by Dayna Curry
Taliban officials gave Silke’s artwork mixed reviews. When the boss finally noticed the room’s altered appearance, he literally jumped back from the shock. Disapprovingly, he reminded us that in Islam—or under the Taliban’s interpretation of Islam—images of living creatures were not allowed.
“Our girls cannot pray in this room with pictures on the wall. These pictures are forbidden. We will allow them to remain only until you leave.” As he left the room, I sensed we were pushing the limits of his graciousness.
Big Eyes, however, visited our courtyard the next morning with Karim and responded to the mural with great enthusiasm. “Beekhee. Excellent!” Big Eyes exclaimed. Completely, totally excellent! He vigorously complimented Silke’s artistic skills, and we felt more at ease with our new decoration.
Since I spent a lot of time out in the courtyard, I played often with the Afghan women’s young daughters. I would swing the children around and hold them in my lap, and they would put their faces right up close to mine. Mariam’s two girls were three and six years old. Then there was Samira’s two-year-old daughter. And an Afghan woman we called the “beggar lady” had a girl, Tooba, who was maybe eight or nine. The beggar lady beat Tooba relentlessly, usually with a plastic sandal. We would try to stop the abuse as often as we could, and occasionally we succeeded.
One afternoon while beating Tooba with a plastic sandal, the beggar lady snatched her daughter by the arm and dragged her off the sidewalk into the dirt courtyard area. Tooba was getting scraped up in the process and screaming at the top of her lungs.
I happened to be sitting near the window in our room and, not wanting to waste any time by going through the doorway, jumped through the window frame onto the sidewalk below. Several of us ran to the scene and grabbed Tooba from the beggar lady. We held the little girl for a few moments while she calmed down, and we tried to examine her for scrapes and cuts. But before we could do anything to help her, Tooba jumped up and ran right back over to her mother. She had been warned to keep away because we were foreigners.
I did not find out until my head started itching that all of the little girls in the yard, particularly Tooba, suffered from severe cases of head lice. Diana and Dayna checked me one morning on the steps outside of our room and gave me the bad news.
“Yep,” Diana remarked. “You have lice.”
Immediately, I was quarantined and not permitted back in our room unless I was wearing my head scarf. To remedy the problem, we placed an order with Mariam for medicated lice shampoo from the bazaar.
The day after I shampooed my hair, my head continued to itch fiercely, so I asked one of the Afghan women, Layla, to check me again. One of the oldest women prisoners, Layla was in her mid-thirties and had been arrested for wandering around town begging. She always wore a head scarf to cover an enormous goiter on her neck and would let the head scarf hang low at the top to cover her eyes. Layla was deeply ashamed, and we never saw her take the scarf off. We never saw her wash her hair. The other women made fun of Layla and usually gave her the smallest portion of food at mealtime. Layla often sat alone singing beautiful, mournful songs.
Layla checked my head for lice after I completed the treatment, and sure enough, she found that the shampoo had done all but nothing to quell the infestation. She offered to help me and spent two hours picking lice one by one out of my hair. She used a little, red fine-toothed comb with a piece of thread interwoven through the teeth. She went through my hair root by root and got most of the eggs out.
Later, after the six of us got to see our parents and diplomats, we ended up with several boxes of more potent lice treatment from Pakistan. You could treat two people per bottle, so one day I lined up eight of the women—including Mariam and Shalah—and shampooed their hair. Many of the women’s heads were raw from scratching. One of my young friends—a preteen forced to marry a man in his thirties—suffered so severe an infestation, her hair seemed full of snowflakes. She and the others were grateful to get some relief.
Whenever we gave the Afghan women gifts or shared the treats sent in packages by our diplomats, we had to act secretively. One night I snuck a toothbrush to my young friend Nafisa.
