by Fawzia Koofi
Niaz bibi, the wife who didn’t get on with my mother, married a teacher and remained in Koof. Despite her and my mother’s disagreements, years later, when I was campaigning for parliament, this man helped me enormously, arranging transport for me and accompanying me on the campaign trail. The extended family structure is hard for people in the western world to understand, but in my view it is a wonderful thing. Those ties transcend generations, petty arguments, and geography. Family is family.
Zulmaishah, the Khalifa’s child and my father’s eldest son, inherited the hooli. He was later killed, and Nadir, the child of my fifth mother—one of the wives my father divorced—inherited it and still lives in it to this day.
But in those first days and weeks after my father was killed we didn’t have much time to grieve, because the world beyond the mountains was getting closer, and the rapidly disintegrating political situation was about to come crashing down on us.
A few days after his death, the commanders who had killed my father came looking for us. We ran up to the fields where our cattle were and hid behind a large rock ledge. We watched as they looted the house, stealing all they could carry—the radio, the furniture, the pots and pans, they took it all.
Then, a few weeks later, we were all sleeping on the roof of my uncle’s house when they came back in the middle of the night. They awoke us by hitting us all with their rifles. They were yelling and screaming, demanding to know where the sons of Abdul Rahman were. My brother Muqim was just six years old, but if they had found him they would have killed him. Somehow my mother managed to pass him to a neighbor on the next roof, who hid him underneath her skirts. In some parts of Afghanistan shalwar kameez are the norm for women, but village women in Badakhshan wear loose pantaloons covered by long, full skirts. Those skirts saved my brother’s life that night. The mujahideen took my sister and my sister-in-law, my elder brother’s wife. Both girls had just turned 16. They started to beat them. My uncle tried to stop them but he was beaten back. They took the girls off the roof and down toward the hooli. My uncles and male cousins were screaming at them, telling them this was against Islam, that this was haram, forbidden, and that no Muslim should touch a woman who is not his blood relative or his wife.
We were forced to watch from the roof as they beat the girls all night long, pistol whipping them and hitting them with rifle butts. They kept demanding to know where the weapons were hidden, but no one claimed to know. My mother was white as a sheet and grim-faced, but she said nothing. We all watched as they put the bayonet of the gun to my sister’s chest and pressed it until she began to bleed. We had a guard dog called Chamber who was chained near the gate of the hooli. So desperate was he to protect his family that he tugged until his chains broke free; he ran toward the men, barking and snarling, ready to bite, but they simply turned and shot him dead. They beat the two girls until dawn, when the call to prayer was heard over the mountain. They left, presumably to go pray.
Two days later they came again and threatened to kill us all. This time they forced Nadir, who was a teenager, to show them where the guns were. My mother had known all along and had even watched as her daughter and daughter-in-law were beaten without betraying the whereabouts of the weapons. My mother knew that with the guns gone, our last method of protection was gone. They had taken everything we had; the next time, they would kill us.
The men of the village were so horrified by what had happened to the girls that night that they sent a message to the mujahideen, saying that if they came back to our village they would meet resistance. They would take up shovels, pick axes, and staffs, whatever they had, and use it to protect their women. The mujahideen agreed not to terrify the village, but they wanted the family of Abdul Rahman dead. Their commander gave permission for his men to execute us. This was the second time I stared death in the face.
They came early the following morning. By now the Khalifa and her children had moved to another village, so my mother was the only wife left in the hooli. Fortunately most of the children were out playing and were able to hide in neighbor’s houses. My mother grabbed me and the two of us ran into the cattle house. Our neighbors frantically started to pile up pieces of dung in front of us to give us cover. I remember the smell and the choking bitter taste of the dung. It felt like I was being buried alive. I clung tightly to my mother’s hand, too afraid to cough for fear they would find us. We were there for hours, silent, terrified. The only sense of security was my mother’s fingers wrapped around mine. We could hear them searching for us, and at one point they came right up to our hiding place. If they had prodded the dung pile it would have tumbled down, revealing our positions, but for reasons only God knows, they didn’t.
After they finally left, we came out of our hiding place to find the world had turned to terror: our hooli had been completely ransacked. My mother grabbed me, my two brothers, and my elder sister. She didn’t waste time gathering our clothes, and we ran. We ran down past the garden, through the hay fields, and onto the river banks. We were leaving all we had behind and we didn’t dare even to glance back. For my mother, it was as though her life was collapsing with each step she took. All the beatings, all the pain, all the years of drudgery and work, it was all to build a home and a life. A life that ended as we ran for our very survival along the river bank.
As expected, the men returned to search again, and they looked down into the valley and saw us running away. They started to give chase. They were stronger, faster. I was getting tired and was beginning to stumble and slow the others down. My sister started to scream at my mother to throw me into the river to save the others: “If you don’t throw her they’ll catch us and we’ll all die. Just throw her.”
