by Fawzia Koofi
We ran as fast as our legs could carry us.
I was so scared of him after that I didn’t ever want to see him again, terrified that if he saw me even weeks later he’d be so angry that he’d kill me.
But in my childhood fantasies, I could not have imagined that it was he who would be killed, and that my golden existence was about to come to a brutal end.
Dear Shuhra and Shaharzad, I know this seems like a very long time ago to you, but I grew up in the 1980s.
That was a time of great political changes around the world, but a time when the people of Afghanistan suffered from the Soviets, communists, and from the countless commanders of the mujahideen.
These years were the beginning of disasters for the people of Afghanistan, and for my childhood.
When the communist Saur Revolution started,* I was exactly three years old, an age when a child needs love, security, and the warm bosom of home.
But most of my friends’ parents were talking about migration to Pakistan and Iran, preparing for a life as refugees.
Children listened as their parents whispered about new equipment people had never seen before, equipment called “tanks” and “helicopters.”
We overheard terms like “invasion,” “war,” and “mujahideen,” but they were meaningless to us.
Children didn’t understand, but they sensed something in the way their mothers seemed to hold them closer at night.
I am happy you have never experienced such uncertainty and fear of a time like this. No child should ever have to feel it.
With love,
Your mother
*The Saur Revolution is the name given to the Communist People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) takeover of political power from the government of Afghanistan on April 28, 1978. The word “Saur” refers to the Dari name of the second month of the Persian calendar, the month in which the uprising took place.
This was widely seen as the start of de-facto soviet rule in Afghanistan, with a pro-Soviet puppet government appointed after the revolution. Once in power, the PDPA implemented a Soviet communist agenda. It moved to promote state atheism and carried out illconceived land reform, which was resented by virtually all Afghans. It changed the national flag from the traditional Islamic green color to a near-copy of the red flag of the Soviet Union, a provocative affront to the people of this conservative Islamic country. The PDPA also imprisoned, tortured or murdered thousands of members of the traditional elite, the religious establishment, and the intelligentsia.
THREE
A TERRIBLE LOSS
The year was 1978, and both the mujahideen and the Russians were beginning to make their presence felt in Afghanistan for the first time.
It was the height of the cold war, and the Soviet Union was keen to show strength. The USSR was working under an expansionist agenda in those days, and Afghanistan lay between Moscow and the warm-water ports of Pakistan, where the USSR wanted to place its naval fleet. To do so it needed control of Afghanistan and was beginning to exert its strategic influence to ensure that happened. Eventually, the USSR invaded Afghanistan.
In later years Afghan fighters, known as the mujahideen, defeated those Russians invaders and became heroes among the people. But at the time the Afghan public knew them only as anti-government rebels.
The mujahideen first made their presence felt in Northern Badakhshan. The central regime in Kabul was in upheaval: The king had been forced into exile, but his successor President Khan did not last long. He and his entire family were assassinated in his palace, and communist sympathizers, Nur Muhammad Taraky and Hafizullah Amin, took control. Taraky became the first communist-backed president, but a few months later he was killed by Amin on the orders of the USSR government in Moscow.
Amin then took over the presidency with the support of Moscow. He is remembered as probably the cruelest president in the history of Afghanistan. His regime was terrifying; torture and arrests were commonplace. He tried to kill anyone who opposed the government—intellectuals, teachers, religious leaders, anyone who dared to say a word against the ruling forces would be dragged from their house at night and, if they were lucky, taken to Puli Charkhi, Kabul’s largest jail, where they faced interrogation and torture. The unlucky ones were thrown into the rivers. In those days Afghanistan’s rivers witnessed thousands of lives being taken, all without reason or trial.
During this time my father continued his work, trying to stay focused on helping Badakhshan even through those days of terror. He remained outspoken, despite the risk of torture or more imprisonment. But perhaps the regime knew he was more useful to them alive than dead. The mujahideen rebels were beginning to make their presence known, and the government was nervous. The rebels had a stronghold in Badakhshan. Eventually the government ordered my father back to his province with instructions to settle the mujahideen or else. They made clear the penalty for failure would be death.
A man of peace, my father was certain he could reason with the mujahideen; after all, they were his fellow Afghans. He understood the political uncertainties of the time and the calls for more social justice. These were men from his own province, Badakhshanis just like him, and he was sure that once he had spoken to them he could calm their fears, listen to their complaints, and offer to help them in exchange for their cooperation with the government. But the Afghanistan my father thought he knew—the values of country first, Islamic tradition, and natural justice that he believed in so strongly— had already begun to change.
He arrived in Badakhshan on his mission with a heavy heart. He had no love for the Amin regime and in truth didn’t know what was best for the people of Afghanistan. He gathered his provincial elders together in what is known as a jirga, a meeting of tribal leaders and elders, and explained to them what he had seen in Kabul: a government who didn’t want young people to be educated for fear they would turn into dissidents; a government who killed with impunity; a land where teachers and intellectuals lived in fear; an Afghanistan where government opponents were simply crushed. After the heady years of King Zahir Shah’s reign, when Afghanistan was regarded as one of the world’s fastest-developing countries, after all that promise of democracy, it was crushing to see the reality of communist rule.
