Class of '75 husband and wife team finds life passion in Afghanistan

Pinpointing one's life passion is something that evades many people for years beyond their college graduation. For those who discover a fulfilling sense of purpose earlier, it is often the product of a long, tortuous journey.

For David Edwards '75, however, this enlightenment of purpose came while searching through, of all places, the Princeton University Store. While aimlessly meandering through sections of books, he said he came across a book on anthropology and immediately realized that "this is what I wanted to do with my life."

At the time, aimless meandering seemed to characterize much of Edwards' life. He said he recalls a profound sense of restlessness while at Princeton. He felt unfocused on his studies, and the 1970s culture of revolt and resistance added to his uneasiness.

"I wanted to be a writer, an adventurer," he said. "I wanted to get out and see the world and, at that time, the whole world was available."

With a restless heart and a desire to see new things, Edwards took a year off between his sophomore and junior years to travel to the Middle East. It was this experience, melded with romantic stories his grandmother told him about a trip to Afghanistan, that provided Edwards with the focus he desired. Only two weeks after his University graduation, Edwards was on his way back to the East, to Kabul, Afghanistan, for a teaching position.

Soon after, Edwards' wife, Holly Edwards '75 joined him there. For two years, the pair taught English to native Afghans at rival schools. In hindsight, it seems clear that they arrived at a time when English and the West represented a wealth of new possibilities.

"The native people were eager to participate in the larger world," Holly said. "The tourist industry was moving forward. There was a lot of demand to delve into the outside world, and English was seen as the way to do it."

The Afghanistan the couple describes seems far removed from the images many Americans call to mind following Sept. 11 news coverage. It was, as Holly put it, "much more than warlords, burqas and rubble."

"Kabul was a sophisticated place then, much more sophisticated than anywhere in Pakistan," David said. "Kabul felt like the kind of place where there is nowhere else you would rather be."

Mr. and Mrs. Edwards returned to the United States in 1977 and wed. As the couple continued their education here, political discontent in Afghanistan that had been mounting quietly for years in underground circuits finally came to a head.

"What I don't think anyone fully appreciated at the time was how much discontent there was underneath the surface and how organized the Marxist and radical Islamic groups were in there recruiting," David said.

Five years after leaving Kabul, the Edwards attempted a return to that area. But because the communist regime that had taken over kept foreigners out of Afghanistan, the couple instead worked at political refugee camps just inside the Pakistani border, in Peshawar.

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While abroad in Peshawar, David began to combine his interest in Afghanistan with his academic fascination with the newly developed role of Islam — the country's dominant religion — as a critical political consideration.

"It initially appeared that Islam was relatively insignificant politically, that it was more confined [to the religious realm]," he said. "It is significant that five years later, that was totally different. Islam became the ideology on every level. Everything was discussed in terms of Islam. You had to justify your claim to [political] authority based on Islamic doctrine and idioms."

The years in Peshawar also provided additional academic material for Holly, now an art history professor at Williams College. She has since conducted significant research in the field of Orientalism, which attempts to better understand how the West views the East.

For such a convoluted issue, Holly's underlying goal for her work remains surprisingly simple: reminding people — especially in today's good versus bad world, marked by the "Axis of Evil" — that things are more complex than they may seem.

"I don't honestly think there is one truth to Afghanistan . . . What I try to do is present as many different pieces of a complex puzzle as I have within my grasp and admit my vantage point," she said. "So, if someone comes to me with a stereotype that I know to be untrue, I do my best to correct that."

Both David and Holly agree, though, that the most significant material they gathered on their trips to Afghanistan was a wealth of video and audio footage taken by Afghans of inner Afghanistan during the Soviet occupations.

Mr. and Mrs. Edwards collected the tapes and recordings and brought many of them back to the United States. Once here, they started the Williams Afghan Media Project to preserve these media, which chronicle the history and society of Afghanistan.

Following the Sept. 11 attacks, the Edwards assembled pieces of the collection for a display at a gallery in New York. Seeing the reality of life in Afghanistan, they hoped, would provide Americans with a better understanding of Osama bin Laden's reputation in the country.

"We hoped to provide New Yorkers with the opportunity to see pictures of Afghanistan as we were invading it," Holly said. "It's people without enough to eat and not enough infrastructure to fall back on. Those are grim circumstances and in grim circumstances, grim forces arise."

The U.S. government's response to the attacks has not been what David had hoped it would be. Intimately connected with anti-bin Laden leaders in Afghanistan, David believes that U.S. leaders missed an important chance to make improvements in Afghanistan and to make friends elsewhere in the Middle East.

"I think that when we went in a year ago, our position was actually very strong and appreciated," he said. "The Taliban was not popular, and most people really wanted the opportunity to improve their country — it had been stripped bare. So, we could help Afghanistan and make a public relations coup, but we didn't follow through. Instead, we are off on this new adventure in Iraq, and we have really squandered an opportunity to make allies in the Middle East."

The couple's interest in Afghanistan continues unabated. David, who recently became a 2002 Carnegie Corporation Scholar of Vision, will return to Afghanistan next year. He plans to conduct research for a book and to continue efforts for the media project.