After eight years in Arkansas, Khalid Ahmadzai moved back to his hometown of Kabul, Afghanistan, on May 21.
Ten days later, on Wednesday morning, he was outside his office waiting for a driver to take him to a meeting when a suicide attacker's truck bomb exploded a mile away, killing 90 people and injuring 400 more.
The air quickly filled with residue from the blast and dust from the old houses in the Murad Khani section of Kabul.
"Until 8:20 this morning, Kabul was dealing with her usual chaotic hustle and bustle of traffic and the normal accepted crazy-ness of life here," Ahmadzai wrote on his Facebook page. "Then came the moment of a gruesome explosion. The shockwave, sound and fear was certainly the most powerful one I have seen or heard in Kabul."
People were running in different directions.
"Street vendors, mostly children selling fresh vegetables by Kabul River, were lying flat on their bellies with their index fingers on their ears and in fear of the second blast," he wrote on Facebook.
"Kabul doesn't deserve this," he wrote. "Nowhere in this planet deserves this."
Ahmadzai, 36, said in an email that all the windows were shattered at his residence, which is a quarter-mile from the blast site.
The explosion was so loud that some of Ahmadzai's family heard it 5 miles away, and there are a couple of mountains between them and the blast site.
Less than half an hour after the explosion, Ahmadzai saw a mason repairing damage to an ancient wall.
"The resilience of people will not let a lunatic stop them from going [on] to live life every day," Ahmadzai wrote in an email.
Ahmadzai was born and raised in Kabul, but he spent the past eight years in four Arkansas cities: Batesville, Cabot, Fayetteville and Little Rock. He married a woman from Batesville, and they have two children.
In 2014, Ahmadzai obtained a bachelor's degree in international relations and Middle East studies from the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville. Last month, he received a master's degree in public service from the Clinton School of Public Service in Little Rock.
"He compiled an outstanding record here at the Clinton School both in and out of the classroom," said Skip Rutherford, dean of the school. "I can't say enough good things about him ... and their family. I'm just thankful and relieved they are OK."
After graduating from the Clinton School, Ahmadzai took a job with Turquoise Mountain, a nonprofit that does work in Afghanistan, Burma (also known as Myanmar) and the Middle East.
According to its website, turquoisemountain.org, the organization is "regenerating the old city of Kabul and spurring the sustainable development of the Afghan crafts industry."
In 2015, Turquoise Mountain started working to find international markets for carpets made in Afghanistan. Ahmadzai is the project manager for the carpet program.
A Section on 06/01/2017
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