by Dayna Curry
Our arrival in Kabul coincided with a Taliban-imposed deadline for all foreign aid workers to relocate their offices and residences to the city’s bombed-out polytechnic institute, a compound with no electricity or running water. The foreigners in town had decided to wait out the ultimatum. No one ever knew whether the Taliban would follow through on its decrees. Even when the Taliban did follow through, there was usually room for negotiation through relationship channels. But not on this occasion.
On our first full day in the city, the actual day of the Taliban deadline, my friends and I were taken on a tour of various medical facilities. Partway through the tour, our guide went inside to notify the staff of our visit, and when he came back out, we knew something was wrong. He told us that only minutes earlier the Taliban had entered the clinic, which was run by an aid organization, and kidnapped one of the clinic’s Afghan employees. We were instructed to go back to a friend’s house and stay there until we received further direction.
Over the next twelve hours the Taliban became increasingly unpredictable, and our expatriate hosts worked frantically to send us back to Pakistan, along with all other nonessential relief workers. By the next day my teammates and I were back on the Kabul road headed toward Peshawar. I learned we made it across the border just before Taliban border guards began confiscating the property of foreigners fleeing the country.
No one was sure what the Taliban’s crackdown would mean for the future of the aid community, and relief workers were left to sort through significant questions. What would become of their projects, their families, and the people they came to serve? Oddly, nothing about the ordeal scared me. Somehow in all of the chaos I had become deeply attached to Afghanistan.
After our evacuation, our team remained in Pakistan for two weeks touring the Afghan refugee camps in Peshawar. One afternoon we visited a medical clinic. My heart broke over the conditions. The facilities were without air-conditioning and equipped with only a few fans to fight the 115-degree heat. The clinic floors were stained with blood, and the linens were filthy. I wondered what became of most of the patients treated in this clinic. The medical staff did the best they could, but their resources were so limited.
When I walked down the hospital corridor toward the children’s unit, I could smell sickness and death. Most of the children suffered from severe malnutrition. One young girl immediately caught my attention. Every bone in her emaciated body protruded against her skin. Her cheek and temple bones jutted out so dramatically, she literally looked like a skeleton. Iodine used to clean mouth sores caused by a vitamin deficiency had dyed her lips purple. Her right hand was wrapped in gauze to keep a temporary IV in place. She lay on a blanket stained by her own chronic dysentery.
I did not know how to respond. I watched as the little girl’s mother attempted to cool her by waving a straw fan. How could this have happened? I wondered. How could this child’s illness have been allowed to get this bad? Before I left the room, I placed my hand on the girl and prayed for her healing. I had read often in the Bible about the miracles of healing Jesus performed. I knew this girl needed one or she would die. As I left the room to carry on with the clinic tour, I burst into tears. Nothing else in life made sense at that point except living and working among the Afghan people.
When the time came to fly home, I sat on the plane weeping and asked God if he would let me return to the people I had grown to love. I sensed in my heart that my work in Afghanistan had only begun. I would return someday—perhaps someday very soon.
By the following summer, the Taliban had allowed the aid community to return to the country, and I went back to Afghanistan to stay with a married couple from our church. The trip was less exciting than the previous one, but no less satisfying. I confronted the mundane aspects of life: the practical needs of the Afghans, the high altitude, and the slow pace of daily activity. When I left, I was more resolved than ever to come back and serve the Afghan people.
In August 1999, I graduated from Baylor and enrolled in a ministry training school, my final stage of preparation before moving to Afghanistan long-term. I made a three-year commitment and planned for a start date of March 2001. The training school, which emphasized character development and biblical principles, met for ten months and ended with an overseas trip, which I spent in Turkey. It was now the summer of 2000. I returned to Waco intending to begin raising financial support for Afghanistan. But four days after my arrival, my middle sister, Hannah, died of an accidental prescription-drug overdose.
Our family was devastated by Hannah’s death. My parents lost a baby girl years ago, and the death of another child seemed too much to bear. My heart was broken. For years I dreamed that Hannah, who suffered chronically from physical and emotional pain, would make it out of her dark world with an incredible story to encourage other suffering people. But it was not to be, and I did not understand. How could her young life have come to such an abrupt end? She had so much potential, so much life still to live.
At times the sense of loss pressed on my heart almost like a physical weight. But Jesus was my comfort. During times of prayer, I sensed intuitively God reaffirming his love and kindness toward my family and me. In the end, I believed that somehow good would come out of my sister’s tragic death and that our family would grow stronger as a result. The grieving was not easy, but I came out more certain than ever that God was faithful. I could still trust him.
Never during that time did my heart’s desire to go to Afghanistan wane. I knew I still had to go. I longed to go. My mother, however, vehemently disagreed. She had never been totally on board with the idea of my going to Afghanistan for a three-year stint, but Hannah’s death understandably roused her to fight my decision with renewed zeal.
