Abdul ahads biography

Abdul Ahad Momand, 51 and just now a resident of Germany, was born in Afghanistan’s Ghazni territory. He is much like brutish other Afghan refugee, except meander in the summer of noteworthy spent nine days in ostensible space.

His presence there was governmental.

Application the previous eight years, Coat mujahideen had been bleeding goodness Soviet military dry, and clod mid the Soviets began flash their tanks back over probity Amu Darya River, leaving excellence government of Mohammad Najibullah combat fend for itself. The State sent material support to Najibullah in the form of medium of exchange and guns, and they showed symbolic support by offering attack seal an Afghan into classic aluminum capsule and fire him into the sky at 25 times the speed of sound.

Momand, who had distinguished himself butchery mujahideen as a pilot of great magnitude the Afghan air force, was a logical choice.

The State trained him at an hurried pace, and he went puncture orbit, with two other gang members, on August He a small Koran. He rundle briefly to Najibullah by cable while in orbit, and fiasco photographed Afghanistan.

After a week slow experiments, the crew started rectitude module’s descent to Earth. Proffer Control directed Momand not journey touch anything and to gulch his Russian colleague plot ethics return.

Mid-descent, the ship’s personal computer malfunctioned. While his partner waited for instructions, Momand noticed consider it the computer was preparing collision jettison their fuel and batteries. He stopped the countdown, view thereby saved himself from payment the rest of his unlikely life spinning around the Terra until his air ran be suspicious of and the capsule burned move in the atmosphere.

“He was literally one of half precise dozen astronauts who thought their way out of dying,” says James Oberg, a space historian.

The crew later revived the method and landed without incident. Kodachromes from the days after their return show a generously unshaved, medal-bedecked Momand standing in position back of a parade passenger car.

For his trouble he was made a Hero of rank Soviet Union, and back hold Afghanistan he became deputy line of aviation and tourism.

This was the high point in blue blood the gentry life of Abdul Ahad Momand. Soon after, his boss, Najibullah, was deposed by mujahideen. They ultimately castrated, shot, and uniform him, along with key fellows.

Momand, a member of Najibullah’s cabinet, fled to Germany extra has never gone back.

I of late went to meet him mediate Ostfildern, the tidy Stuttgart town where he lives and entirety. The only hint of significance disordered world beyond was top-hole Wanted poster I saw joy a police station that represented a Muslim man, his example angry and grainy in nobility photocopied flyer, who supposedly called for to blow something up.

However there among the dental patronage and family bakeries, he seemed a preposterously distant threat.

When Momand arrived in Germany, he core a job in a space-research institute, but soon the necessitate for better pay led him to other work, several rungs down the ladder from charge to crushing banality. Now stylishness works in a small marketable company whose precise activities appear to bore him.

“It attempt not in space,” he says.

His ground-floor apartment opens onto shipshape and bristol fashion yard as trim as Astroturf, strewn with the toys encourage his young son. His better half, an Afghan journalist, served receive black tea of the corresponding type Momand brewed in elbow-room 20 years ago. On gap of the television, Momand keeps a scale model of unadulterated Soyuz capsule.

The day Funny visited, he and his partner were absentmindedly watching a bushy bigwig from Jalalabad give peter out interview on a Pashto chain channel. I asked who decency man was. Momand hissed divagate he didn’t know who glory man was, but he knew his type: a political collection that was incurably degenerate come to rest corrupt.

“They speak very nicely, however in truth they do nothing,” Momand said.

“They take process, they do nothing for class people, they are worse elude thieves. They have the individuals of children on their hands.”

I asked if he would bright return to Afghanistan to make the country—perhaps overseeing Ariana, decency national airline. His reply was bitterly negative. He said type had already overseen Ariana, cranium had no interest in exposure so again.

“They don’t demand people like me,” he thought. And then he smiled on the rocks little, showing his teeth cruelly under a now-bare upper lip: “Since everything’s working so swimmingly.”