I got the sense that he was a good man, a generous one. He had two big books in his office detailing the people to whom he had loaned money, and he never turned anyone anyway if they needed medicine and couldn’t pay. The ledgers were very big – clearly, a lot of people owed him money.
The most intimate times I spent with my father were during the night, when patients who had walked from outlying villages with a medical emergency banged on our gate, hoping to be seen by him. To treat them he would have to take them to the surgery where his bandages and medicines were stored. In those days, electricity was scarce and only came via a generator, something we limited to using three or four hours a day. As my father helped the patient, I would walk ahead carrying a lantern to help light our path through the darkness. I felt of great consequence as I stepped through the pitch-black streets holding the lamp aloft. It was a source of pride to me to ensure that no one stepped into a puddle or twisted their ankle in a pothole.
One of my most treasured memories was when my grandfather ran away with me. My father had told me off for reasons I can’t remember – I must have done something very naughty indeed, because my father rarely chastised me. My grandfather got really cross with my father, scooped me up into his arms and set off into the mountains.
‘You don’t deserve this boy. He’s coming with me.’
In reality, I was a convenient excuse for the wily old man to get away for a few days. He had wanted to go on a trip to search for lapis lazuli, the blue semi-precious stone that is one of Afghanistan’s most precious natural resources. But he knew that there was no way his sons would approve, so engineering a fight with my father over me had given him a convenient way out.
He and I had a truly wonderful week playing truant and searching for the stones. When we came back, my childish misdemeanours had been long forgotten – Grandfather was the one in trouble this time.
It was to be my last happy memory before my whole world changed for ever.
Chapter Two
Even before the arrival of the Taliban, my family were religiously and culturally conservative in their outlook. We lived by Pashtunwali – the strict rules every Pashtun must abide by. The codes primarily govern social etiquette, such as how to treat a guest. Courage is a big part of the Pashtun code too, as is loyalty, and honouring your family and your women. No one writes it down for you – there’s no book to learn it from; it’s just a way of life that you are born into, which has remained unchanged for centuries. And, like all Pashtuns, I accepted them unquestioningly. They were – and still are – a source of cultural pride.
The Taliban government also saw it as their duty to keep the peace on the streets. My father told me that before the Taliban came to power, towards the end of the civil war, women and young girls were frequently raped if they went outside, while houses were robbed and children kidnapped and held for ransom. He said the country had been in ruins, but that the Taliban had returned order.
The Taliban position was simple: strong social controls and Sharia law was the true path to both peace and God. To me and the male members of my family this made perfect sense, because it wasn’t really so different from Pashtunwali.
No one asked the women for their views, however – they didn’t get to have a say in these kinds of political matters. But I think the whole family was in unity. We all understood our different roles within the household.
I was aware that not everyone agreed with this, however. A very few of my friends at school told me their parents feared the Taliban and thought they were bad people. They said they were taking our country in the wrong direction and preventing development. They also said that they abused women.
When I heard this, it made me angry. My uncle, Lala, was a very senior Taliban, so how could they possibly be bad? And yet their rules certainly were strict – men’s beards had to be a certain length and they had to wear traditional, baggy clothes at all times, while women had to wear the burqa so their faces couldn’t be seen, and soft-soled shoes so they couldn’t be heard. In addition, you had to pray at fixed times of the day, and if you were seen on the streets or caught working when you should be praying, it was deemed a crime.
Fridays are the main day of prayer in Islam. When the mosque loudspeakers blasted out the hauntingly beautiful call to prayer, everyone in the whole town would stop whatever they were doing and go straight to mosque. The Taliban had a special team, called the Vice and Virtue Committee, who made sure everyone obeyed. They wore black turbans and patrolled the streets in four-wheel drives, pulling over and leaping out of the vehicle if they saw something amiss.
One sunny Monday afternoon we were in the tailor shop when we heard a big commotion outside. A man stuck his head through the shop door, his face ablaze with excitement: ‘Come on. Twenty lashes.’
My uncles quickly locked up the shop and urged me to follow them to the bazaar. A large crowd had already gathered at the scene: two men in black turbans stood over a kneeling man, who was naked from the waist up.
‘Speak. Admit your crime,’ said one of the turbans.
The man said nothing.
‘Speak.’ The turban smacked the back of the man’s head.
‘I—’
‘Louder.’
The man mumbled something, but it was impossible to hear it over the hum of the crowd.
The turban turned to the crowd with a smirk. ‘This man did not attend prayer on Friday. He was found inside his home.’
The crowd jeered at this seemingly obscene crime.
‘Do you have an excuse?’
This time the man looked up and spoke loudly. ‘My wife was sick. I couldn’t leave her. I thought she was dying.’
At this, both turbans roared with laughter. The crowd followed suit.
