Open Skies

by Niloofar Rahmani

  Most of you have memories of that day. Perhaps you were at work or at school, maybe driving in your car, or at home watching a morning news show. You’ve likely heard all sorts of reasons and theories about why the attacks took place.

  Some of you reading this book may not remember the attacks, either because you were too young or not yet born, but you likely learned about them in school or heard stories about those world-shattering events. Perhaps the stories are more personal, or perhaps they’re distant and detached, like an evocative image that you recognize but don’t really know.

  What I’ve realized is, each person’s knowledge or memory of 9/11 varies. Therefore, here is a very brief explanation of why I think the attacks occurred, which will put into context my personal experience and that of other Afghans as victims of al-Qaeda and its alliance with the Taliban.

  * * *

  The signs of the growing threat from Islamic extremism go back at least to 1979, which was a watershed year in many respects. Most people know about the Islamic Revolution in Iran, as well as the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Both events occurred that same year.

  But there is an incident people probably don’t think about, and which I myself didn’t learn about until I was older: the Grand Mosque seizure in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. One could draw a direct line from this incident to the rise of Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda and the eventual attacks on 9/11.

  Although it’s hard to believe, prior to 1979 Saudi Arabia was also on the path to becoming a progressive, modern society like Afghanistan. Women were joining the workforce and appearing in the media, and young men were moving away from religion and closer to sports and other distractions. This was in no small part due to the influence of the West on Saudi Arabia’s oil sector. Consequently, the push for various freedoms—particularly those for women—were slamming up against traditional Saudi society.

  Men like Juhayman al-Utaybi—a deeply religious man, a former soldier, and an antimonarchist—believed these reforms were an affront to Islam and, in response, planned and executed an attack on the Grand Mosque in Mecca. The attack became a siege, with al-Utaybi demanding the overthrow of the House of Saud, the expulsion of all foreign influence, and a return to a stricter rule over society.

  The siege lasted from November 20 to December 4, 1979. It involved hundreds of hostages trapped inside the mosque, upward of five hundred Islamic militants holed up inside the compound, and over ten thousand security forces, including French commandos, poised outside locking down the area. Casualties were high on both sides. When it was all over, the Saudi government beheaded sixty-seven militants, including al-Utaybi. After the attack, rather than cracking down on Islamic extremists, the Saudi king allowed the ulema (religious leaders) to institute increasingly stricter forms of Sharia law across the kingdom.

  Osama bin Laden was in his early twenties and finishing up his degree at university when the siege occurred. He would have undoubtedly witnessed it on TV. He would also have seen the subsequent storming and burning of the US embassy in Islamabad and the attack on the US embassy in Tripoli, both of which were attributable to rumors that the siege in Mecca had been an American and Zionist plot. Within the year, bin Laden would be in Pakistan with the mujahideen, supporting the fight against the Soviets in Afghanistan.

  These events likely cemented bin Laden’s visceral hatred of foreigners and their intervention in Islamic lands. To me, it’s chilling to know that I lived and traveled in the same areas as bin Laden.

  Fast-forwarding to Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990, bin Laden was a hero of the jihad coming out of the Soviet-Afghan War, and he commanded an international network of battle-hardened Islamic fighters. He offered his forces to the Saudi king to help defend against a potential Iraqi incursion, but the king turned him down. Instead, an international coalition led by thousands of American troops came to Saudi Arabia—the land of Islam’s two holiest sites. Consequently, empowered by his newly formed international terrorist organization, al-Qaeda, bin Laden set out to strike at the heart of the United States and the West.

  On February 26, 1993, al-Qaeda operatives detonated a truck bomb in the garage of the North Tower of the World Trade Center. It killed six people and injured over a thousand but failed to bring down either tower. In Riyadh on November 13, 1995, a car bomb killed five Americans who were training the Saudi military. On August 7, 1998, al-Qaeda executed two simultaneous attacks on US embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, killing 224 people and injuring more than four thousand. And on October 12, 2000, in the Gulf of Aden, two suicide bombers drove a boat laden with explosives into the USS Cole, crippling the US Navy ship and killing seventeen sailors.

  In hindsight, the evidence of the gathering storm is unmistakable; the audacity of the 9/11 attacks and their successful execution is still hard to fathom. My family in Kabul was not aware of the combined significance of most of these events. We lacked access to the international media and had our own struggles to contend with, which were often as basic as trying to put food on the table or avoid being shot by the Taliban.

  However, there was one event that struck fear into us all.

  * * *

  On September 9, 2001, my father was listening to the radio in his small store. He’d built this shop by himself a few years back, and we’d helped him make the bricks in our backyard. This had become his place of business, and he sold produce from the local farms along with other small items. He always kept a radio there.

  The Taliban allowed people to have radios because that’s how they spread their propaganda and rallied supporters, and it was how the mullahs broadcast their edicts. My father, though not a believer in anything the Taliban preached, always had the radio on because it was the only source of outside information. On September 9, some particularly disturbing news was broadcast and quickly spread across the city. A suicide bomber had killed Ahmad Shah Massoud, the commander of the Northern Alliance and an adversary of the Taliban.

