Open Skies

by Niloofar Rahmani

  * * *

  My family and I returned to Kabul in October 2013. Our visas were set to expire, and we were nearly out of money. Although we were unsure of the situation we were returning to, we hoped the threats against us had calmed down and the perpetrators had either forgotten about us or moved on to other matters.

  We spent that first week of our return at my grandmother’s house, but we did not return to our normal lives. My sisters did not go back to school, my brother did not go back to university, and my father didn’t look for work. I didn’t report back to my squadron either. But we knew this couldn’t go on forever, so eventually my father and I arranged another meeting with General Zafar at the air base. As in our previous meeting, his reception was very cool.

  My father did his best to explain our predicament. Because the air force would not help us, we had to take matters into our own hands. We had no choice but to go away for a while, hoping the attention on us would subside and the threats would stop. Now that we had returned, we would be living in a different part of the city, which we intended to keep secret.

  General Zafar didn’t care about any of this. Rather than discussing the matter with my father, he simply stated I’d gone AWOL and I would be reprimanded accordingly. The general dismissed us.

  But both my father and I held our ground, and my father proceeded to lay the matter directly at the general’s feet. He said we came to the general first because he was a senior commander for the air force in Kabul, and it was ultimately his responsibility to provide for the security and welfare of the people under his command. This is also a custom in Afghanistan—senior tribal elders and patriarchs have an obligation to protect the younger, less influential members of the group as a form of patronage.

  By this time, my father’s anger was beginning to show. He told the general he had believed him when he said women could join the air force, trusting the military would protect the people who served in it. After all, my father pointed out, he and my mother had taken a risk allowing their daughter to join the air force because our family believed in the future of Afghanistan—“But now you abandon us as if we are worthless.”

  General Zafar stood up from behind his desk and said, “War is no job for a woman. You are dismissed.”

  My father was irate when we left the command post, but when we got in the car to go home, I said I had not given up hope. I told him to go home and take care of my Mother Jan, who was sick again, but I would remain at the base. There was another option I could pursue. It took some convincing, but he believed me when I said that as long as I was on the base nothing would happen to me.

  As I watched my father drive away, I felt immensely grateful for what he’d done. As the head of our household, he was expected to represent me in a situation like this, and it would have been the same if I were a man. These traditional elements of Afghan culture persist throughout the military, and I did not mind him stepping in for me.

  Yet the traditional Afghan system failed us, so I intended to go outside it. I would go see the American advisors with whom I stayed in contact and would seek their assistance to get my flight status restored. Despite the prejudices of my own people against me, I would get back up in the air. I would not be beaten.

  Before going over to the American side of the compound, I stopped at my squadron building to change into my uniform. As I expected, my colleagues greeted me with sneers and contemptuous looks, but a few of them asked where I had been. Most had assumed I’d resigned my commission or simply run away, never to return.

  I responded by telling them about the threats to me and my family, and that we’d not received any support from the senior command. Consequently, we’d traveled to India.

  I then told my colleagues I was back and intended to continue flying. Some of the younger pilots scoffed at this, echoing General Zafar by saying I didn’t belong here. One of them said the only reason I’d been allowed to become a pilot was because of the Americans, and if I needed help I should run to them. Another chimed in and asked what I would do once the Americans left—I’d have no one to protect or support me anymore.

  This interaction was probably one of the harshest I’d ever had with the other pilots in my squadron. I have no doubt some pilots were pleased about the threats being made against me, even if they weren’t directly connected to them. However, there were other pilots, like Major Abdulrahman and Colonel Pacha Kahn—some of the older and more mature members of the squadron—who I know didn’t feel this way. But they stayed silent.

  After this exchange, I donned my flight suit and headscarf and went to the American advisors’ compound, where I found Major Johnson and Captain Richardson. In contrast to my reception from my colleagues, they were thrilled I was back. I quickly told them my story, and shortly thereafter we headed back over to the command post, where they verified my story with the senior leadership. I was reinstated with my squadron and cleared for flight duty.

  I know the Afghan leadership hated my relationship with the American advisors, and hated being advised to reinstate me. But it wasn’t their call. NATO had been rebuilding the Afghan Air Force from the ground up, and they owed everything to the advisory group. The planes, the training, the funding—everything. The air force would not survive without the advisory group. The Afghan leadership had no choice but to acquiesce with a forced smile when the Americans “recommended” something.

  This was one of those moments.

  34

  Back in the Air

  Back in Kabul with my flight status reinstated, I attempted to straddle two very different worlds as two different people. One the one hand, I was a captain in the air force commanding an aircraft and responsible for the lives of everyone on board, flying missions throughout the country. On the other, I had to disguise myself coming and going from the base and out in public wearing a burka—something I thought I would never have to do again—while doing my best to remain invisible.

  Being back up in the air was a joy. I truly felt free and alive when I was flying. I could be myself, confident in my abilities to fly the airplane and make decisions, and I didn’t have to worry about someone criticizing or threatening me. In the air, I was where I belonged.