The vigor of my mother’s opposition hit an even higher level two months before I was scheduled to leave. In January 2001, Mullah Mohammad Omar, supreme ruler of the Taliban, issued a decree imposing the death penalty on any Afghan Muslim who changed his or her religion. Some reports suggested that the death penalty could be meted out to foreigners who shared their faith with Afghans. In my mother’s mind, the decree confirmed her worst fear—that Afghanistan would prove a death trap both for Afghans with whom I might share about Jesus and, potentially, for me.
“Heather,” she confessed, “I am afraid you will get on that plane in March and I will never see you again.”
She proceeded to write to government officials and religious leaders, hoping to find a means of stopping me from going. I understood. She had just lost one daughter and was going to do everything in her power to keep from losing another, even if that meant lying down in front of my airplane. Eventually, though, she learned there was nothing she could do. She came to the airport to see me off in the end. My father by now had relented, too—I was an adult, he said. The parting was peaceful, but I knew I was breaking their hearts.
I already had counted the cost of living in Afghanistan. I already had reconciled myself to a life of uncertainty when it came to my own safety. Obviously, I did not wish to put any Afghan in harm’s way; and in the months to come, I would grapple with that issue a good deal. Yet while I willingly cut my ties in America to embark on a potentially dangerous years-long odyssey, my parents were forced to deal with the consequences of my decision. They paid the price, but they were not allowed the luxury of counting the cost. They could only watch me go.
two
BEHIND THE VEIL
Dayna: The streets of Kabul are chaotic and diverse, a world unto themselves. The main downtown roads, though paved, are pocked with potholes. Drivers weave from side to side, dodging both the holes and an onslaught of pedestrians and bicycles. Men pull two-wheeled carts piled high with sacks of flour, and merchants push four-wheeled carts of produce and other wares. Shepherds maneuver sheep and goats through the crowds; on rare occasions cows, horses, and even camels contribute to the press. The streets resound with shouting and the sound of engines, and the air is filled with the scent of exhaust and animals.
In Taliban days, black Toyota 4-X-4s owned by the government would speed and skid through the crush of traffic as if to assert authority.
When I first moved to Kabul in August 1999, what struck me most about this lively scene were the activities and wanderings of countless blue ghosts—women covered in burqas, shiny garments that fit over the head and cover the body with mesh screens for the eyes. Watching the Afghan women go about their business, I longed to touch their lives in some way—to help them, but also just to know them in friendship. Out in the open, their lives seemed hidden and remote.
Under the Taliban, burqas were required garb for women. Some women would take risks on occasion and flip back their burqas when walking on out-of-the-way neighborhood streets. Young girls, some elderly women, and Kuchi women—whom the Taliban tended to leave alone—wore big chawdurs, or head scarves, covering their hair, arms, and backsides. We foreign women wore chawdurs, too. But for the most part, you rarely encountered a female face on the streets of Kabul. Most Afghan women still wear burqas—some for cultural or religious reasons, others out of fear ex-Taliban will attack them on the streets.
Once you become accustomed to seeing veiled women about town, the mystery of the sight fades, and you begin to notice the difficult and mundane aspects of Afghan women’s daily existence. Every day women come down from their mud houses in the hills surrounding the city and wash clothes in putrid water on the side of the Kabul River, which runs through town. The women make several trips up and down the hills to fill jugs of water for household use at wells and water pumps. Many women wake early to knead bread dough and carry it to the bakeries in time to have bread for that day’s eating.
Even the simple things are hard. For covered women, traversing the streets of Kabul is a hazardous undertaking. Women in burqas have difficulty seeing the ground, and many trip on the uneven streets. Burqas also limit women’s peripheral vision, and at times careless drivers sideswipe women pedestrians.
Often you will see women teetering precariously on the backs of bicycles, perhaps holding children in their arms. Women ride sideways with their legs dangling to one side while their husbands or male relatives pedal. Women can be seen both queuing up on the street for taxis and riding in taxis. Under the Taliban, women could ride on buses, but they had to sit in curtained-off areas in back. The back windows also were curtained, and the women depended on the drivers to call out the stops.
Burqa-clad women daily crowd the Kabul bazaars. Occasionally you might encounter Kuchi women with their faces uncovered selling glass and plastic bracelets along the roadsides in the bazaar areas. Otherwise, men work all of the shops and stands. You can hear women haggling in loud voices with salesmen at stalls for fabric or meat or household goods. The women shout to be noticed. You can easily ignore them, because you cannot see their faces.
When I lived in Kabul, women usually walked through the bazaars in small groups accompanied by children. It was unlawful under the Taliban for women to venture out unescorted by at least one close male relative, but many women broke the rule. Rarely would you see a woman all alone without even her children. Such women were usually beggars, and their solitary state made them subject to beatings by Taliban police.
When women acquaintances approached me on the streets, I would try to recognize them by their voices. It was strange not to be able to see their faces. I would notice other women talking together in the bazaar and wonder how they recognized one another under their burqas. To some extent you can identify a woman’s burqa once you get to know her, but doing so in a crowd of covered women is a feat.
