By the time I was five I was already a skilled shepherd, able to shear off a fleece all on my own. I recognized every animal individually and loved how they knew the sound of my whistle. I particularly enjoyed watching my grandfather’s two sheepdogs working. One was a large, thick-headed beast and the other a small, wiry terrier-type dog. They would run rings around the flock, corralling them into order. And when the local vet, a man who traversed the furthest reaches of the mountains to service his clients, came to treat the sheep, I remember thinking how brilliant it might be to be a vet myself when I grew up. I was fascinated by him and the various implements he used.
It was about as wonderfully simple and rural a life as you can possibly imagine.
In winter, I would be so proud of coming back down into town with Grandfather by my side. We carried with us precious bounty from the mountains: wild fruits, honey, and koch – a type of thick, unpasteurized butter that we would spread thickly on freshly baked naan for breakfast. And Grandfather would always take me to the bustling bazaar, where he would trade his wares for supplies of rice or a new farming implement. Everything was plentiful.
Coming back down to the family home meant I got to see my parents and siblings, too. Although I loved being with the sheep, I did miss my parents. And, of course, they’d missed me too, so I was very spoilt when I came home.
As is the custom within our tribe, my parents were distantly related: my mother was my paternal grandfather’s niece, his sister’s daughter. My mother was fifteen and my father twenty when they married in the refugee camp to which my grandparents had fled after the 1979 Russian invasion of Afghanistan. During the fifteen or so long years of occupation and the civil war that followed, it is estimated that some 1.5 million people – a third of Afghanistan’s population – died, and a similar number became refugees.
In the midst of all this chaos, my grandfather had somehow scrimped and struggled enough to ensure that my father, his eldest son, became the first man in the family to receive a higher education by studying to become a doctor. This caused a huge sense of family pride, and was something which really made my grandparents role-models for us all. They were the moral heart of our family.
My father’s brothers, my two middle uncles, were also successes. They were both tailors who ran a large and profitable workshop in the bazaar. The fourth and youngest uncle, Lala, wasn’t around as often. He had a senior role within the Taliban. He used to come to visit us, bringing Taliban soldiers with him. I thought he was cool and exuded power. I knew he was an important man but didn’t really understand why or exactly what it was he did.
My mother’s parents had stayed living in Pakistan, so at that time I didn’t know them very well. My mother was one of twelve daughters. Her father was a very educated man – a mullah – and he had educated his daughters, something that was quite unusual among Pashtuns in those days. My mother was the only woman in our entire household who could read.
I think my parents were happy together: they certainly seemed it. But in Afghanistan a child knows better than to discuss or ask these things. There are certain boundaries you do not cross. I did once ask my grandmother if she liked my grandfather. She just laughed and replied: ‘I think he was the one who liked me.’ As innocent as it sounds, in our conservative community that was quite a risky thing to say, even for an old lady.
My parents had three boys by then: myself; my brother Hazrat, who was a year older than I was; and Noor, who was a year younger. Hazrat and Noor were very close, and used to pick on me a little bit. I was jealous of their little world of private jokes and unspoken communication. I think I was a bit of a loner, possibly because I was used to the solitude of the shepherding life.
My life changed completely when I was six, when my father and his three brothers ordered my grandparents back home. They worried the pair were getting too old for the nomadic life and wanted them to stay closer to the family so that they could be better looked after. There was also the matter of family honour: my father’s profession as a doctor meant he was a highly respected man in our strictly conservative community. It didn’t look good within the rigid mores of our tribal society to have the father of such a man living like a poor kochi, or nomad. Such was my father’s standing, in fact, that my brothers and I were rarely referred to by outsiders by our names: we were known as ‘the sons of the doctor’. Even Grandfather was known as ‘father of the doctor’.
Both my grandparents loved their life, so were deeply resistant to the idea at first, but in the end they gave in. Grandfather sold his entire flock of sheep – more than 200 strong – for a combination of cash and a shiny new red tractor. The whole extended family – parents, two uncles with their wives, my father’s unmarried sister Auntie Khosala, grandparents, myself and siblings – then moved to a new house in the district of Hisarak. This house was another single-storey building, made of mud and thatch, with lots of rooms running off a central, communal kitchen. Each night we ate together sitting on the floor, a bounty of food – usually rice, meat, naan and spinach – spread out on a large tablecloth in the centre of the room. It was a happy home, full of chatter and noise. I still loved the company of my grandparents and insisted on sleeping in their room.
My mother, as the senior wife, managed the running of the home, while my uncle’s wives, junior in both age and position, did the majority of the cooking and cleaning. Her outer nature, like most Afghan women, was steely and unemotional, and it was no wonder. Most women work from dawn until dusk doing housework. Washing is done by hand, while wood and fresh water must be collected daily. There is always bread to be baked and hot tea to be freshly brewed before husbands and children awake in the morning. It’s also a land where two out of five Afghan children die before their fifth birthday, so it is easier not to show too much love to children. A year after Noor was born, my parents had twin boys, who sadly both died within a few days of their birth.
