The Sewing Circles of Herat

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The Sewing Circles of Herat Page 29

by Christina Lamb

‘No, Madam, not snow leopard. This Afghan tiger. Also rare.’

  ‘It’s not a tiger! It’s got spots. Tigers have stripes.’

  ‘Here in Afghanistan everything different,’ he would say, shaking his head sadly.

  The morning of my last day in Kabul there was great excitement in the hotel. The General Post Office had reopened. Finally Afghanistan was reconnected to the outside world. It was approaching Valentine’s Day in England back in my other life, so I decided to go along to Pashtunistan Square to try and send a card. I first stopped at the Inter-Continental Hotel where, to my surprise, Mr Shah’s bookstore was still functioning although many of the books had their pictures and covers scribbled over with black felt-tip. I had met the owner, Shah Mirzad, back in 1989 and remembered his passion for books and the history of his country. Pulling out a pile of dusty postcards from under the counter, he smiled, ‘We couldn’t see these before “because of the people”. The Taliban were always in here, taking my books to burn, seizing my postcards. Even this.’ He showed me a picture of the shrine in Mazar-i-Sharif that had been banned because there were some doves in the foreground. I chose one with a photograph of children standing waving on a Russian tank; above were the words Greetings from Afghanistan.

  Inside the GPO there was a crowd of people, mostly just milling. One old man in dirty clothes and unruly turban was clutching a cassette, his grinning mouth revealing just one yellowed tooth. ‘I cannot write but I have made a tape of my voice to send to my son in India,’ he said proudly. I helped him buy an airmail envelope then watched as he told the post office clerk the address: ‘Ghulam Khan, Bombay, son of Ghulam Khan, Ghazni’.

  ‘How long is it since you’ve seen your son?’ I asked.

  ‘Not since before the Russians left,’ he replied.

  ‘And when did you last hear from him?’

  ‘At the beginning of the mujaheddin government. But we have left our village so he would not know where to send a message.’

  The mujaheddin government had taken office in 1992. He hadn’t heard from his son in nine years.

  ‘He will be very happy to hear my voice,’ said the man, his hand shaking as he handed over a pile of afghanis. I feared he would have no food all week and I tried to pay the postage for a parcel that would almost certainly never arrive but he refused.

  ‘What is nan?’ he said proudly. ‘We have gone without before.’

  Outside the post office, sitting on stools with airmail envelopes, sheets of paper, pens and glue spread on folding tables in front of them, were the letter-writers. Less than a fifth of the population could read or write so sending a letter often required the services of one of these men. There was a set menu of letters available: job application, begging letter, letter to children or parents informing of death or injury, and love letter, all for five thousand afghanis a time, about fifteen pence including paper and envelope.

  The letter-writers were busy and I waited in turn for a man with a large oval face and heavy glasses held together by tape. The bitter cold was making my face and teeth ache and numbing my feet even in their boots and thermal socks but he had no gloves and his feet were in rubber sandals. He told me his name was Pir Mohammed and he was a petroleum engineer but had been sacked by the Taliban in 1996 for being what they considered an intellectual. ‘I have nine children to support and couldn’t get work but I can read and write and was always doing letters for neighbours so one day I came down here and set up. I would come every morning at 8 a.m. when the post office opened. Some days I would write five letters, sometimes none. Then last year the postal service stopped.’

  I asked him what kind of letters he was usually asked to write. ‘Sad letters telling of how people died. They were like a catalogue of disaster of our country, I felt like the keeper of all memories. Sometimes I got tired of it all.

  ‘But today it’s very different. We’re very busy as you can see and mostly I’m writing happy letters, people writing to relatives in Iran and Pakistan to tell them to come back everything is fine. Also some to the BBC and Voice of America and Red Cross to try and find missing people.’

  I asked him if he could write a Valentine’s for me in Dari and he smiled. ‘That’s another thing that’s changed,’ he said. ‘People are wanting love letters again.’

  ‘What sort of things do you write?’