Nafisa, nineteen years old, fled her home city of Herat in western Afghanistan two years after her family married her off to an abusive husband. She pulled a daring, if creative, stunt to make her escape, masquerading as a Talib in order to travel to Kabul. Her disguise consisted of her husband’s clothing and turban, and she painted her eyes with thick, black eyeliner. Without a beard, Nafisa was able to pass herself off as a preadolescent boy. Her muscular frame and dark body hair lent an air of authenticity to her character.
Hopping from vehicle to vehicle, Nafisa traveled hundreds of miles to make her way to Kabul. The rugged and strenuous journey, however, destroyed her health and she ended up in a local hospital. There the doctors discovered the truth about her gender. Her actions were viewed as a high crime, and she was incarcerated in Kabul’s most infamous high-security prison. For one year, until someone from a government ministry took up her case, Nafisa lived on two pieces of bread a day in a cell infested with rodents. She received no visits from family or friends. Finally, she was moved to the reform school.
More than any other prisoner, I connected with Nafisa. I respected her fight for freedom, her compassionate heart, and her determination to overcome seemingly insurmountable problems. Though we could not always talk, Nafisa and I would try to communicate in other ways. From across the courtyard, we would smile at each other. Nafisa often signaled with her hands: I love you. I signaled back. On many occasions, I wondered how I might bring Nafisa to America with me once we were set free. She had so much to offer and deserved much more than the life apportioned to her.
One pleasant evening when the stars were out and the air was cool, I decided to sleep in the courtyard underneath the tree. I put my toshak near Nafisa and some other Afghan women. The yard’s single lightbulb, which dangled from a line run between the tree and the roof of one of the compound buildings, burned out that evening, leaving our compound pitch black. I knew Nafisa did not have any possessions to speak of; she had no family in Kabul to bring her soap or shampoo. Since the light was out, I realized I had an opportunity to sneak Nafisa one of our toothbrushes. We had received several in a package from our diplomats.
I went to our room and got the toothbrush. Pretending I was going to get a drink of water from the courtyard faucet, I tiptoed past Nafisa’s toshak and threw the toothbrush to her. Then I quietly slipped into my bed. Moments later, something landed on my head. Nafisa had thrown me her beaded hair accessory as a gift of gratitude. As I dozed off, she crawled over to me and said: “Thank you so much for my toothbrush. I have never had one.”
As frequently as we could, we provided medicine to the women who were sick or injured. Khalida, probably in her mid-thirties, arrived two weeks after we did. She had married off her daughter to a Talib, who ended up abusing the young girl. Khalida attempted to help her child get away and got caught. Khalida loathed the Taliban.
In an effort to reform Khalida’s strong will, Mariam insisted she do her prayers five times a day. The Afghan women prayed in response to the call to prayer from the madrassa’s loudspeaker, and on Thursday evenings, Mariam led the women in Qur’anic memorization drills. Khalida insisted she could not bend down to pray due to arthritis in her knees. To us, however, it appeared Khalida did not particularly want to pray.
Mariam and Khalida fought constantly over the prayer issue. One evening the argument got out of hand, and Mariam reported Khalida to Taliban authorities. A Talib came to the gate to get Khalida that night. As instructed, she put on her burqa and left the courtyard with Mariam. An hour later, Khalida returned, clearly shaken. The next morning she was escorted out of the compound again; and when she returned this time, Khalida could barely walk.
Immediately, the other prisoners gathered around Khalida and draped a burlap sheet over the clothesline in the courtyard to prevent us fr
om seeing the extent of her injuries. Some of the Afghan women went back and forth to the water faucet dampening rags. Later I stole a private moment with a few of the women and learned that the Taliban had beaten Khalida with pieces of wood on her feet, wrists, and back. For weeks Khalida limped on a swollen, black-and-blue foot. To help alleviate the pain, we often snuck her Naproxen tablets by dropping them off on a barrel by the water faucet.
One night we heard a horrifying episode transpire on the other side of our courtyard wall. Except for Silke, who was sitting outside on the steps, we were in our room laughing and playing cards that evening. At some point, Nafisa walked across the courtyard and told us to be quiet. Why do we have to be quiet? I wondered. Are there men in the courtyard?