She almost did. My mother picked me up and lifted me into the air as if to throw me, but she looked into my eyes and recalled her promise at my birth that no more harm would ever come my way. From somewhere deep inside her she gathered reserves of strength and instead of throwing me to my death put me on her back, where I clung on as she ran with me. We were the last of the group and I could hear the footsteps of the men getting closer. I thought that at any second they’d be upon us and would tear me from my mother’s back and kill me. If I close my eyes today I still feel the clammy, cold, awful fear of that moment.
Then, suddenly, we saw a Russian.
WE’D REACHED THE OTHER SIDE OF THE VALLEY, which was government-controlled land. Our would-be assassins turned and ran back. We collapsed with exhaustion and relief. My mother started to weep.
That Russian was the first of many I would see in the following years. They were foreign invaders in Afghan land, and although they would bring education and development in some areas, they would commit many atrocities on innocent Afghans. This one, though, was kind to me. He was tall and blond, in army uniform, and he called me over. Hesitantly, I walked toward him. He handed me a bag of sugar, which I ran back to my mother with. It was the first, but not the last, time my mother would be forced to accept charity.
First the five of us stayed close to the river, in the home of a teacher named Rahmullah. He was just about one of the kindest people I ever met, with warm eyes that crinkled when he smiled and a neat gray beard. The family was poor and couldn’t really afford the extra mouths to feed, but he had been one of my father’s political supporters and he was honored to have the Wakil’s family in his simple two-room home.
His garden backed directly onto the river, and I remember playing happily, splashing about with his daughters. It was a relationship that would endure. Years later he came to me for support because his daughter needed to escape a forced marriage. The family had arranged the match when she was a child, but the man in question had grown up to be notoriously violent and the girl wanted to refuse him. His family insisted the match go ahead, but Rahmullah supported his daughter’s right to say no. I negotiated between the two families, eventually getting the other side to agree to break the engagement. The girl was then free to follow her dream and train as a teacher like he
r father. In gratitude, Rahmullah gave me all the help he could in my political campaigns. Today, if I visit the area I love nothing more than to take a simple lunch of rice and chicken by the river with this lovely family.
After staying with them for two weeks my mother was restless, confused about what to do and where to go. We heard contradictory news about our house, including that the mujahideen had burned it down and killed my sister and sister-in-law, who were still living there. Happily, the news was not accurate and the girls had survived.
My two elder brothers, Jamalshah and Mirshakay, had already moved to Faizabad before the attacks began. The elder one was a chief of police and the younger one a student. When news of what had happened to us finally reached them, they chartered a flight to Koof to pick us all up.
When the helicopter landed my mother was sobbing with relief. It was the first time I’d ever flown, and I remember running toward the helicopter ahead of the two boys and my big sister. Inside the helicopter there were two big wooden chairs; I put myself in the corner of one of the chairs, and my mother and sister sat in the other. Ennayat and Muqim had no chair, and I remember looking at them and smiling smugly because I had a chair and they did not.
In Faizabad my brother had rented us a house. He couldn’t afford much on his policeman’s salary, and it was a basic two-room mud shack. Local people gave my mother the basics: plates, pots, etc. The fancy imported china she was used to serving food on in the hooli was a thing of the past. She joked we were living in a dollhouse, it was so tiny, but she did her best to turn it into a home for us, putting hangings and tapestries on the walls to brighten it up.
By now I was seven. I still looked like a typical village girl, dirty hair and face, wearing baggy kameez trousers, a long scarf that trailed in the mud, and a pair of red wellington boots. I was so out of place in the big town.
From the dollhouse, I watched as the young girls went to school. These girls looked so smart and bright, and I yearned to be like them. But no girl child in my family had ever been educated; my father didn’t see the need. But he was no longer here. So I asked my mother if I could go. She looked at me for a long, long time—it felt like hours—beamed a big smile, and said yes. “Yes Fawzia jan, you can go to school.”
Everyone else was against it, particularly my older brothers. But my mother held fast and insisted. I was to go with Muqim to school the next day to ask permission to join. We went into the headmaster’s office. I remember the office being smart and clean with padded chairs, and I felt so tiny and so very dirty. My nose was full of snot and my face was covered with dirty marks, and feeling suddenly embarrassed, I used my scarf to wipe my nose loudly.
The headmaster frowned and peered at me. How was it a dirty little village girl like me was here in Faizabad asking to be educated? “Who are your people?” he asked me. When I answered I was the daughter of Wakil Abdul Rahman he raised his eyebrows in surprise. This was how far down the social scale our family had fallen since his death. But the kindly man admitted me to school and told me to start the next day. I remember running home to tell my mother, my scarf trailing in the mud and tripping me. My little heart was so full of excitement that I forgot everything else—my father’s death, the loss of our home, our life of poverty.
I, Fawzia Koofi, was going to school!
I was so determined to make the most of every moment of school it didn’t take me long to catch up with the other girls, and soon I was regularly achieving second and first place in class. Nothing has ever brought me such joy as studying for an exam and receiving a top grade.
Our education was fairly basic: general studies half the day at Kockcha high school, and study of the Holy Quran the other half of the day from the mullah iman at the local mosque. My mother—herself totally illiterate—was very interested in the Quranic studies.