Some of the Afghans who had gone to the mountains to fight with the mujahideen truly believed they were there to fight for the future of Afghanistan. My father was still a government servant but he understood the mujahideen and respected them in many ways. He simply didn’t know which way to turn, and asked the elders what they should do.
The jirga debated for hours. Some wanted to join the rebels; others wanted government rule for better or worse. But in the end local needs won the day when one man stood up and spoke in a clear voice. “Sir,” he said. “We are already very poor, we can’t bear to have a fight. We should talk to them and bring them down from mountains, why should we fight?”
Finally the group agreed to go and talk to them. My father gathered hundreds of local elders from all over the province. They rode on horseback for over a day to reach the rebels’ camp. The Pamir mountain range is as high and as treacherous as it is beautiful. Fertile lush valleys soon give way to rocks of different colors—blues, greens, and orange ochres that change with the light—then on to towering snow-covered peaks and plateaus. Even today there are few roads in Badakhshan, but then there was nothing apart from the donkey and horse tracks, some so narrow and steep that the only way to pass was to hold onto your donkey or horse’s tail, close your eyes, and pray the sure-footed beast didn’t slip. To fall was certain death—plunged down the mountainside into one of the icy rivers below, swept away by the rapids.
After a day and a half of solid riding, they reached the highest point of the Pamir, where it gives way to a wonderful natural plain—almost as high as the heavens. In winter men from all over the province gather here to play Buzkashi, the origins of the game now known in the west as polo. It’s a skilled game, a test of rider and horse, where men must rac
e their horses to pick up and place the carcass of a dead cow into the goal area, marked with a circle, at the end of the pitch. In ancient times, the carcass was a dead prisoner. Games are fast and exciting, sometimes involving hundreds of riders and lasting for several days. It’s a game as wild, dangerous, and clever as the men who play it. It is the true sport and essence of the Afghan warrior.
But as my father rode, thoughts of the pleasures of a Buzkashi game were furthest from his mind. He remained calm and composed, still wearing his hat, leading his white horse at the head of the group. Then three men suddenly appeared in the middle of the road and pointed rifles at them.
One of them shouted, “Wakil Abdul Rahman, so it is you. I have waited a long time for this chance to kill you.”
My father shouted back in a cool voice: “Please listen to me. The government of Afghanistan is strong. You cannot defeat it. I come here to ask you to work with it, to stand together and to cooperate with us. I will listen to your needs and I will take them to parliament.”
The man simply laughed and fired a shot. Other shots rang from out from behind the mountains. Pandemonium ensued. The village men—who were mostly unarmed—ran for their lives. My father’s horse had been hit, and as it reared up in pain he lost his stirrup footing and was half dragged along as his mount galloped. The wounded animal headed for a small river that ran along the edge of the Buzkashi pitch. Some of the younger men tried to follow him but he shouted at them to flee and to save themselves. “I’m an elder,” he yelled as he was dragged along. “They will talk to me but they will kill you. Just go.”
The mujahideen gave chase and found my father.
They held him hostage for two days. I don’t know if they gave him an opportunity to talk, if they listened to his reasoning and considered his offers, or if they beat and humiliated him. All we know is that two days later they executed him, shot him straight through the head.
News of his death reached the village quickly. Despite the remoteness of the region news has always traveled fast, a sophisticated system of a person passing on urgent messages at each hamlet along the way. And of course some of the men who had accompanied my father had already arrived home and reported the shooting of his horse. In Islam a body must be buried within 24 hours facing Mecca. The idea of my father’s body being left alone on the mountainside without proper burial was one my family couldn’t bear. He had to be brought back. But the mujahideen sent word to warn us that they would kill anyone who attempted to retrieve the body. No man wanted to be shot and killed themselves just to bring home a dead body.
So it fell to a woman to show bravery. My aunt Gada—my father’s elder sister—stood up, gathered her long skirts, and put on her burqa, announcing to the shocked male gathering that she, Gada, would go retrieve the body of Wakil Abdul Rahman. As she strode out of the room and straight up the path to the mountains, her husband and my father’s cousin had little choice but to follow her.
After walking for 13 hours they found him, his body dumped halfway between the village and the rebel camp.
I was three and a half years old, and I remember clearly the sadness of the day he was shot, listening to both men and women weep, alarmed by the fear and confusion in the village.
I lay awake all night listening, until at around 2:00 a.m. I heard my aunt’s voice ringing out loud and clear as she approached the village. She was carrying my father’s wooden staff and tapping it on the ground.
“Wakil Abdul Rahman is here. Get out of your beds. Come to greet him. He is here. We have brought him. Wakil Abdul Rahman is here.”