  Yet even though I felt liberated soaring across the skies of Afghanistan, the situation on the ground was getting worse day-by-day, and my missions were increasingly more challenging and important to the wider war effort.

  In the fall of 2014, as the Americans and NATO troops incrementally handed over the main combat operations to the still fledgling Afghan Army, casualties mounted. We were also suffering a shortage of new pilots (I don’t know why), so most of us in the squadron routinely conducted medevac flights to the more troublesome provinces, like Helmand, Kandahar, Paktika, and others.

  One of my missions to Camp Bastion in Helmand was yet another medevac assignment. When I landed, my copilot and I got out and walked toward a waiting ambulance. Two Afghan doctors approached us and said we would be transporting them and four wounded soldiers back to Kabul, for a total of six passengers. The soldiers had been wounded in a roadside bomb attack and needed immediate trauma care.

  Roadside bombs, also known as IEDs (improvised explosive devices), were killers in this conflict. Throughout Afghanistan there was an abundance of ordnance either left over from the Soviet-Afghan War, when thousands of artillery rounds had been abandoned as the Russian army fled north in 1989 or funneled across the Afghanistan-Pakistan border during the subsequent civil war. After 9/11 and the American-led invasion, more arms and ammunition came in from Iran and Pakistan to be used against the foreign invaders.

  With a little training, the Taliban and their allies (the Haqqani network, al-Qaeda, and others) could fashion and deploy IEDs with lethal efficiency, some large enough to knock out armored vehicles as strong as the American MRAP (mine-resistant ambush-protected vehicle). The loss of limbs and massive head trauma were common injuries after such attacks.

  I watched as the medical personnel careful
ly took the wounded men out of the ambulance and began loading them onto the aircraft. As I feared, these four soldiers had suffered extremely severe wounds, including the loss of arms and legs. They were on stretchers, which would take up most of the passenger space on the plane. The two doctors coming along would keep the wounded men stable during the flight to Kabul.

  As I was about to step away from the ambulance to return to the cockpit, I heard someone yelling from inside the ambulance. Whoever it was started banging on the rear door. One of the doctors opened the door to reveal another wounded soldier, who I would later learn was Sergeant Mohammad. He’d also been hit in the IED attack—he’d suffered shrapnel and burn wounds to his face and eyes, and he was at risk of losing his eyesight. He was begging the doctors to put him on the medevac flight, afraid if he didn’t get medical help he would be blinded for life.

  I could tell Sergeant Mohammad was in his early twenties, just a young man. He was scared, and I didn’t blame him. To be wounded on the battlefield is one thing—the pain, the violence, the uncertainty can be overwhelming, and even the strongest of men can wonder if they’re going to make it out in one piece. But being blinded adds an entirely new level of fear to the experience. I felt for this sergeant and couldn’t sit idly by.

  I stopped the head doctor and told him to load Sergeant Mohammad onto the aircraft. We would leave one of the attending doctors behind—one on board during the flight would be sufficient—so there would be enough room for the sergeant.

  At first, the doctor protested and said they both needed to get to Kabul, but I held firm. I had enough experience to know medevac flights required only one doctor to accompany the casualties and monitor their condition while in flight, even ones worse than this. I suspected the second doctor had another, nonemergency reason for going to Kabul. He could wait. There’d be another flight later today or tomorrow. He could be remanifested on one of those.

  When the major kept insisting, I told him this aircraft wasn’t leaving without Sergeant Mohammad. This was a medevac flight, not a passenger run; Sergeant Mohammad was wounded and needed medical attention at the hospital in Kabul.

  Reluctantly, the doctor gave in and directed the nurses to put Sergeant Mohammad on the plane. My copilot went to help, to try to calm the sergeant down. We told him he was getting on the plane to go to Kabul, but he was so frightened he didn’t believe it. He kept mumbling he was going to die here, that he was alone and blind and would die.

  I spoke to him, assuring him he was getting on the plane and he would be OK, but he seemed to be in a state of shock, unable to hear or process what was going on around him. My heart went out to him; I couldn’t imagine how scared he was.

  Once we were fully loaded and had taken off, Sergeant Mohammad seemed to understand he was actually on a plane heading to safety. He calmed down, sitting quietly for the remainder of the flight. When we landed at Kabul Airport, I watched the waiting doctors and nurses help Sergeant Mohammad walk to the ambulance that would take him to the hospital. They loaded the other causalities in the ambulance as well. All of them had remained stable during the flight.

  I felt I’d served my country well on this particular day. I would likely never see any of those men again (I hadn’t encountered any of the other casualties I’d transported on previous medevac flights), but I felt I’d helped these particular soldiers in a vital way.

  As for Sergeant Mohammad’s situation, I was proud I’d demanded he come along. I believed I’d made the right decision. I had a responsibility to make those kinds of calls on the ground when the situation demanded it. Being a woman had nothing to do with it—I was a pilot in the Afghan Air Force, and I would carry out my duties accordingly.

