PURGATORY AT THE KYBER PASS

I am sitting at an outdoor table of the Intercontinental Hotel in Peshawar, Pakistan. I look to the left and see the Kyber Pass. For some strange reason I remember and visualize Alexander the Great moving his armies through that pass on his way to “conquer the world.” I remember the story (probably apocryphal) that he wept because he thought there were no more worlds to conquer. (Apparently he was unaware of say, China and Native Americans.)

I look a little to my right, past the massive refugee center I’d visited earlier in the day filled with Afghanistans fleeing their home country then being controlled by Russia. I knew that many of these refugees were mujahideen being secretly armed to wrestle control back from the Russians. I did not know that they were going to replace communism with an Islamic State as repressive as any Stalinist dictatorship.

My mind is in deep reverie, my thoughts puddle jumping from ancient Persia, to Zoroastrianism, to my long held desire to visit Kabul, to refugees all over the world, and how this boy from the little town of Walburg, Texas, who assumed that all of his life would be spent teaching in small Lutheran parochial schools in that state should find himself overlooking the Khyber Pass drinking beer with an Irish Catholic nun.

The “beer part” is almost as remarkable as the rest of the scenario. With Pakistan a very strict Muslim country the sale of alcoholic beverages is severely restricted. As a foreigner I have secured and paid for a license, which allows me to purchase a limited amount of alcohol, three units, to be exact. Sister Sheila and I opted for 3 quarts of beer since the price quoted us for the pint of gin we really wanted was US$32.00.

Sister Sheila is a remarkable woman. She has left her native Ireland and devoted her life to teaching the poorest of the poor. Her classrooms are the shaded areas of trees. Her school equipment consists of 4-inch high benches. Paper is too expensive so each student has a 10” x 12” chalkboard used over and over. Sister Sheila has put together a whole network of schools, has trained a corps of teachers using a model I had taught her. She gathers the mothers for lessons as well. We talk about all that. We move to reflecting upon the legitimacy of teaching Christianity to children form Muslim homes, about comparative religions, about denominations, about Lutherans and Catholics, about life after death and about purgatory.

“I haven’t even thought about purgatory for 20 years” she says “and here I am with a Lutheran Texan drinking beer, recalling ancient caravans coming down the Khyber Pass and talking about purgatory!”

We laughed. We agreed that teaching little children to read, giving food to the hungry, care to the sick, and human dignity to the forgotten of the world is much more important than trying to particularize any of the zones of hell.