  Massoud had been a renowned fighter and commander of the mujahideen during the war against the Soviets; during the Afghanistan civil war he had fought against the rise of the Taliban. But since the 1990s, he’d held his forces in the northern provinces and prevented the Taliban from occupying more land. His murder sent shock waves through most Afghans.

  At the time, none of us knew that bin Laden and al-Qaeda were behind the assassination, but we did know that Massoud’s murder would allow the Taliban to extend their control over more territory. My father explained these things to us when he returned from the shop that night. We were all worried, but we didn’t know the worst was yet to come.

  * * *

  At three in the afternoon on September 11, my father was again in his shop. That’s when he heard about the US attacks over the radio. When he heard this announcement, he said he froze, and everyone else in the shop stopped what they were doing and stood silently and listened. The news was unbelievable.

  No one knew that bin Laden and his terrorist organization were behind the attacks, but the gravity of the situation was lost on no one. The Taliban and their supporters were ecstatic and thrilled that someone had launched such a successful attack against the American infidels and the Zionist enemy. But my father, my family, and others like us were shocked and saddened by this unspeakable tragedy. I remember asking my father if the Taliban was in America. He said he didn’t think so. I asked who could have done such a thing. He didn’t know, but I heard the fear in his voice.

  That night, we ate dinner in silence with only candles to light our meal. It wasn’t just my family who was eating quietly in the dark. There was an odd stillness over the city that night, as if everyone knew Afghanistan was somehow connected to the attacks in New York and Virginia, and that something ominous was about to overwhelm us.

  At one point during our dinner, another news broadcast came on the radio and my father pressed his ear to the speaker so he could hear. Both towers had fallen, the Pentagon was still burning, and thousands of people we
re believed dead.

  The last thing I remember my father saying that night before we went to bed was “No one is safe anymore. God help us all.”

  11

  Invasion and Freedom

  During the first week of October 2001, we heard that American troops had invaded Afghanistan. Taliban fighters and their supporters still ruled all aspects of life, and they tried to control the information with their propaganda and sermons and declarations, but people were talking. Our neighbors, my family, laborers in the fields, and people at my father’s shop heard rumors that American soldiers were in the north rallying the Northern Alliance to fight the Taliban and take back the rest of the country.

  Warplanes appeared in the skies over Kabul. They were hard to see; they were so fast and so high up in the air. I would hear the high-pitched screech of jet engines as they soared over the mountains and through the clouds, but often I couldn’t track them. By the time I looked up, they were usually disappearing in the distance or behind a mountain peak.

  The sight of the American planes both concerned and fascinated me. I worried because I remembered my mother telling me how a bomb had destroyed our house many years earlier, and I didn’t want that to happen again as the Americans fought the Taliban. Yet the aircraft overhead also captivated me, especially their speed and power, and I was elated because of what these planes represented. All of us who had lived in fear for far too long knew these warplanes had come to destroy al-Qaeda and the Taliban.

  At our home, we heard the bombs falling and exploding on the outskirts of the city. My father said they were targeting the Taliban training camps, airfields, and supplies. The Americans would remove them from power. He was so happy, and he welcomed the American invasion, telling us not to worry. We would be safe if we stayed in our basement.

  * * *

  We were all amazed at how quickly things changed in the city. It was still October, and one day my father ventured out of the basement to see what was happening. When he came back, he told us that he couldn’t see any Taliban on the streets, nor any of their trucks. He’d heard they’d fled the city, either to the south to Kandahar and Helmand, or east to Pakistan.

  After that, it was as though a new city emerged out of the ashes. My father allowed us to come up from the basement and venture into our neighborhood. On occasion, we could still hear the planes overhead, but the sounds of bombs were farther off and at times too distant to hear.

  Kabul was coming alive again. Somehow it seemed brighter; it was no longer only gray and brown sandstone and bone-cutting cold. Colors appeared in the windows of buildings, on people’s clothing, and in shops, and the sun gleamed off these surfaces.

  There were more people in the streets than I’d ever seen in the city before, and they were smiling. I could hear the laughter of men, women, and children. I heard the songs of Ahmad Zahir again, as well as new music from India. Many of the same melodies I’d heard on the car radio when we journeyed from Karachi to the Torkham border crossing nearly ten years ago were now playing inside shops in the bazaar. I felt like my eyes and my ears had been opened to a whole new world.

  Most spectacularly, I started to see things change for women. They were small changes at first. The Taliban were not walking the streets in packs like before, harassing and beating anyone who dared to have a beard too short or who allowed the skin of an ankle or wrist to show, but all of us feared there might be someone hiding in the shadows. Some men, although they may not have fled with the other fighters, were still believers, and I sometimes feared they would come for me at night.

  Gradually, more women went out to the markets to buy food and clothes. Soon I saw women throw away their burkas. Those awful, stifling, oppressive garments that the Taliban had forced us to wear were now being tossed aside by Afghan women.

