Holding on to Afghanistan and Hoping to Change the Future

Arezow Doost sits outside on a glorious, sunny day in Austin, Texas, sipping mint juniper tea. A slight breeze blows her glossy, raven hair back, revealing a face with sublimely sculpted features: arched eyebrows, high cheekbones that are flushed rose from the slight sultriness of mid-day, large dark eyes with elongated eyelashes, and a scarlet-stained, heart-shaped mouth. Passers-by might never guess the story that she is telling, unless they were listening to the conversation.

"The thing that I remember the most is riding the donkey through the mountains. I kept falling off and hitting the rocks because I was sleepy. Finally, my family decided that I wasn't allowed to ride the donkey any longer and I would just have to walk," she says, remembering her escape from Afghanistan in 1984 that would lead her to Pakistan, Germany, the United States, and ultimately the University of Texas at Austin. It's a journey where she has been thrown into so many different cultures that she has adjusted to, clinging tightly to her family, morals, customs and especially to her Islamic faith, while pursuing her dream in broadcast news.

When the Russians invaded Afghanistan in 1979, Arezow was only a year old. By the time she was six, the Russians had been kicked out, but the Taliban had taken over the Afghan government. Everything was changing quickly and not for the better.

"Before the Taliban took over, women in Afghanistan were allowed to be teachers, businesswomen, doctors, just about anything they wanted," she says. "Of course, there were certain levels of class and decency that women as Muslims maintained, but school there was pretty much like school here."

Arezow's family knew that they needed to get out of the country, because it was becoming perilous. The peaceful and contented life that they had been living was going to be pulverized by the new government. They were some of the few, fortunate ones who were able to slip away from the Taliban because one of her uncles had ties to the former government. He aided them in their risky escape to Pakistan, where they lived for two years. Then they went to Germany, where they lived for a short time while waiting for U.S. citizenship, and then finally settled in Plano, Texas.

Even though she was very young when she left, Arezow still considers Afghanistan her home and remembers it as a beautiful country with fairy-tale mountains and waters. Her parents help her fill in any voids in her memory when they chat in her native language, Farsi, which they have never ceased using at home.

"Things in the other countries where we have lived just aren't the same. Things in Afghanistan seemed to taste good, we felt good, and it was just a good life. It was our history, our home."

Arezow says that it is hard to be objective when comparing the United States to Afghanistan because Afghanistan was the first place she knew. She compares everything to the joyous times that she had there, which were even more enriching because all of her extended family were together. She thinks that there are positives and negatives to every society and culture. However, she does think that the United States can be a selfish country at times, in that its leaders only seem to help other countries out if they think they will benefit from it themselves. She wishes that the U.S. would be more understanding and empathetic to the less fortunate countries.

For Arezow, family is one of the most important things in her life, and her parents have been the greatest influence on her, as well as her role models. "They have worked so hard everywhere that we have lived, in order to provide the best for their children. I am so grateful to them because I know that I wouldn't be able to have the choices and opportunities that I enjoy if it wasn't for them," she says.

Eventually, she hopes to reciprocate all that her parents have provided her with and be able to take care of them. After starting over so many times in places where they were not accepted, clinging to family has become that much more important when struggling to hold on to morals and beliefs.

Just as significant as family is being a devout Muslim which "has given me peace and has kept me in touch with my spirit. Without blessings from Allah and my morals and beliefs, I wouldn't be where I am today," she says. If her future includes children, it is very important to her that they be raised in the faith. "That will be passing down tradition and my main tie to them," she says.

One of the most frustrating things that she has observed in this country has been the stereotypes which Americans have about Muslims and the Middle East. She especially became aware of it after the Oklahoma City bombing when everyone jumped to the conclusion that an Islamic person had been responsible.

"Most Americans don't really have a clue as to what Islam is truly about. They just have stereotypes of a group of terrorists, fanatics, and a religion that is oppressive to women, but they have never really gotten to know someone who is a true believer of the faith. Of course we have fanatics who twist the religion, but people forget that there are a lot of Christian fanatics as well. You can't judge the whole religion based on certain extremists groups such as the Taliban. Not all Muslims are weird," she says.

She thinks the biggest stereotype of being Muslim is that she is a repressed female in a male-dominated religion. "Most people don't realize that Islam was the first religion to give women rights and treat them as equals to men," she says. Arezow feels that many people also have the wrong idea about Muslim women who wear hajabs (head coverings).

"They do it because of tradition, to be humble and not draw attention to themselves," she says. "Unfortunately, in this country it just draws more attention to them, but they don't do it because they consider themselves inferior to men." Arezow has never worn a hajab, and most Afghan women never did before the Taliban took over their country. Now, however, women are not allowed to leave their house unless they are covered head to toe and escorted by a man, and they are also not permitted to attend school.

In each different country that she has lived in, Arezow has paid close attention to the media, and she considers it to be what is most influential in forming people's opinions and stereotypes. "Every country seems to have their own bias on their television news, and I could see this reflected in how their people viewed other cultures and countries," she says. "Most people believe what they see on the news, and if they have a biased news, how can the people make unbiased opinions?"

This realization has lead her to pursue a career in broadcast news, where she would eventually like to make news less sensationalized entertainment and more impartial, fair-minded information in which every person in the world is included and has a voice. She hopes that this approach would help to hash stereotypes.

Her goal and her passion are to give back both to the public and her family. After graduating from college, she hopes to be able to work in a broadcast market where she won't have to compromise her values and beliefs, and where she can make a difference in the quality of television news. The only failure that she foresees in her life would come from not working hard enough to accomplish the goals that she has made for herself, although that isn't likely to happen given her strengths of being honest, strong-willed and motivated.

"I feel that I have been set on the right track, and I just have to live up to my potential," she says. Even after exposure to many diverse cultures, she claims her weaknesses are being too naive to the world and being too trusting at times, which might stem from the cocoon of family and religion that she has wrapped herself in to stay sane.

People who don't live up to their potential as well as bigoted people are most frustrating to her. "I can't stand it when people are lazy. When people have the capacity and smarts but just don't apply themselves," she says. "I just want to tell them that they have everything to do-they must have dreams and goals-but they just have to get up and do it."

She considers bigoted people lazy as well, because it is sometimes easier for them to think narrowly than to revolutionize themselves. Racism is encasing us in people's thoughts and frame of mind, she claims.

What keeps her most motivated is her faith, but she does admire Peter Jennings and Ted Koppel, professionally. "Peter Jennings is so classy," she says, and "Ted Koppel is one of the best anchors and interviewers who writes all of his own stuff. He's not one of those guys who makes other people write and he just reads it on the air."

As for the future, Arezow will do her best to make a distinguishing mark in broadcast news, and if that proves impossible, it is important for her to have a job that assists people in other ways. Her dream job would be working as a foreign correspondent to Afghanistan, where she would definitely return if she had the chance. Without aid from other countries, however, she does not see any immediate end to the Taliban's rule and the creation of standing peace in the area for her to retreat to.

She hopes that eventually she will not have to choose between having a family and a successful career, but she knows that might be a possibility. "As much as having a career is my passion, family will always come first, because it will always encourage me to do my best in everything else and make me a better person," she says.

In the meantime, she is relishing in the small things in life that she enjoys, like waking up early to eat a satisfying breakfast while reading the newspaper. Even though she is ambitious and driven, she has a good sense of humor about her life experiences. She believes that smiling is contagious, and her friends keep her laughing just being themselves. She thinks, however, that her grandmother is the most amusing of all. "Sometimes my grandmother is talking very rapidly in Farsi but throws in an English word because she has no other way to explain it," she says, "and it seems so out of place that it really cracks me up."