Why I love the NYTimes ...

... and me alma mater. I have spent a good chunk of time both days this weekend browsing the electronic pages of the New York Times. In the T: Style Magazine, "Spool Days" by Lynn Hirschberg and "The Right to Chew" by Holly Brubach were particularly good, as was "The Freshman" by Chip Brown in the Times Magazine. The cover line reads, "Rahmatullah Hashemi was the Taliban’s chief spokesman abroad. So how did he end up at Yale?" Here's an excerpt from the end of the article:


Many distinctions could be drawn between his old life and his life at Yale. But he had seized on one.

"You have to be reasonable to live in America," he said. "Everything here is based on reason. Even the essays you write for class. Back home you have to talk about religion and culture, and you can win any argument if you bring up the Islamic argument. You can't reason against religion. But you cannot change Afghanistan overnight. You can't bring the Enlightenment overnight."

A few weeks after our visit, aching for his family, Rahmatullah hit a low point. The semester was ending. Everyone was heading home to see his family but him. He could not leave the country on his visa with any assurance of its being renewed in time for class. The future, his vague hopes of returning to Afghanistan to work in education, seemed remote. He said to Ahmed one day, "What is the meaning of life?" and answered for himself: "Family." And then out poured reasons that he should abandon his education and go home. He was neglecting his duties as a father and husband. His children were pining for him; his wife was upset. He missed his parents. And all the young minds around him were so fresh, it was daunting sometimes, people who looked as if they were hardly paying attention in class blazed through their exams. What was he really learning? When you studied political science, you were always focused on how messed up the world was. He wished he could study the stars, but as Hoover had sensibly said, "The world doesn't need an Afghan astrophysicist." He had been raised in a faith, buoyed at every turn by the certainty of a higher order, a purposeful universe, and now here in this shrine of critical thinking he was learning to doubt, not to believe.

Everyone needs a time to be young. He spent the holidays with Hoover and the Maxwells in Jackson Hole. He ventured into the town pool. When he was 19, he nearly drowned in the Arghandab River. He had never learned how to swim, and he always wanted to. And now in landlocked Wyoming, he was getting the hang of it.

By January the crisis had ebbed. He was happy about his grades after the fall-term finals. He had a 3.33 G.P.A. He had done better than he thought in Managing the Global City and worse than he expected in Terrorism: Past, Present and Future. Make what you will of that. He felt more at ease on College Street and was really enjoying his spring courses: Reading and Writing the Modern Essay (ENGL 120), International Dimensions of Democratization (PLSC 151) and Introduction to International Relations (PLSC 111). And the toys he had sent his kids had arrived in Quetta at long last — Suleman's train and Suraya's stuffed dog. And the pictures of Dad the Talib at Yale. So they could see where he was. He had a direction and plans, and it helped to remember how fortunate he was. "In some ways I'm the luckiest person in the world," he says. "I could have ended up in Guantánamo Bay. Instead I ended up at Yale."

He planned to apply for admission as a degree-status sophomore in March or April. And in May, in'shallah, he would go home.