But love is hard to hide when it’s a part of your very being, as it was for my mother. Under that commanding exterior, her survival mask, I often saw her gentle side – the way she would fuss over me when mending a scrape or bruise, her worry when one of us was ill, her obvious pride when recalling our accomplishments to a visitor or one of my aunts. She had a very deep voice for a woman but was tall and elegant, with a long nose and round, brown eyes. People said I looked like her. She smiled rarely, except for the secret grins that flashed across her features when I was naughty or did something funny. She was tough because she had to be but, underneath, there was an unmistakable warmness. Her family meant everything to her.
Culturally, it was a great shame to allow your women outside in case they were seen by other men, so my mother and aunts rarely left the house. On the rare occasions they did, they were completely covered by a burqa – as was the rule under the Taliban government. Inside the house they wore long shawls to cover their hair. It would have been seen as very bad for anyone outside of the immediate family, even a male cousin, to see their heads uncovered, even in the house.
I was an extremely pious child, and this was a rule I took upon myself to enforce: ‘The wrath of Allah will be upon you – go and cover your head,’ I used to say to my aunties. The young wives worked hard all day baking naan bread, and cooking over the open fire. If I wasn’t playing with my brothers or cousins, I often sat with them in the kitchen, bossing them around and ordering them to bring me tea. When my uncles were away, I would often refuse to let them walk to collect firewood, visit people or attend family weddings. I saw this as protecting the family honour. I would make a big show of insisting on collecting the wood for them so they didn’t have to: ‘Why do you need to go outside?’ I would say. ‘You are the queens of this house.’ This was something I’d heard my uncles say many times. As was another saying in Pashtu: ‘Khor yor ghor’, which was the two places for a woman: home or grave. Sometimes I would wake my aunts in the middle of the night to bring food for a newly arrive
d guest – my father’s profession meant people looking for help would turn up at our house at all times of the night and day.
My father was much more relaxed with the women than his brothers were, but I think I must have absorbed more of my uncle’s stricter attitudes. I was a bratty child, and I enjoyed exerting my power over my aunts. I know they loved me but I think I must have really got on their nerves at times. And if they complained about my behaviour, my uncles would tell them to be quiet and to obey me. It was not the best way to keep a child’s ego in check, but this was how it was done. In our conservative culture, males have all the power, even little boys.
The only time I got seriously told off for picking on my aunts was by my mother. One of my uncle’s wives couldn’t have children, and this was a source of consternation to the whole family. ‘If you don’t get a baby soon, I will get my uncle a new wife,’ I rudely said to her one day. The poor woman cried. My mother was absolutely furious with me and made me go and apologize at once. My aunt hugged me and I remember realizing I’d said something really mean, even though I didn’t understand the severity of it at the time. It took nine years for her to get pregnant, but she went on to have six daughters.
Another of my aunts, my father’s sister, Meena, married a man who lived outside the district. This was a really big deal because it was the first time anyone in the family had married outside the tribe, and people were not happy about it.
Auntie Khosala was next to be married. She and I had a special bond because of all the time we’d spent together in the mountains, and I felt sad for her because although she couldn’t read – she was naturally very smart – the man she married, her first cousin, was not only illiterate but obviously thick. But the match had been arranged when she was a baby: my grandmother had been pregnant at the same time as the wife of Grandfather’s brother, and when the babies were born within days of each other, my grandfather and his brother had decreed that the two infants would marry when they were older. Within our culture these things are not said lightly; once said, they cannot be unsaid, and must go on to happen.
Aside from being a farmer’s wife, my grandmother was also a traditional midwife. Pashtun men do not like to take their wives to a doctor – it’s considered extremely shameful if anyone, especially a man, puts his hands on your wife. But the Taliban government had banned female doctors from practising. In those circumstances, it was not surprising that since coming back from the mountains, my grandmother’s skills had been in great demand.
I often went with her to attend the births, but it was not something I enjoyed. I would be left to sit outside, helping to look after the family’s children or talking to the woman’s husband. Sometimes, if the family was poor, their house only had one room, so I would be forced to sit in the corner as the woman screamed and bled.
Childbirth horrified me. The labour could go on for hours. I would sit quietly, childishly willing and wishing the woman would get on and push the stupid thing out so we could go home.
My grandmother knew I was squeamish about the whole thing so she teased me mercilessly: ‘Did you see all that blood, Gulwali? Did you look, you naughty child?’
‘No, I did NOT.’
‘Ahhh, you lie to me.’ She’d give me a toothless grin and rub her fingers through my hair.
‘Get off me. You were touching those women.’
That only made her cackle more as she grabbed me in a bear hug, wiping her hands all over my head as I squealed with horror.
Some men would have forbidden her from her midwifery work, especially because it often meant being out on the streets at all hours. But Grandfather was very proud of her and liked to joke about the hundreds of babies she’d ‘given birth’ to.