  ‘Today I am writing “the snow is all around but I feel warm when I think of you”.’

  When I got back to the Mustafa, Tawfiq was sitting at one of the tables looking impatient.

  ‘Where have you been?’ he demanded. ‘I’ve found Marri!’

  We set off immediately, heading northwest past Kabul Gate, a pinkish stone archway and the only one of the seven old city gates still standing. No one knows who built the famous old city walls which once stood twenty feet high and twelve feet thick running along the crests of the mountains with regularly spaced sentry towers but they were thought to date back to the rule of the White Huns in the fifth century. According to Frank Martin, the Englishman who worked as engineer-in-chief to monarchs in the early part of last century, the walls were built ‘as a protection against the raids of the wild tribes inhabiting the country southwest of Kabul who frequently fell upon the city in great numbers, putting the people to the sword and carrying off all the loot they could get, including women and cattle, both of which are looked upon in much the same light in Afghanistan’.

  On the way Tawfiq explained that Marri’s family had indeed fled Microrayon but had not left Kabul, instead moving to the other side of the city to an area called Khair Khana, and he had found them that morning. The roads were like polished glass in the freezing weather and with all the traffic it was about forty-five minutes’ drive, mostly on a wide straight road clogged with skidding buses, bicycles and yellow taxis. Through the middle of it all, a group of Kutchi nomads in bright summer colours were leading a train of camels, the animals picking up their hooves distastefully as they slid about. Much of the way was lined with shacks selling satellite dishes made from flattened oilcans and skinned sheep hanging from hooks, their white eyeballs peering sightlessly.

  Just before the road snaked up into the mountains beyond which lay the Shomali Plains where the Taliban had burnt down entire villages and raped the women, we turned off right into a residential area. There in a side street of small bungalows we knocked at a green door.

  ‘What if she’s out?’ I asked Tawfiq. ‘I’m leaving tomorrow.’

  ‘She won’t be out,’ he smiled. ‘Where would she go? Anyway if she’s out, we just wait.’

  He knocked again and a young man of about nineteen came to the door and showed us along an alley by the side of the house. Through one window I could see a large group of boys and girls sitting on the floor around a young woman teacher.

  I took off my dusty shoes and entered the house, noticing the line of blue burqas hanging from hooks by the door. The boy showed us into a room with lime-green walls and a red carpet and gestured us to sit on the pink cushions as he knelt down and poured thickly sugared tea from the large white vacuum flask on the floor. There were net curtains across the windows and a gaudy painting of a mountain scene on one wall above a plastic plant. I clasped my hands around the tea-glass to keep warm as the door burst open and a young woman appeared with shining eyes and an irrepressible smile, thick red lipstick and a plum-coloured scarf draped over her hair. It was Marri.

  ‘You found me. I wondered if you would come,’ she said in English, taking my hands and kissing me on both cheeks. We sat back down, Marri still holding my hand and beaming happily as I gave her my gifts which she fell upon; the jar of coffee seemed to please her more than the embroidered notebook. ‘Since the Taliban left I cannot stop smiling,’ she explained. ‘The snows have come back to the city and today there was a bird singing in the tree. And now you have come. We say this is zairay, it means good news and we must give sweets to the bringer, Mr Tawfiq Massood.’

  I noticed that for all her open nature, she ne
ver looked at him as she spoke.

  ‘It has been hard to find you,’ I told her. ‘I first came to Kabul more than two months ago, just after the fall of the Taliban, but I didn’t have your correct address. I wandered all over New Microrayon. I wasn’t even sure whether I was looking for Fatema or Marri.’

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said. ‘My name is Fatema but everyone calls me Marri. I could not risk putting the right address on the letters in case they found them. And in those days we thought they would still be here forever. Then we moved here because the noise of the planes and the bombing was so bad in Microrayon and my mother became very anxious, and we heard that the Taliban knew of our work.’

  ‘Don’t worry. I met all sorts of interesting people I would never otherwise have met.’