The second turban spoke this time, his voice ringing out as clear as a bell: ‘The Islamic Emirates of Afghanistan gives the sentence of twenty lashes with justice to this man for his crime. May this sentence be an example for anyone else thinking of committing such a crime. Anyone who goes beyond the limits of God’s law and against His rules, let it be known this will be their fate.’
He lifted a thin reed high into the air.
‘By Allah the most merciful, you have been sentenced to a fitting punishment for your crime.’
As he brought the reed down on the man’s back with a loud swish, the crowd roared and cheered.
The turban hit the man again and again and again.
By the time it was over, their victim had crumpled into a heap, his back a bloody mess. I don’t know if anyone helped him or if they took him to prison after that, because my two uncles said it was time to get back to the shop.
Five minutes later, the sewing machines whirred into life and I was back to hanging clothes as if nothing had happened.
Many times after that I saw people get lashed. I once saw an old man beaten with a wire cable because his beard was too short: the black turbans would grab a beard with their hands to measure it – if the person measuring it had big hands and you had a wispy beard, then it was unlucky for you. Other times they gave out smaller punishments, such as painting someone’s face black and marching them around, encouraging people to abuse them.
I suppose it sounds shocking, but this was all I knew. I had been taught by Uncle Lala that the Taliban only punished someone when they broke the law, so in my child’s mind if someone was suffering this way they must have deserved it.
But one incident will always haunt me.
Grandfather and I were with a friend of his on our way to visit some relatives in a different district. We had stopped for chai, tea, in a small town. As we sat outside the tearoom, we watched several men begin walking and running in one direction. My grandfather stopped a man to ask what was happening.
‘Justice, my friend. Justice.’
Curious to see what was happening, we followed. At the edge of
the village, scores of men had gathered in a large clearing. Some of them were shouting, ‘Allah akbhar. Praise be to God,’ while others were whooping with joy.
At first I thought it must be some kind of sporting event – maybe a dog- or cock-fight. I strained my head to see what they were looking at, and my grandfather’s friend lifted me on to his shoulders.
I saw a woman. She was covered in a burqa with a black blindfold tied around her eyes. Her hands were tied behind her back with rope.
A man next to her – I guessed a Taliban official from the Justice Department – raised his hand. The crowd went silent. ‘This woman is a dirty woman. She is an adulteress, a whore.’
The crowd roared insults at her.
‘The Islamic Emirates of Afghanistan gives the sentence of death to this woman for her crime. May this sentence be an example. She has been condemned to death by stoning. Let it begin.’
At that, he placed his hand on the woman’s shoulder, almost tenderly, and walked her towards a dug-out area of earth. He took her arm and helped her get into it, so that she was standing in it, up to her waist. She didn’t try to resist.
It was then that I noticed the rocks, sitting in a pile to the front of the crowd.
The Talib walked to the pile and picked up a large stone. He waved it above his head like a trophy. ‘By Allah the most merciful, you have been sentenced to a fitting punishment for your crime.’
He walked back towards her, until he was a couple of feet away.
Then he threw the stone hard, so that it smashed against her head.
The crowd went wild. All at once men began picking up the rocks and throwing them at the woman. At first, she didn’t seem to move, even as they hit her, but then one little rock caught the back of her head sharply, and she began to try to wriggle her way out of the pit. But as she did so, another hail of stones and rocks caught her and she fell backwards. After that, it was a bit of a blur for me, just a hail of rocks and a lot of shouting.
The whole thing only took a couple of minutes.
I don’t think I really understood what I was seeing. The noise, the excitement of the crowd, the calm silence of my grandfather and his friend – I didn’t enjoy it, but I didn’t cry either. As I sat on the shoulders of Grandpa’s friend, I looked around and saw other boys my age on shoulders too. Their expressions were blank but their eyes were confused, mirroring my own.
With hindsight, I can see what barbarity this was. But it has to be put into context. The country was recovering from a war in which brutality had known no bounds. Millions of people had been killed, thousands of women raped and children slaughtered. There had been a complete breakdown of law and order with no national governance. Their mantra was this: ‘If you don’t accept peace or our rules, we will force it on you.’
My grandfather called life under the Taliban: ‘The best of times we are living in.’ Given that he’d lived most of his life in the insanity of war, I don’t think it is too surprising that he and many other Afghans felt this way.
But, as is ever the case in the geopolitics of my country, we were about to get out of the frying pan and into the fire.
Chapter Three
I was seven years old.
I remember running between the kitchen and the guest house, my mother handing me pots of tea to take to the assorted tribal elders and Taliban fighters who had amassed in our home. The air was thick with tension and heavy with discussion.
‘We didn’t have anything to do with it, so why should we bow down to the imperialists?’
‘Bin Laden is our guest. Pashtunwali must prevail.’
‘Our great country will never cede to this pressure.’
