352 AFTERWORDills in Iraq and Afghanistan and other troubled regions. Upon the success-
ful completion of such elections, the countries in question are said to have
become democracies or at least to have moved closer to that happy state.
But I keep remembering the elections held in Afghanistan after the Tal-
i ban had fled the country. Across the nation, people chose delegates to rep-
resent them at a national meeting organized by the United States to forge
a new democratic government, complete with parliament, constitution,
president, and cabinet. That summer in Paghman, a town near Kabul, I
met a man who said he had voted in the elections. I couldn't picture him
in a voting booth, since he looked like the traditional rural villagers I had
known in my youth, with the standard long shirt, baggy pants, turban,
and beard, so I asked him to describe the voting process for me-what was
the actual activity?
"Well, sir," he said, "a couple of city men came around with slips of
paper and went on and on about how we were supposed to make marks on
them, and we listened politely, because they had come a long way and we
didn't want to be rude, but we didn't need those city fellows to tell us who
our man was. We made the marks they wanted, but we always knew who
would be representing us-Agha-i-Sayyaf, of course."
''And how did you settle on Sayyaf:>" I asked.
"Settle on him? Sir! What do you mean? His family has lived here since
the days of Dost Mohammed Khan and longer. Go over that ridge, you'll
see his house across the valley-biggest one around! Every year at Eid, he
comes by and gives candy to the children and inquires about our prob-
lems, and if someone needs help, why, he fetches money out of his pocket
and hands it over then and there, whatever he has on him. That man is a
Muslim! Did you know that my sister's husband has a cousin who is mar-
ried to Sayyaf's sister-in-law? He's one of our own."
It struck me that what Western planners called "democracy" was an ex-
traneous apparatus this man shouldered because he had to, under which
load he carried on with his real life as best he could. In him flowed two
streams of history that were unrelated and interconnecting awkwardly.
And if this was happening an hour outside Kabul, it was happening all
over the country.
From the Western side, it seems plausible (to some) to assert that fund-
ing and arming rulers amenable to Western ways in places like Pakistan,