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In a village somewhere in the North of Afghanistan, two Algerian journalists are interviewing Ahmad Shah Massoud, the enigmatic leader of the Afghan opposition Northern Alliance. One of the journalists looks over to the cameraman and nods. Suddenly the camera explodes killing the two Algerians and with them Massoud. In that instant Afghanistan’s last hope of ridding the country of the curse of the Taliban vanishes in a plume of smoke. Two days later, two aircraft fly into the World Trade Centre in New York. The world as we know it vanishes in another plume of smoke. In Stratford upon Avon, Waseem Mahmood a jet-setting communications consultant in his early forties, - working for a Danish NGO - is trying to meeting a tight deadline for a report. On his table is an air ticket for the American Airlines flight that has just gone into the Pentagon. A bout of unexpected food poisoning means that he is at home battling with his expenses and not seated in seat 33G on AA77. |
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In Peshawar, Farida, a 23 year old Afghan sits alone in a room, completing an elaborate letter to President George Bush bemoaning how Afghans like her, have lost all hope of displacing the Taliban, with the assassination of their leader Ahmed Shah Massoud ... and asking for him to intercede and help. In the background, the BBC breaks news of the World Trade Centre disaster. Farida understands the torment of the American people, a Taliban missile killed her her young sisters on their way to school. Fourteen other children died with his sisters that day. But part of her is perversely pleased that maybe this atrocity on American soil may galvanise American foreign policy into helping her country to freedom.
It is early morning in San Francisco. Abi Brookes, a twenty something news producer is returning to work after a freak accident. The events she has to report to the world that day hide a personal tragedy and change her life forever.
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Meanwhile, Manocher Izzatyaar, another Afghan also in his early twenties – and Farida’s cousin - is working out in a flea-bitten gym in Kabul when he hears people cheering and men firing Kalashnikovs, as they hear about the planes crashing into the WTC towers on Radio Sharia. Manocher quickly makes his way to a friend’s place where they huddle around a small secret television watching the events unfolding. Like Farida he too sympathizes with the Americans, he, as a four year old cradled his dying father as he was shot by Mujhideen wrongly accused of being a communist collaborator. To this day he is still searching for his grave. A little less than two months later, Waseem and Manocher arrive at Bagram Airbase with John Murray, a veteran Scottish radio journalist and Waseem’s closest friend, to launch a radio station in war torn Afghanistan. Armed with little more than a good idea and with not a clue of how to go about it the team meander their way through the almost biblical landscape to Kabul. “Good Morning Afghanistan” is their story and how against the all the odds they manage to launch Afghanistan’s first radio station. |