At night I slept alongside my brother Muqim in our mother’s bed. Our routine was always the same. She would ask us what we had studied, and we had to tell her what we remembered and recite the Quran to her, and she would make verbal corrections of our readings. It was her way of being involved in our education, and she loved it.
By the time I got to Pamir high school, the first high school in Faizabad, I was a confident child. I cut my hair short in order to look like the other girls. My brothers were furious, but again my mother calmed them down and, I believe, secretly enjoyed my newfound confidence and development.
Sometimes we’d have access to television and I would hear about Margaret Thatcher in the UK or Indira Gandhi, the prime minister of India, who remains a heroine of mine to this day.
I would watch them with my mouth open and think to myself, How is it possible that a woman stands in front of all those people? How can a simple woman lead them? And where does she find the power to speak to the all those people?
Other times, my friends and I would climb on the roof of my school to play. Slowly my horizons were broadening. When I was a toddler, I used to stand in the kitchen of the hooli looking up at the sky and thinking my whole existence was there. Now I stared from the roof at the streets surrounding the school. I believed then that the whole sky stood on the mountains around Faizabad, and all the world, my world, was in that city and its surrounding areas.
I was extremely happy there until the age of 11, when my brother Jamalshah got a promotion within the police force and was posted to Kabul. We were to go with him. I think the day we moved was one of the most exciting days of my life. Not only was I thrilled to be moving to the exciting capital city, a place I had only seen on TV, but I was transferring to a big high school there. I was fit to burst.
Kabul was exactly as I had dreamed it would be—noisy, exciting, and loud. I marveled at the yellow taxi cabs with black stripes down the sides, the blue Millie buses with female drivers in smart uniforms (the Millie was Kabul’s electric bus system, one of the few electric bus system in the world at the time), the glitzy shops with all the latest fashions, and the smell of delicious barbequed meat floating from the hundreds of restaurants. The city embraced me, and I loved it back with all my heart.
For the next three years we stayed in Kabul, and they were some of the happiest years of my childhood. My mother loved the city, too. She found shopping in the big bazaars tremendously exciting and stimulating. It wasn’t much, but these were levels of independence she could never have dreamed of when she was married to my father. The same was true for me. I experimented with fashion and talked about poetry and literature with my friends. We’d walk home from school along tree-lined boulevards, carrying our books with pride. These new school friends seemed so sophisticated and glamorous to me. Their families had houses with swimming pools; their mothers were chic with bobbed hairstyles, and their fathers indulgent and kind, trailing behind them the faint scent of aftershave and scotch whisky. Some of these girls even wore makeup and nail varnish. I was banned by my brothers from trying it, and I recall one day when I’d secretly put some on at a friends house. I also borrowed some of her clothes, long socks and a short skirt. My friend and I were casually sauntering around, pleased with how cool we thought we looked, when Jamalshah drove past in his car. He saw me and slowed down, staring out the open window. I didn’t have time to hide, so I turned and faced the wall. My thinking was if he couldn’t see me I couldn’t see him. But of course he did. And he was waiting for me when I got home. He made like he was going to beat me so I ran away to hide. As I ran I heard him bellow with laughter, calling my mother to tell her the tale. She laughed too, and shamefaced I quietly snuck back in for dinner.
Those days in Kabul were free and light and fun.
But once again the wider world was about to collide with my little world.
Dear Shuhra and Shaharzad,
When I was young I felt like my life changed all the time. Each time we found a safe place to live or a moment of calm, the war forced change back upon us.
I hated change in those days. All I wanted was to stay in one place, in one home, and go to sc
hool. I had big dreams but I also wanted a contented life. I want the same for you, too. I want you to fly free and find your dreams, but I also want you to have a happy home, a husband who loves you, and one day experience the joy of having children of your own.
Even in your short lives you’ve had to experience more changes than I would have wished for you. Tolerating a bad situation is often easier than having change forced upon us. But sometimes I worry that I have asked you to tolerate too much. My long absences, your fears that I will be killed and that you will be left motherless.
But sometimes tolerating something is the wrong approach. Being able to adapt and start anew is an ability that all great leaders have shared. Change isn’t always our enemy and you need to learn to accept it as a necessary part of life. If we make a friend of change and welcome it in, then it may choose to treat us less painfully the next time it comes to call.
With love,
Your mother
FIVE
A VILLAGE GIRL AGAIN
It was the beginning of the 1990s. Apartheid in South Africa had ended. In Europe the Berlin Wall was coming down, the great Soviet empire was dismantling, and the cold war was reaching its final years.
The mujahideen fighters were seasoned veterans by now. They fought a successful war of attrition against the Russian invaders. And in 1989 they succeeded in sending the Soviet army retreating back to Moscow. Crowds cheered and clapped as the Red Army was forced to make a humiliating defeat. The fighters’ morale had never been higher and many people saw them as heroes. The most popular of them all was Ahmed Shah Massoud, the man known as the Lion of Panjshir. He was seen as the most brilliant and clever of all the mujahideen warlords and the man who was the real strategist behind the Russian defeat. His image is still found on posters all over Afghanistan today.