^[1] KABUL, AFGHANISTAN: I was born in a small village not far from Kabul. Unfortunately, most of the people there are uneducated and they won’t accept anything that does not conform to their traditional laws. For instance, when the government wanted to build a school in the village, the elders did not allow it. They said: “If the children learn knowledge in the government’s school, then they will forget their religion, and then Satan will come to our village.”

I remember the elders would not trust doctors either. They would tell us to go to an old woman in our village who would cure sick people using traditional methods and recipes. This woman must have been around 65-years-old but she looked older. Her eyes were wide, watery, and red. She had a frightening face. The woman used to tell the villagers: “If you go to the doctor, the monster and Satan will come to your house.”

In those days my father had a tractor and he carried the farmers’ vegetables from our village to Kabul. One particularly cold winter my father got sick and went to see a government doctor who had just come to our community. The doctor gave him a tablet and warned him not to work after he took it. My father swallowed the tablet with a glass of water and that night he felt much better. The next morning my father took another tablet as he was loading the tractor. The people in the village saw him and warned him: “Don’t take the doctor’s tablets.” But my father said it would make him feel better.

On the way to Kabul my father fell asleep and the tractor capsized. He was not hurt but all the produce of the village fell along the road and was lost. When my father returned home the people said: “When the doctor came to our village, the monster and Satan came with him, and they destroyed all our produce. We cannot trust the doctors!”

Not long after this incident I also became ill. My mother took me to a doctor but when she saw that he wanted to give me a tablet she took me away. “He wanted to kill your father and now he wants to kill you,” she said.

Then my mother took me to the old woman. I was scared. The old woman peered into my mouth and said she could see that the monster and Satan were in my stomach. She looked at my mother and said: “The doctor did this to him! Now we must tear through your son’s stomach to get these Satans out!”

My mother cried out that she didn’t want me to die. “No, he will not die!” roared the old woman. “But if you want your son to live you must let me open his stomach.” My mother accepted, hesitantly, and the old woman took an old knife that was sitting in a cup of water next to her. Then she stood up and started to recite some incomprehensible formulas. I was shaking in fear and when she moved towards me I suddenly jumped up and ran away. I could hear my mother calling me but I did not stop nor turn back.

I ran for a long time, until a man driving a car stopped and asked me what was wrong. I told him what had happened and he took me to a hospital, where a doctor visited me and treated me. I soon felt better and within a few days I was healthy again. When I returned home some of the doctors from that hospital came to the village, and they visited several other sick children and made them feel better too. After that time nobody went back to the old woman.