I leapt out of bed thinking, “He’s alive, my father’s alive.” Everything was going to be ok. The father was here. He would know what to do. He would restore order and stop everyone crying.
I ran into the street barefoot. I stopped dead in my tracks at the sight of my mother weeping and grabbing at her clothes in horror. I darted past her and saw my father’s dead body. The top part of his skull, where the bullets had entered, was missing.
I began to cry. I didn’t yet fully understand the enormity of what had happened but I knew that our life would never be the same.
The body was brought into the hooli and laid out in the Paris Suite before burial. My mother alone went to see the body and prepare it for the funeral. Only she of the wives said her final goodbyes to him. In the room where her children were conceived, the room where husband and wife had, in all too rare moments, lain and talked and created their own private world together, she endured this task, as she had endured everything else in her harsh life: with dignity and duty. She didn’t scream or wail out loud; she washed and prepared the body in accordance with God. In his death, just as in his life, she did not fail my father.
In the morning thousands of local people poured into Koof to say a final goodbye to him. Their sadness and fear for their own futures created an atmosphere so heavy that it felt like the very sky was falling down on our heads.
Gray-haired old men with beards, white turbans, and green coats sat in the garden crying like babies. My father was buried on a peak behind the hooli, facing Mecca and the valley of Koof he so loved.
For the villagers, losing the man who had championed their causes and supported their needs was a turning point. It marked the beginning of the political upheaval that was about to become full-blown war in Afghanistan.
For my family, losing my father meant losing everything: our lives, our wealth, our figurehead, our reason for being.
Dear Shuhra and Shaharzad,
When I was a little child I didn’t know the words “war,” “rocket,” “wounded,” “killing,” “rape.”
Words which sadly all Afghan children are familiar with today. Until the age of four I knew only happy words.
I long for those nights of summer when we would all sleep on the big flat roof of my uncle’s house. His house was just next door to the hooli but it had the roof with the best view of the valley so all the family liked to gather there.
Until late at night my mother, my uncle’s wives, and my small mother—my father’s fourth wife and my mother’s best friend—would sit and tell old stories.
We children sat under the blue sky, or under the bright yellow moon to listen to these sweet stories. We never closed the door at nights and had no security men with guns like we do today, because there were no worries about thieves or any other dangers.
In these happy times and with everyone being nice to me, I couldn’t even begin to imagine how I had begun my life, that my mother was not happy when I was born and put me in the sun thinking I’d die.
I never felt that my birth had degraded my mother the way it did. I felt only that I was loved.
But this happy life didn’t last for long. I had to grow up fast.
My father’s murder was just the first of many more tragedies and deaths to hit our family.
And being forced to leave those beautiful gardens of Koof, with cold spring water and big trees, the experience of being refugees and homeless in our own country ended my childhood.
The only thing which didn’t change was the constant smile of my mother, your grandmother.
With love,
Your mother
FOUR
RUNNING
Although she grieved for the man she loved, my father’s death was in many ways the making of my mother.
In those first few months, her natural leadership abilities and skills came to the fore. It was she who took control of the family, organizing resources, deciding the fate of children. Her years of practice as my father’s right hand, of political organizing and efficient home management, of keeping the peace within our extended family, allowed her to lead our family out of this dark period. Her priorities were keeping the children together and safe. She received many offers of marriage, but for the same reasons she had once refused to divorce my father—the fear of losing her children—she refused all suitors.
Not all of the wives fared so well.
Ennayat’
s mother—still young and somewhat flighty—married a handsome young man who had worked for my father as a shepherd guarding the family cattle. He had gone to Iran to find work and recently returned, bringing with him exciting consumer goods, including a tape recorder, not found in our little village. He wooed her with his tales of the sophisticated life in Iran and with that tape recorder.
But as is normal in our culture, a stepfather has no obligation to take the children from a previous marriage, and he refused to care for them. Aside from Ennayat, she had borne my father three other children: Ennayat’s brother Hedayat, sister Nazi, and a six-month-old son, Safiullah. She insisted on taking the children with her to her new home, but the new husband refused to feed or clothe them. When my mother visited a few weeks later, she found Ennayat and his two older siblings crying in the yard. They were not allowed in the warmth of the house and were hungry and dirty. She took them home with her immediately. But the young woman refused to give up her baby. My mother, who was sympathetic to her, left without baby Safiullah. It was something my mother regretted forever, because a few days later he got a fever and was left to die without food or comfort. We heard that he cried alone for hours, his little face covered with flies, while this man would not allow his mother to even pick him up. He died a lonely, horrible death. Ennayat has never gotten over it and named his own first-born son Safiullah in his memory.
Khal bibi, who had been so dear to my mother, was luckier. She married a local leader, a kindly man who had no previous children. In a gesture almost unheard of in our culture, he raised her two sons like his own, even leaving his property to them when he died.