When I left Afghanistan in 2020, my biggest wrench was having to leave my dear doggie behind. He and I had been through a lot together, including dress rehearsals – me with my staff (the wooden variety) and he with his teeth, brute strength and stupefying terror-inducing powers – in case we encountered any unwanted intrusions in our homestead. Fortunately, we never had to utilise the techniques we practised.

Eventually, our former office cook volunteered to look after my best friend. He has found a good home there. It is only fair that I send quarterly remittances, eked out from my state pension, to help him look after my dog. This morning, tomorrow being the first of October, signalling the onset of the final quarter of 2025, I rang the hawala banking service in my hometown in England. “I need to send my regular remittance to Afghanistan,” I told him. “How much will this amount of Afghanis be in pounds, at today’s rate?”

“There is a problem, Haji Sahib,” my hawala banker told me. “Internet and cell-phone services are down across Afghanistan. The government has disabled the Internet. We are unable to send any money to Afghanistan at this time.” I gave him my commiserations, saying it was much more of a problem for him and his customers, than it was for me. We would manage, insha’Allah.

It was not the first time that I had encountered difficulties with my quarterly remittances. I called to mind the time when I sent my third quarterly canine submission of 2024. I was a bit baffled when I did not receive any acknowledgement from our former office cook, saying that he had received the amount. Several days later, he texted me. He had indeed encountered a mishap.

When he was ready to visit the designated hawala banking office, to accept the money, he received a visit from the Islamic Emirate authorities. “I hear you are keeping a dog on behalf of a foreigner,” they told him. Before he could offer any explanation, they had taken him and the unsuspecting creature downtown, and put them in a lock-up.

It was three days before an Islamic Emirate official with sufficient authority to decide their case turned up at the jail, where the somewhat strange couple were being detained. While my doggie must have just barked, the office cook explained – taking my name – on whose behalf he was keeping the creature.

“Oh, this dog belongs to Haji Sahib!” the official exclaimed. “I am so sorry for the inconvenience we have caused you.” He immediately arranged for a car to take the pair home to their village, outside town.

I should explain here what I had been doing in Afghanistan. Having studied from 1970 to 1983 in madrasas myself, graduating from the famous Darul Uloom Deoband in India – a hallowed establishment throughout South Asia and Afghanistan – I had pursued a career in the media. As old age loomed, in 2008 I thought it would be a good idea to give other madrasa graduates the same type of career options that I had enjoyed. I set up a “higher learning for madrasa graduates” institute, imparting contemporary education from a Quranic perspective. The aim was to orientate madrasa graduates, like the Taliban themselves, towards careers in a range of fields, including the media. That is how the said Emirate official knew about me. He had himself studied in my higher learning institute.

Having given my own credentials, I should give some of the credentials of my dog, also. As I said, it had been a wrench to leave him, when I left Afghanistan in 2020. My first idea was to leave him with a foreigner. I found a head of an international NGO who was willing to take him as a pet. The problem was, my dog was used to an Islamic lifestyle.

In keeping with Islamic tradition, my dog had always lived in his own kennel, outside our home. He had never even been inside a human house. His purpose in life was to guard our grounds. Imagine my dog’s indignation, then, when my daughter and I took him into the posh NGO CEO’s office. He made his feelings known by depositing a mountain of excrement on the carpet in one corner of the office. As my daughter and I apologetically set about cleaning the mess with some toilet paper, my faithful dog let loose a torrent of wee on another corner of the carpet. “This is what I think of the place you have chosen for me to live,” he seemed to be scoffing.

Still, I did not immediately get the message, and left my doggie there. Soon I received a call from the gentleman who had agreed to take him on. He had bitten one of his staff members. “It’s not too bad,” he said. “It must be part of the process of him getting used to his new surroundings.” The situation deteriorated further when he rang me late at night. “He has bitten me.” He had indeed dug a hole into the NGO supremo’s hand.

Now I was sure that the next call I would receive would be to tell me that one of his Afghan staff had shot my dog. It was midnight when I arrived at the NGO office, telling the people at the gate that I had come to collect my dog. “We cannot disturb the boss now,” they told me. “Please come back in the morning.”

I did so, and safely collected my dog first thing in the morning. He was so happy to see me that he knocked me over and strutted up and down on top of me, partly in rebuke for leaving him in such an alien type of environment, and partly in relief at having extricated himself from these strange surroundings.

People reading this article are bound to say, “Your dog is not a typical dog in Afghanistan. He is a lucky dog.” They would be right. My doggie is much luckier even than humans living in Afghanistan. Does it not sum up the plight of their country, that in other parts of the world, it is sworn enemies who would launch a cyber-attack on another country. In Afghanistan, it is their own government who do this. We did teach political science in our higher learning establishment for madrasa graduates. Obviously, we did not teach it enough.

John Butt has lived much of his life in Afghanistan, producing educational radio drama.

---

We’ve grown up hearing that “it’s the small things” that matter. That’s true, of course, but it’s also not – there are Big Things that we know matter, and that we shouldn’t take our eyes, minds or hearts off of. As journalists, we spend most of our time looking at those Big Things, trying to understand them, break them down, and bring them to you.

And now we’re looking to you to also think about the small things – the joy that comes from a strangers’ kindness, incidents that leave you feeling warm, an unexpected conversation that made you happy, finding spaces of solidarity. Write to us about your small things at thewiresmallthings@gmail.com in 800 words or less, and we will publish selected submissions. We look forward to reading about your experiences, because even small things can bring big joys.

Read the series here.

This article went live on October fourth, two thousand twenty five, at zero minutes past eight in the morning.

The Wire is now on WhatsApp. Follow our channel for sharp analysis and opinions on the latest developments.