  When I saw my mother do it, a wave of delight flowed over her. She beamed with joy as she threw her burka on the ground in the dirt, and then moved it to the trash barrel.

  I saw the happiness in my father too. He’d hated seeing his beautiful wife, our loving mother, humiliated and forced to wear clothing that was intended to oppress and confine. Now she was free, and his girls would never have to wear that horrible garment.

  The Americans were coming, and everything would change.

  * * *

  During the first few months of the American-led invasion, it still wasn’t safe for women to be out in public without a male chaperone, but that changed in December. We saw American armored vehicles drive through the city and American soldiers patrolling the streets. Most people, especially children and teenagers, would wave and shout hello to the passing trucks and men.

  We were warned never to walk in front of the American vehicles or get too close. They might run us over or, worse, shoot us. They were here to hunt down al-Qaeda and fight the Taliban, not play. For those first few weeks in late November and early December, anytime I saw one of the American trucks I would run and hide. I’d been conditioned by the terror of life under the Taliban to fear trucks with armed men, even those in uniform.

  In time I realized the Americans wouldn’t shoot me or run me down. Though I’d never met an American, I knew just by looking at them and from what my parents had told me that they were different. They weren’t like Afghans, and I knew they were here to help us.

  Soon, my mother was able to take her girls to the bazaar. It was just us, no men as escorts, freely out in public. I felt excited and liberated. We were no longer prisoners in our home, no longer slaves in our beloved country. I remember breathing the air and thinking that it actually felt freer.

  I saw it in my Mother Jan too. She didn’t have that cloud of depression haunting her face anymore. She held her head up and looked people in the eye; she would speak or ask a question if she wanted to, no longer silent with her head down and eyes averted. She had her confidence back, and it was beautiful.

  * * *

  One day in early November of that year, my father came home with amazing news. He gathered Afsoon and me in the main room of the house. We stood together and gazed up at him. Our younger sisters, Maryam and Manizha, who had just been born the year prior, were still too young. My father looked so handsome and happy since he’d shaved his beard after the Americans took control of the city; now his faced blazed with a huge smile.

  Earlier, at his shop, he had caught wind of a rumor that schools for girls would soon reopen in Kabul. Afsoon and I would be able to get a formal education from a real school!

  This was some of the best news I’d heard in my entire life. Ever since we were in the refugee camp in Pakistan, I’d dreamed about going to a real school. I was grateful for my mother and all she taught us in the camp, in our apartment in Karachi, and here in Kabul, but this would be an actual school.

  My imagination ran wild, thinking about the teachers I would meet, the students I would make friends with, and the subjects I would learn. I so wanted to read my textbook, write in my notebook, and answer questions. I was giddy with anticipation.

  My father, in the midst of sharing our joy, told us that he still needed to find out more information, to verify that what he’d heard was actually true. He said it might take him a few days to confirm the news, but as soon as he knew something he would tell us.

  For the rest of the day and into the evening, I could barely keep still, bouncing around and chattering about what it would be like to finally go to school. At night I’d lie awake dreaming about it, and then in the morning I’d wake up wondering if today was the day my father would find out the rest of the details about where and when we could go to school.

  After three agonizing days, my father came home with news from the Ministry of Education. Yes, girls’ schools were being built across the city, funded by international donors, and they would be opening soon. But because no girls or women had been permitted to receive an education under the Taliban, everyone would need to take placement tests to determine their grade level. The tests were scheduled to take place at the minis
try in a few weeks.

  I could see the pride in my father’s face, and he told us he knew we would do well because our mother had worked so hard to prepare us over the years. We were his brilliant little girls.

  * * *

  For the next two weeks, our mother and father helped us review our school subjects. We practiced day and night—reading, writing, arithmetic, science, and history. We used the same books we’d been studying for years. We used my brother’s books to study more, and he drilled us on the material he’d learned in school.

  None of this was work for me. It was my dream to go to school and get an education. Yet part of me wondered if it was actually true. Were they really building schools for girls, and would we truly be allowed to get an education? I knew what my father had told us, and I knew what I’d heard the few times I’d been outside the house, but the possibility that this wasn’t real and wouldn’t happen still tugged at the back of my mind.

  Finally, November 20, 2002, arrived—the day of the test. My sister and I woke up early, and I remember feeling butterflies fluttering in my stomach like never before. Both my sister and I had worked so hard, and I wanted both of us to do well on the exam. I wanted to prove to my parents that everything they’d done for us, all that they’d sacrificed, was going to work out for the best. I wanted to make them proud.

  I also wanted to do well for me. My Baba Jan had always told us that an education was one of the most important things in life because it made all other things possible. I believed him and wanted to earn my education so I could follow my dreams. My dreams may have been innocently formed at this point in my life—I was only eleven years old—but I had them and knew I needed an education to achieve them. With an education, opportunities would be open to me that otherwise would be out of reach.