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American Morning
America Alumni of A Kabul High School
Aired December 10, 2001 - 09:51 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: Most Afghan-Americans have watched the war in their old homeland with mixed emotions. Joys for the end of the Taliban regime, grief for the suffering of the Afghan people.
But as CNN's Bruce Burkhardt shows us, there are some Americans who also have a special relationship with that war-torn land.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Oh my god! Hi!
BRUCE BURKHARDT, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): It is a reunion of sorts, a gathering of old school chums.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We associated more on on the basketball court probably.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yeah.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I out jumped him though.
(LAUGHTER)
BURKHARDT: Baby boomers swapping misty-eyed memories of a different time, a different place -- a very different place.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: That's my junior class president picture.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: There's me.
BURKHARDT: And the year books. Well, they look like anybody's old year book. The clubs, the teens, the corny captions, the cheerleaders. But what about that "K" on their jerseys? Kennedy High School? No. "K" stands for Kabul. Kabul, Afghanistan.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There -- there's the palace, yes.
(CROSSTALK)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Shot, riddled.
BURKHARDT: They call themselves Scorpions. The mascot for the American International School of Kabul. Through the 60s and 70s, the school educated hundreds of American and other foreign students, grades K-12. They were the children of either embassy staff, or those involved in U.S. A.I.D. projects, building roads or irrigation projects.
(on camera): And the Kandahar airport was also built by them.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Sure, yeah, yeah.
BURKHARDT: And of course, we're shooting it all to pieces now.
(voice-over): We gathered some Atlanta area Scorpions at this hotel, which was convenient because it is managed by Obai Difriti. He was one of the privileged few Afghan students who attended the school.
Others who showed up for this mini-reunion? Randy and Tanya Givens, high school sweethearts. He was on the basketball team. She was a cheerleader.
Marjorie Cutler. This is her in the eighth grade. Deborah Dempsey-Jones, she too was cheerleader. Abraham Parvana, another Afghan who attended the school.
(CROSSTALK)
We showed them recent video of Kabul, including their old school, or what remains of it.
(CROSSTALK)
To many Americans, Afghanistan may seem like a hostile place. Rocks and dust and killing. But to these folks, it was a magical place where field trips might take them to those ancient Buddha statues that the Taliban later destroyed.
OBAI DIFRITI, AMERICAN INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL OF KABUL ALUMNUS: In that desolate land right there that a lot people see as just stones and rock and rubble, to us it is our playground.
And watching what has been happening to that playground has been painful.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I always felt that it was my home land bombing my homeland.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Quite a unique experience to have in common. Nobody else can relate to it really...
(CROSSTALK)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yeah, nobody else can relate to it.
BURKHARDT: But in so many other ways, these Scorpions were just like other kids at the time.
(on camera): Cutting classes?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Making out in the senior lounge. BURKHARDT (voice-over): They still get together periodically for national reunions, far bigger than this one. They were Scorpions then, all those years ago. Scorpions forever.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Ready? Say Scorpions.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Scorpions!
BURKHARDT: Bruce Burkhardt, CNN, Atlanta.
ZAHN: Who knew. What a great idea for a piece.
JACK CAFFERTY, CNN ANCHOR: Tremendous piece. Yeah, it's great.
ZAHN: Can't believe how many of those students he could pull together in Atlanta.
CAFFERTY: I had no idea that Americans went to school over there. I mean, this whole thing has been an education, at least for me, about that part of the world. I didn't know very much about it at all.
ZAHN: For all of us.
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