Who Gets to Escape the Taliban

A dispatch from the fall of Kabul. Plus: a Black Communist’s disappearance in Stalin’s Russia; and Adams vs. Sliwa in the New York mayoral debate. View in browser | Update your preferences Thursday, October 21, 2021 In today’s newsletter: Jane Ferguson on the Afghans who attempted to escape from Kabul; Eric Adams vs. Curtis Sliwa in the New York mayoral debate; and how an African American Communist disappeared in Stalin’s Russia. Photograph by Andy Spyra / Laif / Redux Since I left Kabul, my dreams have been filled with frightened, weeping faces and outstretched hands reaching toward me. I watch them and say “I’m sorry” repeatedly. Recently, I called David Lavery, a retired Canadian soldier, whom I saw pull dozens of Afghans out. “I don’t sleep well right now,” he told me from Dubai, where he’s still working to help people leave Afghanistan. “It’s becoming more vivid. . . . The outside noise, that hum, and that volume of desperation and everybody chattering. And no matter what time it was—daytime, nighttime—it was always light, and it was always that hum, and the smell of the swamp will always stick with me. You know?” Like me, Dave still wonders if he did enough. “There’s a lot of reflection, you know? There’s the anger. . . . Did you help many people? Did you leave a lot of people behind? All of that I think of. Because I saw so many people in that swamp area that did have passports and I couldn’t get everybody out.” Americans have told me that the chaos I witnessed in Kabul was inevitable. They said wars are messy and expressed a sense of fatalism. When America’s wars go badly wrong, it seems, its politicians, generals, and diplomats are rarely held accountable. What became apparent to me is that there was no American strategy for leaving Afghanistan—none that considered the future of the Afghans left behind. —Jane Ferguson, from her Kabul dispatch Read “Who Gets to Escape the Taliban.” For more on Afghanistan, read Anand Gopal on what women in rural Afghanistan see in the Taliban and David Rohde on President Biden’s Afghanistan problem. From the News Desk Our Local Correspondents A Pair of Crime Crusaders Face Off at the New York Mayoral Debate Eric Adams and Curtis Sliwa, two figures with long histories in the city, met onstage to talk about the future. By Eric Lach Cultural Comment The Identity Politics of Kyrsten Sinema The Arizona senator seems bent on proving to the world that she is not like other Democrats. By Lizzie Widdicombe Editor’s Pick Letter from Moscow A Black Communist’s Disappearance in Stalin’s Russia What happened to Lovett Fort-Whiteman, the only known African American to die in the Gulag? By Joshua Yaffa Dept. of Delight “Just when you think you’ve finally made sense of him, he sheds his skin once more.” In his weekly column, Sheldon Pearce reviews the rapper Young Thug’s new album, “Punk.” “Instead of a thrashing provocation, Young Thug presents a meditation set primarily to gentle piano and guitars.” Two Broadway plays, one a comedy of reality, the other a comedy of family, rise above their origins, Alexandra Schwartz writes.“Is This a Room” takes as its text the transcript of the F.B.I.’s visit to the home of the whistle-blower Reality Winner, in 2017. Meanwhile, “Chicken & Biscuits,” about a pastor’s funeral and the familial conflicts that ensue, is an “old-fashioned crowd-pleaser, a comedy as conventional as convention comes.” A newly released live recording of John Coltrane’s “A Love Supreme” shows the saxophonist and his band “in a time of tempestuous flux,” Richard Brody writes. “There actually isn’t all that much of Coltrane’s playing” in the recording, “but what there is of it is extraordinary.” Listen to the Pulitzer Prize-winner Forrest Gander, who joins Kevin Young on our Poetry Podcast (also on Apple and Spotify). They read and discuss “Privacy,” by Ada Limón, which begins: On the black wet branches of the linden, still clinging to umber leaves of late fall, two crows land. Fun & Games Dept. Name Drop Play Today’s Quiz The fewer clues you need, the more points you receive. By Liz Maynes-Aminzade Daily Cartoon Thursday, October 21st By Adam Douglas Thompson Daily Shouts A Taxonomy of Migraines The Puddin’ Pop, the Headbanger’s Ball, the Glitter Bomb, and more. By Erica Lies Daily Shouts Icebreakers for Elevator Rides “Tell me how attractive you think I am using only the floor buttons.” By Colin Stokes P.S. Ursula K. Le Guin was born on this day in 1929. In 2016, Julie Phillips profiled the fantasy writer, who died in 2018. Le Guin won eight Hugo and six Nebula awards, and, in 2000, the Library of Congress declared her a “living legend”—“a designation that has made its way into many introductions to her readings.” “I am getting really sick of being referred to as ‘the legendary,’ ” Le Guin joked. “I’m right here. I have gravity. A body and all that.” Today’s newsletter was written by Jessie Li. Thanks for reading. Let us know your thoughts about today’s edition. Plus, browse more newsletters and invite a friend to sign up for The Daily. 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