I looked outside to see what was going on. All of the Afghan women were sitting in the courtyard in silence. Some were crying. We listened. Somewhere nearby a whip was being cracked. We could hear a man groaning and then the sound of a group of men roaring with laughter. The laughter sounded unlike anything I had ever heard before. It was a deep, brutal, inhuman sound—the sound of evil. As the whip cracked steadily, I quietly began to sing a song as a prayer: “There is a light in the darkness, and his name is Jesus.” The man’s groans grew weaker. Finally he cried, “Bass, bass.” Enough. Enough. And there was silence.
Moments later an eerie, beautiful sound rose above the courtyard walls. The tormentors were forcing the beaten man to sing the woes of prison life. He sang for twenty minutes. All of us wept. The broken man’s voice was one of the most beautiful sounds I had ever heard. Somehow out of his suffering had come true sweetness. The atmosphere in our courtyard became subdued for several days.
When Mariam heard us talking among ourselves after the beating, she approached with a smile and said, “Don’t worry. The Taliban were just performing a drama for our entertainment. The man was not actually tortured.”
Her lie was so repulsive, it did not even merit a response.
Though I did not trust Mariam, I relied on her presence as a means of protection. During interrogations I insisted Mariam accompany us whenever we were escorted to the boss’s office; and after interrogations, I refused to leave the courtyard for any reason without her. The Taliban could put us in a truck and take us anywhere, and no one would ever know. If the Taliban planned to kill us, then they likely would say they were taking us to the Herat Restaurant to serve us a beautiful meal.
About two weeks after our arrest, the boss agreed to take all of us to our houses in Wazir to pick up extra clothing and toiletries. We had eight outfits among the six of us. Kati and Silke desperately needed to feed their dogs. After a good deal of pressing, the boss finally gave in. Diana and Ursula were fasting, and the boss agreed to take them along only if they would eat. They would not eat, they told him; the rest of the group would have to return to our neighborhood without them. In the end, the boss let them come with us anyway.
Taliban guards collected us from our room late at night. They always worked in the night hours. If they wanted to talk to us about something after questioning, they came to the courtyard at night. If they were delivering packages from our embassy, they came after dark. When they came to get us for the trip to Wazir, it was pitch black outside. I was nervous before we left and insisted Mariam come with us. This was the first time we had left the prison compound since our arrest.
What seemed like a whole battalion of armed Taliban acted as our escort. The men put the six of us plus Mariam into two vehicles. Ursula, Diana, and Silke were put in one; Dayna, Kati, Mariam, and I in the other. Already the trip looked like a bad idea. Why would the boss put Dayna and me—the two accused of the most serious violations—into one vehicle and most everyone else into another? I imagined the worst.
Then the men drew curtains over our windows, causing me to grow even more anxious. I could not figure out why the men needed to pull the curtains. It was totally dark outside, and we were draped in our chawdurs. I thought: They could do anything they wanted behind these curtains and no one would ever know we were in here.
Meanwhile, Kalashnikov-toting Taliban jammed the back of each truck, and several men piled into our front seat. One guard set a whip on the dashboard and turned on some religious music. Karim got in with us, which calmed me a little.
We entered Wazir, and immediately I could sense a dramatic change in the atmosphere of the neighborhood. There were no foreigners going house to house, as we used to do before curfew. I did not see any aid organization vehicles out on the streets. The neighborhood was dead quiet.
Kati and Silke’s house was our first stop. Ten to fifteen Taliban took Kati and Silke inside their home while we waited in the truck with several armed guards. Fifteen minutes later, two more vans of armed men pulled up in front of the house. All of the men got out and went inside.
Why did it take all of those men to guard Kati and Silke as they simply packed a suitcase? Another fifteen minutes passed. I became very agitated. What were all of those men doing? Did they tie our friends up? Were they raping or killing them? I was so nervous I began to shake.
