The ‘ego monsters’

A large diaspora of exiled Afghans had already settled in Peshawar, many of them waiting for papers to arrive from various foreign embassies who would grant them rights to resettle elsewhere. Also living in exile in Pakistan at the time was Bahaouddin Majrooh, carrying out his work at the Afghan Information Centre (AIC). In addition to his journalistic credentials, Majrooh had obtained his doctorate in France and had published large bodies of work, including poetry, in French, Pashtu and Farsi. His seminal work was an epic prose poem, ‘Ajhdeha-i Khudi’ or ‘The Ego Monster’, written in 1984 and still admired by many in Afghanistan and France for its layered and philosophical dimensions.