Essay 2

Abdul Dada
English 367, Mike Lohre
May 17, 2009
Essay 2

Farhad “Tony Kukoc” Luden
5145 Dry creek Dr. Dublin, Ohio

Farhad Luden is an American citizen who was born in Jalalabad, Afghanistan on September 3, 1980. He was born and lived through most of Afghanistan’s war with the Soviet Union. This was a very deadly war in which more civilians were killed than soldiers. A plethora of Afghan Citizens had no choice but to flee their war torn country. Most of them went to Neighboring Pakistan where they lived in crowded refugee camps. After going to Pakistan he came to America with his family and started going to school. He graduated from college and now works for a bank and owns a gas station in Columbus, Ohio. He recently purchased a house in Dublin, Ohio.

Life in Afghanistan was very hard. I grew up under the Russian occupation and into the civil war so pretty much the whole time I was there, there was always war going on. Life there was very hard. I went to school but the teachers weren’t getting any salaries, so there were schools but there were no teachers teaching. I went to school for three years and I still don’t remember any of my teachers names, but when I came here, I went to school for only five months, actually three months and I still remember three of my teachers names. So life was difficult in regards to education and work. Life wasn’t always hard but it became hard because of the war. You had Russians on one side and Mujahidin fighting them with the civilian population in the middle of it. There was a never night where we were not waken up from rockets nearby our house or gunfire breaking our windows. We had a few relatives and a few friends that died. I was only nine and I still do remember a lot of people that died. Actually sometimes we would go to some of those places where a bomb or rocket had fallen or exploded and we would go there and see the scene to see if any of the victims were our relatives so you know it was difficult, it was hard. Sometimes you go on the streets and you see nobody; everybody was trying to stay somewhere where they are protected but even that was difficult. There were a lot of deaths. Being nine years old and seeing all of this made it difficult to go on.

To avoid the war, you migrated to Pakistan. What was that like?

I was nine years old and I had to carry my younger sister on my back all the way to Pakistan. It took over eight hours. Even after we reached Pakistan, she wouldn’t get off my back because she was so frightened. We started our journey at one o’clock in the morning. We had to choose a time and pretty much hope and pray that we got there safe and unfortunately on our journey we had a lot of people with us including men, women, kids and elders. We had to travel in the dark because the Russians had fighter jets. Whenever they saw a group of people walking they wouldn’t care if it was innocent people, they just acted like they were the Mujahidin, so the only way you could escape was in the night. On the way there were mines that we had to watch for. There are mines all over Afghanistan even today, a lot of mines, and a lot of people died from those mines during the soviet occupation and during the civil war. I remember one time me my sister and my brother, we walked half way into a mine field. We were trying to take a shortcut but halfway through, we realized it was a mine field. Then someone saw us and yelled,” don’t take another step” and he said to step exactly where we did when going into the mine field so we can get back. When we were coming it was raining so we could see our footprints. It was an intense journey! We had one kid that got shot on the way to Pakistan and he was the third or fourth person ahead of me. There were bullets flying above our heads and one of them unfortunately caught him. I still remember his mother crying and saying that he was all she had and that she had no other relatives so she just stayed, but we all kept going because we couldn’t stay. We had to keep moving, we had no choice. It was very difficult, it was very scary.

Were you happy to be in Pakistan?

We were happy to be in Pakistan but at the same time it’s hard to leave you home where you grew up. All we brought were the clothes we were wearing and the women had some jewelry and some money, but they currency was so horrible that it wasn’t going to make any money for us in Pakistan. So for money I couldn’t choose between selling water, corn, chewing gum, or sugar canes. I just sold whatever I could to make some pocket money for school. If you go to a third world country, that’s the child labor. If you exchange the currency in terms of dollars I was making 5 to 10 cents, but over there it was good enough for me to buy pen and a paper to use in school and maybe have some money to buy myself something once a week if I wanted it. Noting big but let’s say maybe like a sandwich if I got hungry, or chewing gum, or candy, something that should be given to you by your parents but not there.

How did you feel when you arrived in America?

Well in the beginning I missed Afghanistan because that’s where all of my family was and I hadn’t spent much time with my family that lived in America. I was really new to all of it, and coming here I didn’t even know my ABC’s. Going to school and having teachers care about me was an experience by itself. The first two years I started learning English, but in 7th grade the coaches were after me and he offered to drive me home but I didn’t know how to communicate. I was pretty tall and basketball was very famous here and likening sports from back home I wanted to try it. I was good and athletic and good at soccer and basketball. Coach always told me to play but I didn’t play sports till 8th grade. I came to Ridgeview middle school and I played soccer and basketball. I was the second leading scorer in soccer and in basketball I was the best all around player we had. The coach remembered me for a long time. I had a couple of family members that he still talks with about me. In basketball and all sports you have people that like you and people that hate you and I guess there were a couple of guys that didn’t like me because I was taking attention from them and so they chose to take it on their own hands and fight me but they were not successful. Being new, basketball was very helpful with making me fit in. I had a lot of friends from basketball and soccer. It did the same for me in high school which I finished in three years.

I graduated from Ohio State with a degree in development economics. I got a job that falls within my major. I work at a bank now and I’m looking forward to a promotion in a couple months. I've been waiting a while but it’s going to be a long way because with the way the economy is. Owning my own business and managing it is another thing the degree helps with because you know what to do and what not to do. After my business picked up I got married. It was in 2003 and married life is good. You settle down and growing up that’s what I wanted to do actually I wanted to settle down and get married. I just purchased a nice house. It’s only 4 years old and only one other occupant besides me. Like is said, unfortunately some people lost their house but you have to look at it as one man’s loss is another man’s gain. I want to get my masters so if I stay with the bank they can get me a promotion up and are willing to pay for my masters in finance or business administration. In the next ten years hopefully I’ll be done paying for my house and either have my masters or working on it.

15 or 16 years ago if you told me that I would be owning a house in a country like this, if you would have told me that, I would have told you that you don’t know what you’re talking about, it’s just not going to happen. Growing up we would watch it in the movies, you‘d have a guy coming to the house and you have the wife and kids at home as he walks into the house. Sometimes I think about how I achieved all these dreams of owning a car and a home and having a family to come to. I enjoy it, and I still can’t believe it. It’s like a dream come true. Anything I put my mind to, I have accomplished. Coming from a third world country, I came here went to school, high school, college, got a college degree, and now owning a home. It takes hard work and education.