It is less difficult to distinguish the poor women from the rich—or from the women who at one time had wealth. Women of means wear shiny, bright blue burqas. Some wear very high heels and stockings, even fishnet stockings. Afghan women like to dress up and will wear high heels through the winter. Since burqas are shorter in front than in back, you can catch glimpses of women’s garments just below the knee. Wealthier women wear high-quality dresses and tombans—pants that go underneath their dresses. Wide-legged tombans are the rage, and you may see luxurious lace sewn onto the pant and dress hemlines. Occasionally, sequins or sparkly velour fabric may flash underneath a woman’s burqa.
Poor women wear tattered tombans and dresses underneath their burqas, which usually are stained, patched, and faded. The women wear plastic slipperlike sandals called chaplacks; often the sandals are torn and barely wearable. Some poor women wear black rubber Holland-style shoes in winter. Many women cannot afford socks.
After years of war, an extraordinary percentage of Afghan women are widowed, and they must do what they can to earn money for their children. Many women sit in the bazaar areas all day with their children, begging for assistance. Walking in the bazaar with a foreign male friend one day, I noticed a whole row of Afghan ladies begging. I went inside the corner bakery, bought more than a dozen pieces of fresh, hot bread, and began to hand the bread out to the women. An Afghan man approached my friend and me and rebuked us: “If you are going to give, then you should give to all of them.” I told him I was sorry. I thought helping a few of the women would be better than helping none, but he did not agree.
Many times in the bazaar, or on Chicken Street—a famous street frequented by foreigners and lined with souvenir and antique carpet shops—women holding babies would approach me and ask for money to feed their children. I worked at a woman-and-child health clinic my first year and a half in Kabul and would encourage these women to breast-feed. Often I would tell the women about the health clinic, which would be able to offer them medical assistance.
In the summer, women would come to the health clinic and take off their burqas, nearly hyperventilating from the heat. Being underneath a burqa during the Kabul summer can be like standing in a furnace, and the women’s faces would drip with sweat. Some of the women who came to the clinic were displaced people from the northern Shamali Valley—where the Taliban, at war with the Northern Alliance, had burned villages. These women were living in the bombed-out Russian embassy building and had little or no access to water. Their hands were nearly black with dirt. I did not know how they kept going.
Throughout Kabul, you will see women sitting along the sides of the main roads waiting for passersby to give them money. Other women loiter near the homes of foreigners, aggressively begging for handouts, sometimes following foreigners on errands through the bazaar.
I talked most often with Afghan women at my home. Women would come to the gate at lunchtime to ask for assistance. We would stand together at the gate or we would have tea inside. The women would flip back their burqas and tell me heartbreaking stories about the loss of loved ones, debts taken on to feed numerous children, chronic illness, hunger, abuse by husbands, and mistreatment by the Taliban. I would see utter desperation in the women’s eyes. They tried to keep their heads up, but the pain would always emerge if our conversations went deep enough. I think I was able to help a little just by listening. I loved the Afghan women and wished with all of my heart for them to know better days.
I desired to extend friendship to veiled women long before I ever went to Afghanistan—perhaps because I had known isolation myself. There were years in my own life when I badly needed someone to break through and reach me. As a teenager growing up in Nashville, Tennessee, I had few goals outside of partying and meeting boys. I made good grades, but only because I knew I would be in trouble otherwise—my parents both worked in academia. I tried shoplifting on a few occasions. I experimented with drugs. I drank a lot. I got physically involved with a boyfriend. There was a kind of dark haze over my life that I recognized was hurting me, yet I couldn’t seem to get free of it.
My early years were not as bleak. In fact, for most of my childhood my parents considered me an angel. They sent me to a small Christian elementary school, where I was ambitious to do well. I made top grades, and I was the valedictorian of my sixth-grade class. I participated in Girl Scouts, basketball, and cheerleading. I acted in several sc
hool plays and a musical, and I told my parents I wanted to be a singer when I grew up. During the summers I played on a softball team and was on a swim team.
I attended summer church camp and especially enjoyed singing songs to God during campfire worship services. One song I liked had the lyric “Father, I adore you, I lay my life before you.” I remember praying to God on an almost nightly basis as a child and asking Jesus to come into my heart.
At the same time, though, harmful influences filtered into my life. Some of the kids I knew would play games that included moderate molestation. I began kissing boys early. One kid’s parents kept pornography around the house. I began to develop a rather perverted mind, and I watched R-rated movies at friends’ houses.
After sixth grade, my parents enrolled me in another private school; and, to my shock, they divorced. My mother moved into another house, and at first I frequently shuttled back and forth between my parents’ homes. I felt terribly insecure, and my ambition flagged. After I failed to make the basketball team in eighth grade, I forsook all extracurricular activities. For some reason, I gave up trying to please my parents. Instead I spent a lot of time at the shopping mall and the roller-skating rink, and I looked for acceptance from boys.
I switched schools again in ninth grade, this time to a public school where I didn’t know anyone except a stepcousin. My only desire at that point was to make some friends and find a boyfriend. I began to drink freshman year, and I went to parties. I did make friends. Some were into shoplifting, so I tried it a few times; but I was too scared, and felt too guilty, to keep it up. I started working at a restaurant and soon was able to pay for the things I wanted.