  ‘Yes, we say that those who wait hardest for the serpents to go, find the jewels. So please welcome to my city. But I wish you could have seen Kabul when I was young. It was so beautiful then, there were gardens and flowers and everything was good, the air was good, the schools were good, the teachers. It was safe. People flew in and out and wore fine clothes. My mother even went for studies in Delhi. Imagine now.’

  ‘It was a huge risk writing those letters,’ I said. ‘Why did you do it?’

  ‘We thought we were the forgotten people,’ she replied. ‘I was frightened the Taliban would find my letters and I would be put in prison. But it gave us hope that someone somewhere wanted to know … You know the Taliban were very cruel people. They beat my friends, my brother, they even hit my mother in the bazaar. They weren’t Afghans, they were Pakistanis, Arabs and Chechens.’

  I asked her about the class we had seen going on in the front room of the house.

  ‘My sister Latifa is teaching now. This house is much nicer than our apartment but the rent is high and we must find many pupils to earn money.’

  For all her wide smile, there was a sadness in her eyes and she toyed with the end of her scarf as I asked about her own plans.

  ‘Chairman Karzai has promised to reopen the schools and give us our salaries and jobs back,’ she said. ‘I wish I could return to teaching in a proper school and be a good teacher. I would like to have proper books to teach from, and the children to have warm clothes and shoes so they can concentrate. I would like to travel but there is no money. So I would like women from other countries to come here and see what has happened to our country. Not just the ruins, but the people, the children. You know my family has been lucky, we have of course lost some of our education and freedom and my parents lost their jobs so we no longer have a nice house and garden like when I was a child, but we have our lives. Many don’t.’

  She went and fetched a box from which she passed me some black and white pictures of her and Latifa as little girls in pinafore dresses with long cascading hair done up in bows, standing shyly in a garden full of flowers. I could make out roses and a large sunflower.

  I took out of my wallet a photograph of my husband and son on a beach in Portugal to show her in return.

  ‘Can I keep it?’ she asked. ‘They are so beautiful. How lucky you are. And this is the sea? I have read about it and my mother and father have seen it. I would love to see the sea.’

  ‘Would you like to get married and have children?’

  ‘Oh yes! There are lots of weddings now, people feel free, there can be dancing and music, the bride can wear make-up and beautiful dresses. Before what was the point? I didn’t even want to think about it.’

  I asked if she had someone in mind and she laughed. ‘No, my parents will choose. That is our system. My family knows about my future better than me. So it’s better.’

  She took my hand again. ‘Christina, you know it’s difficult. I have known war almost all my life. So it’s hard to believe in peace. And we never imagined the Taliban would go so easily. Now it seems like a bad dream. But we could just as easily wake up again and find the streets once more filled with the men in black and white turbans.’

  Her sister came in to join us and her brother brought in a plate of cakes and biscuits. ‘It is not much,’ said Marri apologetically. ‘It is what we have.’ Her father, she said, had gone to talk to people to see if he could get his job back at the Foreign Ministry but I was surprised she did not go and fetch her mother. I wondered if her parents had any idea she had been secretly writing letters to a foreigner.

  ‘It is our tradition to give presents and I am so sorry I have nothing to give you,’ she said as we swapped addresses and she kissed me goodbye, ‘just this.’ She gave me something wrapped in a cloth. Inside the taxi I opened it to find an old exercise book covered over with pages of writing.

  It was her diary.

  The next morning Tawfiq sat at a table in the hotel translating Marri’s diary. It was the most valuable thing she could have given me, a part of her, and much as I wanted to keep it, I knew I had to send it back.

  While he was working, I went for a final walk along the road from the hotel. On the right I passed the Interior Ministry Hall where I had watched the new government of Hamid Karzai be inaugurated, all the old enemies like General Dostum, Sayyaf, Rabbani and Ismael Khan glaring at each other as their gunmen brooded outside, and I wondered how long it would last. The foreign embassies were starting to reopen and I crossed over to the left to see the Indonesian embassy. There was a driveway leading to a private estate next to it with lots of activity, jeeps going in and out and trucks bringing in mattresses, wardrobes and chairs.