“Mariam,” I asked. “What is wrong? Why aren’t they coming out?”
“Do not be afraid,” Mariam soothed. “These are Taliban. They are good men.”
She then spoke to a guard standing outside the truck. He sneered at me, and a devious smile played across his lips. He pulled back the trigger on his gun, cocked his bayonet, and started cackling. His ploy worked—I was terrified. I believed these men would have no qualms about hurting us. My fear continued to escalate. Where were our friends? Wouldn’t they have come just to tell us they were on their way and not to worry?
By now nearly forty-five minutes had passed. “Under no circumstances will I go inside our house if those girls do not come back,” I told Dayna.
Finally, we heard the dogs barking, and Kati and Silke came out with a suitcase. Apparently, the ordeal took so long because the Taliban could not find the keys to the women’s bedrooms. Taliban were living in the house by that time.
“Get a grip,” I told myself. “They did not kill Kati and Silke, so maybe they really are just taking us to our homes.”
We went next to our house. About fifteen armed men went inside with Dayna and me. We noticed that a Talib was living in the chowkidar’s room. Dayna had our keys, so we went right in. Mariam came, too. So did Karim and Noorahmed, our second translator, who soon afterward was dismissed.
The boss and his men were insisting we would not need much. “It should only be two or three more days, Enshallah,” God willing, they kept saying. I did not believe them, but I did not think I would need months’ worth of supplies at that point, either.
We stopped first at Dayna’s room. It appeared someone had broken into the house through her balcony door. She grabbed some clothing, makeup, her Bible, and some books.
The men puzzled over Dayna’s photographs, pointing to different people and asking about them. They asked about her books. Karim wanted to know whether he could borrow some of Dayna’s books one day and whether he could hear her play her guitar in the future. Noorahmed asked Dayna if she would read any books on Islam if he could get them for her.
“Sure,” she replied.
“You are good, clean girls,” Noorahmed noted. “You really should be Muslims.”
By the time we got to my room, the men were yelling, “Hurry up! We have to go. It is late.” The atmosphere was so chaotic, I ended up leaving essentials behind. I did not think to get my money, passport, or airline ticket. Other than a couple of family pictures—which later greatly helped me endure the absence of my loved ones—I left most of my photographs behind. I did not think to get an extra pair of shoes. I brought a lot of clothing for the Afghan women, but nothing I really could use the rest of our time in prison.
I did get permission to take my reference Bible. The men flipped through the pages to make sure the text was in English, then they let me take it. I also grabbed a packet of mail from my father containin
g some sensitive e-mail printouts. When I went to put the packet in my bag, a U.S. newspaper article fell out: “Taliban Single Out Non-Muslims.” It may have had to do with a Taliban decree requiring Hindus and Sikhs to wear identity badges. One of the men called Noorahmed over to translate. Noorahmed passed off the article as insignificant and threw it on the floor. Later, at the compound, I spent hours chewing up the pages of sensitive e-mail and contact information in the packet and flushing them down the squatty potty. I did not want the papers falling into Taliban hands.
Our last stop was the bathroom. Looking for items I could bring back to the Afghan women, I emptied our medicine cabinet. Dayna grabbed a large supply of toiletries along with some towels.
On our way out of the house, the Taliban instructed us to make a list of the items we removed and sign it. Dayna handed the men her set of house keys. Then the men loaded us up in the truck and we proceeded to Diana and Ursula’s house.
After Diana and Ursula had been gone for a while, we heard Diana yelling from inside the house. When Karim came back to the truck, he said, “Miss Diana is a very bad woman. She called us all liars and thieves.”
Apparently, the women refused to give the Taliban their house keys on the way out. At some point, we learned, the boss spit on one of their carpets. From then on, we adopted a new name for the boss: “Carpet Spitter.”
KABUL GORGE: The ruggedness and beauty of the Kabul gorge capture the attention of all who pass through it. Just beyond the pinnacle, the capital city spans out at an elevation of 7,000 feet.