My family owned various shops in the bazaar, including the tailor’s workshop run by my two middle uncles, and my father’s doctor’s surgery. Along the flat roofs ran a network of vines laden with fat grapes, which we sold commercially. We also had many fields out of town that grew wheat and different vegetables; at busy harvest times, we employed as many as 100 men locally. And before the Taliban took over and banned it, my grandfather had also farmed opium and cannabis – something that was entirely usual for Afghan farmers.
In warm weather, the whole town would become burningly hot, and the brown sandy dust of the town’s desert landscape got everywhere, stinging eyes and blocking noses. My mother and aunts would fight a losing battle to keep it outside the house, seemingly spending all day sweeping with a stiff broom, or banging rugs against the walls to keep them clean. Their efforts were futile. The sand collected in little piles in the corners of the rooms, on door frames, behind chairs, and covered windowsills. And with the dusty sand came all manner of insects and bugs: dangerous scorpions, and the little black ants which, in particular, fascinated me. I loved to watch them mobilize into lines of activity and scurry towards the kitchen. Of course, keeping ants out of the rice stores was another lost battle. Whenever I heard my mother let out a long groan as she opened one of the earthenware containers which kept the grains cool, I chuckled because I knew how funny her angry face would be as she scowled at the infestation of ant invaders in our dinner-to-be.
Aged six, after my grandparents’ nomadic activities were curtailed, I was enrolled in the same local school that my brothers already attended. I literally had to be dragged there on my first day by one of my uncles, as I yelled all the while: ‘I’m not going. I don’t want to go.’ I wanted to go back to the mountains and run with the sheep, not be stuck in a classroom. But I soon settled in and became a very studious, hard-working pupil.
The most fun we had at school was in winter, when we had to fix the roof of our classroom. The building had been badly damaged in the war so none of the rooms had ceilings. In the summer that wasn’t a problem, but in winter each class was dispatched to cut down trees and help drag them back to make a temporary roof. I loved it.
In Afghanistan, children aren’t mollycoddled; they are expected to pitch in and work alongside the adults. Before mosque each morning there were duties in the fields: cutting hay for the cows, watering the crops, harvesting the vegetables, collecting firewood and jerry cans full of water from the nearby well. All the kids went, even the two newest additions to our family, my little sisters, Taja and Razia. As female education was banned by the Taliban government, during the day they helped my mother and aunts with the cooking and cleaning. In our culture, it’s seen as important that girls learn these duties from a very young age, so that by the time they are married they know how to manage the running of a household. They also learned how to sew and embroider, as well as Quranic studies. After those chores, we went to the local mosque to pray, before getting ready for school.
We didn’t really play outside on the street; the kids who played out were seen as the bad kids. My parents thought it showed bad manners and a lazy attitude. So, after walking home from school, my brothers used to hang out in the grape vines, making sure nobody tried to help themselves.
I preferred spending time with the tailor uncles. I was fascinated by the whirr of the sewing machines and the folds of the differently coloured woven cottons and wool they used to make shalwar kameez, the traditional, loose-fitting tunic and trousers worn by Afghan men. At times of celebration, they were overrun with orders, and my uncles would be at the shop day and night sewing wildly to get everything finished. I used to help by cutting out the fabrics and dealing with the customers.
They were very proud of me when I devised my own system of numbering and organization, so that when people came to get their clothes I knew, among the hundreds of garments, where everything was. I took joy in the order and neatness of my system: to me, it was a little world of my own – a way of bringing a sense of order. A long day spent helping them checking off my lists and hanging the clothes ready for the next day was one of my biggest pleasures. By then, I knew I definitely wanted to become a tailor too. I was very enterprising
– I even had my own little after-school stall outside their workshop, which sold threads and buttons.
The journey to and from school took us right past my father’s surgery, so occasionally Hazrat, Noor and I would pop in to say hello to him. I used to sweep the floor for him or go and fill a jug with fresh water from the modern pump near the governor’s house. I always felt sorry for him working so hard in his packed surgery, so I wanted to make sure he had fresh, cool water to drink.
In the early mornings, my father would do his rounds in the local hospital. Treating malaria, the mosquito-borne disease which blighted the local area, was his specialism. For the rest of the day he ran his surgery, and people came from miles around for him to treat their ailments.
His surgery was full of strange-looking equipment. I recall a little wooden box which used to store his dentistry tools – I remember watching in horrified fascination as he pulled a patient’s head back and used metal pliers to prise out a rotten tooth. Whether it was stitching a wound, healing a snake or scorpion bite or setting a broken limb, my father’s face was always a mask of studious concentration.
My father’s most precious piece of kit was his microscope, a very rare thing in those days. It was too valuable to leave in the surgery so, at night, he used to carry it home under his arm, covered with a black cloth to keep it free from dust. He was immensely popular, and couldn’t walk through the bazaar without people wanting to shake his hand or offer him gifts of fruit or sweets.
Sometimes, when the surgery was quiet, he used to sit outside in the sun on a wood-framed bench with a seat of knotted string, and chat with his friends or argue about politics. I used to love listening as he and his friends debated the ills of the world and would sit quietly, cross-legged on the ground, taking it all in.
The Lightless Sky Page 2