Eisa Khan AYOOB Ayoobi

Is it to be a positive impact on your surroundings or environment? Is it to be a help out there for people who need you? Is it to help your family in overcoming challenges? There are many more questions to ask when we embark on a self-discovery journey. Answers may vary from one person to another given the person's circumstances. However, for me at this very moment, it  is mainly to be effective to your surroundings, particularly to your family in overcoming their challenges. It could be easier to overcome family challenges if family members have positive and happy attitudes. Positive and happy attitude encourage one to address challenges effectively. Unfortunately, families are formed without any pre-family planning in Afghanistan. The majority of them, including mine, do not have basic family infrastructures such as housing, a sustainable source of income, and access to educational opportunities.  Lack of such foundational family needs has negative impacts on family mem...

Is it to live in an environment that challenges lead your way to an uncertain future? Is it to be squeezed with harsh realities and obstacles to come to believe some moments of avoidance are opportunities? Is life what goes through your head, particularly thoughts and beliefs that you develop based on realities on the ground? Is it to struggle with the challenges that your parents have cultivated for you unintentionally?  In Afghanistan, life seems to mean struggling with the waves of challenges those have come from your ancestors and will go on to your children. It is almost impossible to give a different meaning to life in this country. It is extremely exhausting to swim against these waves of challenges to avoid the uncertain future.  What could you do if it happens that you are born in Afghanistan? You may have lost your chance to swim off the waves. Should you avoid your children from falling into the waves of challenges? You must be a wise and strong human being to ...

My brother, Meer Ata Khan lost his life while he was battling for freedom along with his people in the early 1980s. He was 22 years old when he was killed. He is on the right sitting upfront in this picture. He was killed when I was two years old. Behind my brother on the right is Ghulam Ali. He was my brother's very close friend. He was also killed in the same month. May God bless them both. I don't remember anything about my brother, as I was very young when he was taken from us. People say he was a very brave soul with a simple heart full of love and honesty.

The people in my country are always running They cannot sit; they are rushing and suffering They cannot LIVE—because they are trying to survive In Arabic “The Life of the world is like the rain/That waters the crops of the earth” (10:24) I was not even a year old, when my family ran A migration across mountains Marked desperation mounted In raids, bombs, and blockades And once, they got caught Caved, covered by an avalanche of rock Left to die But that wasn’t what my sister wanted My sister dug us out The people in my country do not have time to think They no longer hear the voice of rivers Or the smell of flowers in spring Because Afghanistan, they say, is the most dangerous place in the world I felt this violence when a bullet tore through me, on the front line fighting The Taliban I felt it as I watched the rain fall that night I watched it stream over Daud’s scarf; Daud, he was next to me I saw it in the tears of the man who rescued me But it hurt me most ...

I have lost two of my brothers during different wars in Afghanistan. Meer Ata Khan was my oldest brother who was a senior high school student when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. He did not attend his graduation ceremony. Instead, joined Ahmad Shah Massoud, the leader of the freedom fighters of Afghanistan fighting the Soviet occupiers. He had served for a few years with a group of freedom warriors called Group-e-Mutahrek. Its English translation would be the commandoes. He got killed in a battle at the top of one of the tallest mountains in the Valley of Panjshir in an early morning. Meer Ata Khan Abdullah Ayoobi was my other brother years older than me. He had an MA in Arabic Literature and Religious Studies. Upon his return back to Afghanistan in the early 1990s,  he started a volunteer job with one of the social organizations, "The Union of Afghanistan Journalists" as the Director of Foreign Relations. When the Taliban took over Kabul in the mid-90s, he ha...

This picture was taken in Washington D.C. in December of 2005.

History of Stanford Law School Stanford began offering a curriculum in legal studies in 1893, when the university engaged its first two law professors. One was Benjamin Harrison, former President of the United States, who delivered a landmark series of lectures on the Constitution. The other was Nathan Abbott, who served as head of the nascent law program. Abbott assembled a small faculty to which he imparted a standard of rigor and excellence that endures to this day. In his honor, the student with the highest academic standing in each year’s graduating class is designated the Nathan Abbott Scholar... Please visit here for more detail: http://www.law.stanford.edu/school/history/

This is an issue which has shocked me since I have been here. I see homeless people in each city that I have visited. They don’t have homes to live in. They always walk outside. I am thinking how they can fulfill the daily needs as we do. Things like taking shower, eating, drinking and etc. to see such homeless people wandering in the streets is really strange for the people who come from third world countries with a very different perspective about the US and its citizens. People believe that America is the land of dreams and all the people living here are in a utopia. They are rich and have loads of money to live luxuriously, but the reality is so different. I have been visiting San Francisco City and have found lots of homeless people begging for money in the streets and on the roads. This made me wonder what drove these people to this miserable condition. Isn’t America supposed to be great welfare States that promises to take care of its citizens and provides them the basic facilit...

Hoover Tower & the Herbert Hoover Memorial Exhibit Pavilion Hoover Tower, visible throughout the surrounding area, serves as a landmark of Stanford to faculty, students, alumni and the local community. Completed in 1941 to celebrate the university's 50th anniversary, the 285-foot structure offers superb views of Stanford and the Bay Area from its observation deck. Atop Hoover Tower is a carillon of 48 bells cast in Belgium. The largest bell is inscribed, "For Peace Alone Do I Ring." For more detail please visit: http://www.stanford.edu/dept/news/neighbors/visiting/hoover.html

It was a great time which I had with my friends, Sultani Saheb and other Fulbright Scholars. I thank Sultani Saheb for taking us there. We had fun at that wonderful and great day. Sultani Saheb drove us to one of the nicest and most beautiful mountains covered by trees like a forest. It has great views, in one side surrounded by a big and hushed ocean. Other sides of this mountain are connected with other mountains. This is a Historic Place since Japanese had tried to take over San Francisco from this direction at the time they had occupied Hawaii. If you go to there you can still find some military posts which were used during the war. I took this picture at the top of a Military Post on the mountain. We had a pleasurable time all together that day.