No Number Is Damned

The history of humanity is filled with ups and downs in different places. Human beings cannot afford living without thinking and imagination – as Decarte says:” I think, so I am.” One the thing pertained to the imagination is Superstition.

Superstition is appeared in di

fferent ways such as cult generated by cults, talisman, some religions, beliefs, traditions and so on. One of them is sayings originated from superstition and these sayings are sometimes constituted into number like 666 in Holy Book and Satanism, 13 among Samarians and the new one – 39 in Afghanistan.

Sometimes Afghans call this number 40-1.39 has no logical background among Afghans, but there are many stories about it that I cannot write and collect them all. One the most heard one is that:

“Once upon a time, there was a rich man like Khan in a village. He was powerful and very superstitious as well. After collapse of Taliban he built several places and buildings, bought a cell phone, and renewed most of his property. His phone number had three 39, the size of his shoes was 39, he had 39 mistresses and he had 39 buildings.”

“When he dies, due to being so cruel, no villagers went to grave him. Day by day, people forgot his name, but the buildings he made, the mistresses and all his property were remained. People used his buildings and made the number 39 popular among their village. Then the story went to other villages and cities so fast.”

This was one of the stories of why number 39 became popular among Afghans and they detest it.

Yesterday, a large number of Afghan bloggers, facebookers and twitters post articles, pictures and music and video in order to condemn 39.

Some days ago during the four days of Luya Jirga, I saw all of TV networks filmed all the chairs whose numbers were 39. There was no guest sitting on those chairs. That is why Afghan bloggers, facebookers and twitters post their articles, picture, music clips and video clips.

Yesterday, President Hamid Karzai was asked as to why this is like this. And Karzai said:” this is what people believe. I did nothing and this is not my responsibility to answer it. When people accept, I do too.”

One of the facebookers who changed the picture of his facebook account to 39 says:” I did so for two reasons. The first one; because I want to show the ridiculous culture widespread in my country. And second one; because I would like to indicate my hatred about the participants of Luya Jirga.”

But in reverse, other person says:” I live in Kabul, if I changed my facebook account picture to 39, I will be mocked. What looks like great in West is not acceptable in Afghanistan.” He added:” I hope one day we would change Afghanistan in a favorite way.