We know that the word describes something which is commonplace, standard, or ‘just the usual’.

During my first day in Afghanistan, a Taliban soldier casually entered a local restaurant with an assault rifle slung over his shoulder. He sat at a table to eat his lunch and sip his mountain dew, and nobody even looked twice. The normality of what I had just seen was hard to comprehend, but I guessed it must just be commonplace here. 

It was the first time of many where I was left confused and unable to rationalise or make sense of an experience in Afghanistan. Very quickly it became clear to me that in this country, nothing was simply black or white. 

For three weeks I was stuck in a strange grey liminal space as I struggled with what the word ‘ordinary’ even meant. In a country where an entire generation of children have grown up playing on the rusted remains of Soviet tanks, ‘ordinary’ hardly feels like the right word to use. Yet true to the definition of the word, what I was seeing was just the usual. Right? 

Here's what ordinary looked like:

War remnants as décor—bombs displayed like garden gnomes, weapons carried casually in streets. Men with prosthetic legs struggling on crutches, unexploded ordnance still killing 3-4 children daily. And in the same spaces: being invited for tea by someone you'd just met. Someone insisting on buying your meal. People talking with strangers like old friends.

Street hawkers selling 5 kilos of tomatoes for a dollar, and hungry people watching on. Strangers asking "what can I do for you?" with genuine intent. Children with wind chapped faces doing hard manual labour. Soldiers punishing men for not growing their beards long enough.

Hundreds of deportees forced to return at borders, herded through metal gates and beaten with sticks. Roads destroyed by bombs, invisible women hidden under blue burkas begging in traffic—I didn't see a woman's face for days. Music banned, Taliban flags everywhere.

But still, a common warmth and generosity that transcended any language barriers.

On my third day in Afghanistan, my good friend Nawed and I visited this old abandoned palace that had been used by the Soviets during the war, and was now a Taliban outpost. Upstairs, a few men lay around a big open room all drinking green tea. AK47’s were scattered around the floor amongst pillows, blankets and teacups, and the biggest gun I had ever seen sat mounted on a tripod over in the corner. One of the men was young, about 20, with long black hair and sharp hazel eyes. Bored from two years of manning the quiet outpost, he seemed eager to chat with us about anything and everything. 

I shared moments of eye contact with him, as he spoke admirably about fighting for the freedom of his country and people during the US invasion. He was passionate about ‘the liberation of Afghanistan from the oppressors,’ and I could recognise real honour and sincerity in his heavy gaze. He happily showed me a video clip on his phone, where his cousin was sheltering behind the wall of a mud brick house holding an RPG. The man then stepped away from the wall into space, aimed, and fired the missile at an American tank. The tinny speakers blared “Allahu Akbar! Allahu Akbar!” and for a moment all I could manage was to gulp and look out the window. 

He later invited us back to his home, to meet his family and share dinner. 

But that same young Taliban fighter also upholds an oppressive and tyrannical system—one where women aren’t allowed to be educated or employed, where people risk being jailed, tortured or executed for dissent, where ethnic minorities are forcibly displaced. 

Here was somebody who was both honourable and complicit. I was grateful to be invited for dinner, but could I still be grateful if the invitation was given by an Islamic extremist?

I was often stunned by the beauty of the country. I had to pinch myself when I looked out of the car window as we passed by the ruins of fallen empires. Watching the evening light fall softly on the jagged Hindu Kush mountains, I realised that in this crossroads of the world, a raw freedom existed in its vast and open spaces - but that feeling only lasted until reaching the next Taliban checkpoint. 

Every single day I was in Afghanistan, I was profoundly moved by the interactions I had with the Afghan people. Ordinary people seemed to share a deep sincerity unfamiliar to me, one that constantly left me humbled, despite not speaking more than 3 words of a shared language. And sometimes it was even the ones that moved me, who were also the perpetrators of this tyranny. But nearly everyone I met dreamed of leaving Afghanistan, even Taliban fighters themselves. 

Most people didn't choose to be subjugated to this system – there was no other option to choose from. The Taliban seized their power by force. But maybe many people accept it, because this new chapter of Afghanistan is better than the decades of bombings and war before it. Maybe Afghanistan’s new 'stability' isn't peace and prosperity— it’s just the absence of conflict. And maybe for people who are exhausted by forty years of war, oppression just isn’t as bad as what was commonplace before.