A Saudi man called Bin Laden, who Uncle Lala told me was a great freedom fighter, had attacked America. TV was banned under the Taliban so we didn’t see any images of it, but the radio had been broadcasting non-stop news about it. Thousands of people had died in the attacks. They said people had been jumping from windows to escape. I had been told that Americans were infidels who didn’t follow Islam but as I listened to these stories, I felt sad at the news and thinking about the families of the people who had died. Given my family history of living in refugee camps, I think I had an innate understanding that, wherever they were from, all people suffered in war and conflict.
Now, just days after the attack, the US was angry with Afghanistan, blaming us for it. This was because the Taliban were refusing to bow to American pressure and hand over Bin Laden, who was said to be sheltering in Tora Bora, a place only a couple of hours’ drive away from where we lived. The US had threatened to attack if they didn’t hand him over, but the Taliban refused because, under the rules of Pashtunwali, he was our guest, and a guest is under the protection of the host.
There was a swell of patriotism. No one really believed America’s threats, mostly because everyone knew the Taliban had had nothing to do with the attack themselves, and we assumed the Americans accepted that too.
But, it turned out, this wasn’t a view shared or understood by the world. Within days the US, supported by European countries, had invaded my country, and the Taliban began to retreat.
When it started, we could see US fighter jets overhead. For a day or so they only circled the skies, not doing anything. Taliban troops were everywhere, and lots of local people were volunteering to fight with them.
My father was expecting the worst and was busy trying to amass extra medical supplies. He had also ordered my mother to pack bags and food and prepare to take us children to the shelter of a nearby bunker. There were several concrete bunkers on the outskirts of town, a legacy of the civil war.
The following day, the US began to bomb Tora Bora. We could hear the sound but it was far enough away for us not to be at direct risk. Within days, however, bombs rained from the sky directly overhead.
It was terrifying.
It was never clear exactly where the planes would come from. We would hear the screech of Taliban anti-aircraft missiles attacking them as they approached, then there would be the sound of deafening, terrifying explosions. The whole ground used to shake with the force of the bombing. After each bombardment we would come outside for air and look up at the trails of smoke the B52 bombers left behind in the sky.
Pretty much every type of bomb except nuclear bombs rained down on my country. Even today, children are born with diseases and deformities caused by the toxic effects of that time, something that makes me very angry.
The children and aunts huddled in the bomb shelter with other families. Uncle Lala was the regional commander for the Taliban, leading the fight against the invaders. My father stayed in the hospital, treating the hundreds of wounded. My grandfather insisted on staying in the house to stop it being looted. I was proud of them all, for different reasons, but I was most worried about my father. I feared the bombs might hit the hospital.
I longed to run to the solace of my mountain paradise, but it wasn’t safe. Fighting echoed across the hills. It seemed the whole of Afghanistan was under attack, and for days we couldn’t sleep. I thought it was only a matter of time before our bunker hiding place was discovered.
I expected to die at any moment.
It was only later that I learned that the area around our home had been the last frontline; Uncle Lala had been one of the last local commanders of the Taliban to hold his position against the US-led coalition forces. We were told that his courage allowed busloads of fighters to escape Kabul into neighbouring Pakistan; in my childish eyes, this made him something of a hero. Soon after that final battle, he fled the country himself, and we didn’t know where he had gone. I feared he’d been caught and killed, but we had no way of knowing.
For us, life then began under occupation. Suddenly, US troops were everywhere, convoys of armoured vehicles speeding down the road. The first time I saw Western troops on the ground, I was so scared of their big guns. They looke
d like something from another planet. From a safe distance, my brothers and I would throw stones at them.
After a while, seeing them became normal.
The pressure and political turmoil impacted on all of us. My father took the decision for the family to leave the district and go back to the neighbouring district where he had been born. Things were slightly safer there.
Not long after the US troops landed, the aid workers arrived – white Land Cruisers emblazoned with the blue UN sign were everywhere. They started to rebuild clinics and schools. My father conceded this was a good thing but he was still very disapproving that it was ‘foreigners’ who were building this new infrastructure, and not our own government.
Girls slowly started to return to school. Under the Taliban they had been banned, and that was all I had known. It was so strange to see them wearing their black uniforms and little white headscarves, walking to school. They generally walked in groups for their own safety, because some of the boys used to take pleasure in cursing them and throwing stones at them as they walked. My two sisters did go school for a short while, but not for long. My father deemed it too unsafe. I was happy about this. Not because I wanted to deny them an education, but because I didn’t want any of my friends telling me they had seen my sisters outside.
There is a religious hadith, or saying, that discourages gossip. It states that gossiping is haram, forbidden – as though you eat the flesh of your brother. But the reality is that it is rife. And most gossip in our community was about females – whether they deserved it or not. So damaging can this be, that if anyone says anything bad about a girl, harasses them or accuses them of misbehaving, some families either go and kill the person responsible for the slur, or move house or, in even more extreme cases, murder the girl, regardless of whether she was innocent of all wrongdoing. Either way, taking some form of action is seen as essential, otherwise the family reputation is destroyed.
The Lightless Sky Page 3