comedies of Kemal Sunal — known as Şaban — whose humor I found a way into before I could follow much else.

But the money I had saved for university ran out faster than I expected. The stress came back. I needed to find work — and this wasn't Afghanistan, where I could borrow from someone or lean on family.

I knocked on many doors. But because my Turkish wasn't yet fluent, I couldn't find anything comfortable or suited to what I knew. Back in Kabul I had been an office worker — administrative roles in government and private organizations. Here, I had no choice but to take what was available: construction sites, potato and wheat farms, overnight shifts at a bakery.

Hunger and the need to keep my dignity made me do what I had to do.

I thought about this a lot during those months. In Afghanistan, when I had a desk job, I complained constantly. I never threw myself into the work. I never felt genuine enthusiasm for it. I hadn't learned the value of being home — near family, near friends, in your own land. I hadn't learned contentment. I was buried under my own restlessness and comfort-seeking. The sense of responsibility, the desire to serve — I had lost it, or maybe the environment I worked in had never encouraged it. I never saw colleagues lift each other up. No one seemed to care about doing good work.

But here, afraid of going hungry and of losing whatever standing I had left, I was willing to do the hardest labor just to earn a piece of bread without holding out my hand to anyone.

And every moment of it hurt. I kept asking myself: why do we Afghans fail to serve our country and our people when we have the chance? Why don't we know the value of what we have? Why can't we be content? And above all — why aren't we grateful?