Answering Afghanistan's call

The gunshots rang out decades ago and far away from his new home in Waltham, but Najim Azadzoi still remembers them vividly.

The year was 1978. Azadzoi had gone to bed the night before anticipating another day of teaching architecture at the University of Kabul.

''My first memory is suddenly you wake up and hear gunshots in the streets," he recalled, adding that he then turned on the radio, but heard nothing but static. All the stations were off the air.

''People were in the streets wondering what had happened the night before," he said. ''Then we saw tanks rolling and soldiers marching."

By the time Azadzoi walked to the university, the radio was back on, announcing that the communists had killed the president and his family, and had taken over the country.

From that day on, he said, Afghanistan became a place of war, where the sounds of violence, torture, and executions became part of the background.

By 1981, the then 26-year-old professor felt he had to get out. Students weren't coming to class; teachers lost interest in their courses.

''I would secretly write letters to friends I had in the United States," Azadzoi said. ''I'd also sent an application to MIT in hopes of someday entering their graduate program."

Within weeks, Azadzoi left behind everything -- including his fiancée -- and set out for Pakistan walking 8 to 10 hours a day, for more than a week.

When he arrived he sought out other professionals like himself instead of entering a refugee camp and soon met up with a group of engineers; four of them turned out to be friends who had left before him.

After working some weeks for UNICEF to improve sanitation at the refugee camps, Azadzoi ran into one of his former students who invited him to join his architectural firm. He took the job and sent for his fiancée, Najla. It had been only two months since he left Kabul, and the best news was yet to come.

A letter arrived for Azadzoi at the University of Kabul. Through friends, family, and a hired driver, it made its way to Pakistan; not only was Azadzoi accepted to MIT, he was awarded a $4,500 scholarship. The only problem: He had 24 hours left to respond.

''It was nighttime and pitch black when I drove my motor scooter to the telephone at the post office to call MIT," said Azadzoi. ''It was 8:30 in the morning [in Boston] -- the day of the deadline."

The following fall, Azadzoi and his new wife were in Massachusetts.

Now 50, Azadzoi runs Azad Architects in Newton and is helping rebuild Boston's suburbs as well as Afghanistan.

''Almost half my jobs are public projects," said Azadzoi, whose clients include the federal government.

Since 2002 he has returned to Afghanistan six times with the Army Corps of Engineers. His current projects include a volunteer effort, designing a library in Afghanistan in partnership with Rajia Jan, president of the Duxbury Rotary Club. Jan said the government has given them the land, and she's confident she can raise the money for the building. Her Duxbury club brought in nearly $50,000 at a fund-raiser in September.

Azadzoi said in the future he'd like to be involved with an independent project like building a small school ''where 2-3 dozen children can learn, have teachers and books. I'd also like to return to Afghanistan and teach for a few semesters."

Azadzoi and Najla will celebrate their 25th wedding anniversary in 2006. They have a son, Yousuf, an architecture student at Northeastern University, and two daughters, Yasamin, in high school, and Semira, in middle school.

For information on the library project in Afghanistan, contact Rajia Jan, President of the Duxbury Rotary Club via www.duxburyrotary.com. Najim Azadzoi can be reached at azadarch@aol.com

HAM OPERATORS -- K1XM and KQ1F have been married for nearly 24 years.

The Hudson couple -- also known as Paul Young and Charlotte Richardson, are ham radio enthusiasts whose callsigns accompany them around the world. Tanzania, Thailand, and the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea are among the spots they've ventured for radio contests, scuba diving, and underwater photography.

Both computer programmers, they met in 1979 while working on a project at Digital Equipment Corp. Young, who is just shy of 50, is now employed by Hewlett Packard in New Hampshire and Richardson, 52, works at Stratus Technologies in Maynard.

Young was first introduced to ham, or amateur radio, through his middle school science teacher and loved it to the point distraction.

''I didn't attend classes as much as I should have," he admitted. ''It was more fun spending time building things and doing radio stuff. He was eventually asked to leave the private school.

Now grown up and responsible, Young still enjoys building radios and frequently tweaks his store-bought hams to better respond to his needs.

''Being ambidextrous, he can solder with either hand, hammer with either hand, and use chopsticks with both hands. He's quite entertaining to watch," his wife said.

The couple compete in DX (distance) contests that include making the most contacts with the farthest and most varied spots on various frequencies. Those who set up camp in exotic locales tend to have the advantage. They're more likely to be sought out by other contestants -- it doesn't matter who makes the contact to score.

''We won a contest three years ago when we were in the country of Sao Tome and Principe, the smallest country in Africa off the coast of equatorial Guinea," said Richardson, who confessed that Massachusetts travel agents have stopped returning their calls. ''They told us that we had too many unusual requirements."

The couple plan their trips carefully, making sure to line up all the necessary radio licenses and other permits ahead of time. Young said several friends of his have been shot at when their boats got too close to a Vietnamese military base. ''We went and got air conditioning," he said.

Before the process was computerized, contestants verified contacts by sending self-addressed stamped envelopes to the person they radioed, receiving back postcards as proof. Richardson said that after the couple spent four weeks radioing out of Malaysia, they returned home to Hudson to find four big post office bins filled with self-addressed envelopes.

The couple spent Thanksgiving in Bermuda for CQ World Wide CW contest -- that stands for continuous wave/Morse code.

''For the last 20 years or so, we've gone to a variety of places for this contest," said Richardson.

Young not only has mastered Morse Code, but its shorthand lingo -- the Instant Messenger equivalent of acronyms like LOL.

Young said that ham radio has become less popular among young people, probably because of e-mail, cellphones, and instant messages. He's also noticed a lot of hands-on technical things; for example, building equipment seems to be less popular.

So what keeps Young and Richardson at it?

''That would be like asking a runner why he likes to run," Young said. ''The answer is 'because.' " In a contest last month, Young connected with 317 stations in an hour. ''I contacted 10 stations in one minute. This is running very fast."

The Eastern Massachusetts American Radio Relay League is at ema.arrl.org and the American Radio Relay League-New England Division at www.barc.org/nediv/.

TIDBITS -- Moira Munns of Natick has been appointed to oversee the senior center as the new director of the Natick Council on Aging. Kenneth F. Garni of Wellesley, director of the Suffolk University Counseling Center, has received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Association for University and College Counseling Center Directors. Artist and retired teacher Gail Rosenthal of Needham has donated more than 100 books, photography dark room equipment, museum slides, and tools from her sculpture studio to The Greenhouse School in Salem." I wanted to give [the items] to a deserving multicultural institution with underprivileged children," said Rosenthal.

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