  Suddenly a familiar voice called ‘Christina!’ Some way down the drive a stubby bearded figure in metal-rimmed glasses was waving furiously.

  ‘Hamid!’ It was Hamid Gilani, my old friend from the jihad who I had last had dinner with at the Italian restaurant in Islamabad a couple of years before.

  I ran to him and we hugged each other, tears falling to be in Kabul together, not caring whom we shocked at such open physical contact.

  ‘This is my house!’ he said, pointing at the large building behind. ‘I haven’t lived here for almost thirty years. Come and see.’

  The Gilanis had been rich and this was the biggest private estate in Kabul. ‘It was wonderful growing up here,’ said Hamid as he showed me round the destroyed garden with its cracked earth, dead trees and broken-down walls. ‘We had a pool, tennis courts, vineyards, ten acres of land and here we would have music and barbecues in the summer. My father built houses here for all his sons.’

  He led me to a house with bricked-up windows and armed guards at the door.

  ‘Look what they did. KHAD took over our estate. They turned my brother’s house into a prison and carried out their tortures here. The Taliban did the same. It’s still full of prisoners that we don’t know what to do with.’

  ‘And this.’ He showed me the banquet hall in the main house, which was full of grass and manure on the floor. ‘My parents used to host wonderful dinners here with candles and musicians.’ The Taliban had turned it into stables.

  He shook his head. ‘What is left of this country that one should fight to be ruler of it?’

  ‘How old were you when you left?’ I asked.

  ‘I was just sixteen and left in 1973 to go and study in Cairo and London and by the time I had graduated the Communists had taken over so I couldn’t come back. The rest of my family fled in 1978 when the Communists were arresting and murdering all the intellectuals. They abandoned everything, just took the clothes they were wearing and fled to Iran but then the Shah was deposed. Fortunately we had a house in Knightsbridge just behind Harrods so we sold it to have money to eat.

  ‘I was a careless youth with no problems living a wonderful life by any international standards in a beautiful part of London but when the Communists took over my country, I knew I had to fight so went to Pakistan. I had learnt to use a gun at the age of twelve for hunting. My father refused three times to let me join him in the jihad but I came because I thought we owed it to our people. We were born into privilege, myself, my father, my grandfather, and the
people who had given us that life had been denied all their rights.’

  He smiled at me as we walked down to the gateway. ‘But to be honest if I had known it would take so long maybe I would have had second thoughts.’

  I smiled back, remembering Elphinstone’s words in his Account of the Kingdom of Caubul which I had re-read the previous night. ‘If a man could be transported from England to the Afghan country he would find it difficult to comprehend how a nation could subsist in such disorder and would pity those compelled to pass their days in such a scene,’ he wrote. ‘Yet he would scarce fail to admire their martial and lofty spirit, their hospitality and their bold and simple manners.’

  Almost two hundred years had passed since he had written those words yet, standing there with Hamid, I thought little seemed to have changed.

  It was time for me to go and catch my plane to Abu Dhabi and then on to London. In less than twenty-four hours I would be back in warmth and comfort with my family and though I longed to hold my son again and feel his soft cheeks against mine, all this would seem so very far away and I knew I would be sad.

  ‘Look!’ said Hamid as we waited for his driver.

  I followed his gaze. Standing all alone on the deserted pavement across the road, the man I had seen earlier in the week with the big bundle of brightly coloured balloons was releasing them, one after another. As we stood watching them floating up into the cottonwool sky, wondering why the man was doing it, Hamid smiled at me. ‘We’re here now and that’s good,’ he said, ‘but we lost so many people. One and a half million. That’s too big a number. Every one of them had their story and we must never forget.’

  If you enjoyed The Sewing Circles of Herat, check out these other great Christina Lamb titles.

  An extraordinary collection of reportage that tells the story of some of the most important world events of the past 16 years, from one of the most talented and intrepid female journalists at work today.

 

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