Earlier this week Japan lost a hero and Afghanistan lost a champion when Japanese doctor Tetsu Nakamura and have five his NGO workers were gunned down inside their car by unknown assailants in Jalalabad this past Wednesday.
He was an honorary Afghan citizen for his three decades of health and development work for the Afghan people but to my father Ali Azimi he was simply a friend.
When I first ran across the news of Tetsu’s murder on the front page of the New York Times for a moment I thought to hide the news from my Pops:
What good would it do him to know that another one of his friends and work colleagues lost their lives in Afghanistan? But then I realized he would likely eventually find out what had happened to his friend and it would be better to hear it from me.
At first, my Pops was very reluctant to share pictures of his time working with Tetsu back in 2015 but eventually he relented and started to take me through his photos of their time together.
And with each photo he shared with me I could see the memories of Tetsu become more vivid for him. There was anger of course at his senseless murder but also joy and admiration shining through the grief for what Tetsu accomplished in Afghanistan – far before it became the popular destination for an entire generation of people looking to “earn their spurs” in Afghanistan.
As for myself, I was once again enormously thankful that my father could sit down with me and reflect on his time in Afghanistan.
You see, he made the same journey to Jalalabad several times to meet with Tetsu to review one of the Japanese doctor’s life giving irrigation system projects for JICA. He could have been caught in that ambush. He could have been gunned down in that hospital like his friend Dr. Jerry Umanos. He could have been caught in the many suicide bombings around Kabul throughout the two decades he spent working there for the ADB and then for organizations like JICA.
Instead here he was, a happy and healthy 70+ years old sitting beside me next to the fire on Hill here in Santa Fe, reminiscing about a good man that deserved to leave this world peacefully. And all I could think about that evening was how grateful my Pops was still with me. <3
My heartfelt thanks to Ayub Alavi jan for taking these photos and helping preserve memories of this time in my father’s life for myself and our family. <3