  * * *

  That evening, my father picked me up from the base, which was unusual. My brother usually did. There had been a time when such a change wouldn’t have bothered me. I would probably have been glad to see my Baba Jan. But given the precautions we’d been taking since India, the change in pattern unsettled me. A tightness formed in my chest, and I felt the blood rush to my face; I was afraid something had happened. I’d been living on the edge of this fear for months.

  After our return from India, we’d stayed at my grandmother’s house for about a week before moving into an apartment across town. As before, we told no one. My sisters went to new schools and made new friends, and my older sister, Afsoon, still hadn’t contacted her husband, because she feared what he and his family might do. She missed her son terribly.

  My brother, however, needed to go back to class at the university; he was bound to run into people from before who would ask him where he’d been. Fortunately, he only had a few months left until graduation and believed he could avoid any trouble.

  But one night after class, when my brother was walking home, two men on a motorbike drove by and shot at him. This was a typical tactic for assassinations in the city, and they sped away before my brother could identify who they were.

  Omar was scared but on alert, and he ran from the area as fast as possible in case there was a second team or if the two on the motorcycle came back around. He spent the night hiding in an alley a few blocks from campus, afraid the perpetrators might still be out there. He figured if he waited until daylight, he’d have a better chance of spotting any new threats and could make it home safely.

  My family wasn’t aware of any of this. We feared the worst when we couldn’t reach him. My mother had another breakdown and had to be taken to the hospital. We all went with her, and while there my father tried calling some trusted friends to see if they’d heard or seen anything about Omar, but he found out nothing.

  It wasn’t until the morning when my bother returned home to an empty house that we learned he was safe. He’d lost his mobile phone, so he used a neighbor’s phone to call my father to find out where everyone was. Hearing the news, we were relieved, and my mother recovered enough to be discharged. We came home, all of us thanking God while also afraid of what might happen next.

  Thus, when I saw my father in the car and not my brother, all sorts of fearful visions flashed through my mind. But when I got in the car, my Baba Jan said Omar was not feeling well, so he’d offered to come get me. Relief swept over me.

  I dove right in, telling my Baba Jan about my day and the medevac flight with Sergeant Mohammad. I could see he was proud of what I’d done, and he said as much. He said no matter what happened, he would always support me. However, as he told me these things, I noticed a hint of hesitation in his voice, like there was something else he had yet to tell me.

  We were about to drive off the base when the guard at the front gate stopped us. He knew my father and brother because of how I had to come on and off base, covered in a burka and ducked down in the seat. The guard approached the driver’s side and said earlier in the evening someone had come up to him saying he was a relative of mine and wanted to come on the base to find me. The guard asked if I knew who this person was.

  My father and I exchanged looks. No one we knew—no relative, that is—would have come to the base asking for me. Whoever it was, I had no doubt they were a threat.

  I told the guard my father and brother were the only ones who would come to the base looking for me. If anyone else did, even if they were posing as a relative, they were lying and shouldn’t be allowed onto base. If it happened again, I asked them to please call my squadron and let me know immediately.

  As we drove away, my father turned to me and said there was more. After my brother had dropped me at the base that morning, two men had come to the apartment building asking about me. When the attendant at the front desk called our apartment, my father told him to say no one was home and they couldn’t come in. As they left, the two men said they would avenge the dishonor I had brought upon Islam.

  * * *

  When we got home that night, we packed up to move to another apartment. There was no time to waste—we just had to go.

  But we weren’t at the new apartment for long. One m
orning, I was running late for work and went outside without wearing my burka. A neighbor who happened to be walking by stopped and stared. He said he recognized me from the television. A few days later, my father was buying vegetables from the vendor down the street, and the seller said someone was looking for my father and pointing at our apartment.

  We packed up again. It had been only a month, but we had to go.

  Out of options, my father called a trusted friend of his named Ahmad and asked him if we could stay in his spare room for a time. My father had faith Ahmad would keep it a secret, so we moved there.

  Things went on like this for most of 2014. I felt like we were refugees again, without a place to call home. My father was having trouble working, and coupled with all the moves, we were living very destitute and uncertain lives. I watched my father’s hair turn gray over a few short months, my mother suffer depression, and my brother and sisters struggle to grow up and live their own lives.

  It was all my fault. This was happening because I became a pilot. I was selfish, and now my family was paying the price.

  35

  Contacts

  My family and I found ourselves abandoned by nearly all our relatives, friends, coworkers, classmates, and neighbors, and our lives were being threatened by our countrymen—the people I’d volunteered to serve and defend. Much of the happiness in our lives had disappeared.

  Yet, while all this was going on in our Afghan lives, I began to find rays of hope in my contacts from the West. Some of these people, in fact, would come to save my life.

  In the summer of 2014 I met a Wall Street Journal reporter named Margherita Stancati. She’d heard about me through one of the media events I’d participated in, and she wanted to do a story on me. She obtained my phone number through the public affairs office, called me, and asked if I would come to her house in the diplomatic quarter of Kabul in the middle of the city.