The Favored Daughter

by Fawzia Koofi

  We crept through the tiny alleyways that separated the houses. Any noise or panicked movement could draw attention in the form of bullets. My mother and I inched our way forward, up the hill and toward safety.

  The house was built in traditional Kabuli style, made from large graybrown bricks and very square, with small windows to keep the heat out in summer and the warmth in during the freezing winters. A sloping roof of curved tiles ran parallel to the hill. At the back was a courtyard with fruit trees and flowers. As we hammered on the door I wondered if the trees were still there. My relatives answered the door. They were visibly scared. They thought we were mujahideen coming to rob or kill them. When they realized it was us they dragged us inside and shut the door. I was so relieved to be safe, but I felt very sad to be back in this house so unexpectedly. This was actually the house my brother was living in when he was murdered. My mother knew this too, and she started crying again. We were both so physically and emotionally exhausted it was all we could do. My relatives brought us tea and some food, but neither of us could take anything aside from a little tea. Blankets were fetched and we went to bed, on my mother’s insistence, in my brother’s room.

  Neither of us slept that night. I lay wrapped in a blanket thinking about my brother and the terrible things I had seen that day. How it felt to watch my country implode. How a taxi driver loading bodies into his car was the most decent, civilized thing I had seen all day. How a woman will walk through rocket fire to mourn a beloved son, and why men with guns who fought to free Afghanistan from the Soviets were now destroying this country to satisfy their own personal lust for power. My mother wept all night, her knees pulled to her chest, lamenting her loss. That night seemed to drag on forever. In some ways I wish it had. By dawn there was enough light in the room to see the bullet holes from the rounds that had sprayed from the gunman’s Kalashnikov and killed Muqim.

  That terrible sight only seemed to strengthen my mother’s resolve. Her determination and pragmatism were returning. That morning she made hot green tea for me, and then staunchly announced we would be moving out of the apartment at Makrorian and moving here, closer to the cemetery. My mother’s logic was impeccable as always—if you must walk in a war zone, better to make it a short walk.

  My father’s house had spectacular views over the city. The neighborhood was home to many affluent Kabulis. Instead of being able to enjoy the cityscape that tumbled out toward the mountains, we were now forced to witness the fighting that was raging beneath us as if the city were a horror movie. Machine guns chattered, and rockets hissed and roared as they exploded into buildings. From our high lookout we could see the two sides exchanging fire, tracers from the explosives lighting up the darkness. I watched the fighters as they organized themselves and directed fresh attacks on enemy positions. Some of the homes there had been built using colored plaster. I was watching the battle one day when an artillery rocket landed directly on top of a pretty pink house. The blast made the earth tremble and sent chunks of masonry flying more than a hundred yards into the air. Where the house stood just a few seconds previously was now a cloud of pink dust, almost a mist, settling over the surrounding houses. I saw the same thing happen to a blue house, too—there was nothing left of the house when it exploded like a ghastly firework, fading out with a trail of blue fog rolling through the streets. The tragic inhabitants inside were blown to smithereens along with their house.

  For me, one of the saddest moments was when the polytechnic school got hit in the fighting. It had been built by the Russians and was a very good institution. During their time in Afghanistan the Russians had built a lot of institutions. We wanted the Russians gone because they were invaders in our land, but at the same time we had been thankful for some of the infrastructure and building they brought with them. A lot of young high school graduates continued their studies there, learning computer science, architecture, and engineering. Even Ahmed Shah Massoud had studied there. For a long time as a little girl I aspired to attend one day, too. That dream ended the day the library was destroyed. It was late in the day and the fighting was beginning to die down. I don’t know if whoever fired the rocket intended to hit the polytechnic. Neither side were using it as a base, so perhaps it was an accident. Or maybe they just wanted to destroy it and what it represented. Either way, the result was the same. When the rocket exploded in the side of the polytechnic library I gave a little gasp of shock. Then, in the way one watches a horror movie, not wanting to see the end but unable to turn away from the inevitable, I watched, growing more and more sickened, as the smoke gave way to flames, licking at the gaping wound. Inside were thousands of books that had helped educate many young Afghans. Now those books were fueling an increasingly large fire. There was no fire brigade, of course. Nobody rushed to save all this knowledge that could help improve our country and educate our people. Nobody except me really even seemed to notice. I watched it burn until it was time to go to bed. I went to bed numb with the idea that so many words, so much literature and learning, had perished. But I also felt guilty for caring about books when people were burning in flames, too.

  My mother quickly settled into her routine in that house.

  Every morning she would wake, eat a simple breakfast of traditional Afghan naan bread and green tea, and make the dangerous journey to change the flowers on my brother’s grave. She would take the shortcut down the hill, weaving through the alleys and rocky tracks that made up the hillside before creeping across the open ground to the cemetery. She would return a little later, puffy around the eyes from crying. It upset her but it also seemed to strengthen her, despite the risks. The routine seemed to galvanize her, and her return to the house was usually marked by a flurry of domestic activity. My relatives had been living there and guarding the property, but they hadn’t turned it into a home. My mother set about this job, organizing, cleaning, and decorating. Furniture was cleaned and aired, rugs beaten, pots and pans cleaned and buffed until they gleamed black or copper. The yard was emptied of rubbish and swept.

  But she never again went into my brother’s room. That was left as we found it, broken and bullet marked. My mother and I never discussed cleaning that room. It was just understood that for however long we were living here, the bedroom was to stay untouched, at least until such time my mother decided otherwise. The door was closed, and that was that. My brother was to be remembered in death, as he was in life, bright and wonderful like the silk flowers that stood on his grave—not in the violent evidence of his last living moments.

  My elder brother Mirshakay would try to visit us every day. To put it mildly, he wasn’t very happy about my mother’s decision to stay at the house. But he understood her reasons and for the moment was prepared to let us remain there. Sometimes he would bring my sisters, too, and on those nights we would sit down and have a meal like we might have had in more peaceful times. We would gossip and laugh, but despite the banter, there was no escaping the underlying fear we all shared for our future.

  It seemed to be a turning point for the city’s middle class. Until now most had been prepared to sit out the fighting and see what happened. Leaving prematurely would mean leaving your house open to looting. But with the civil war showing no signs of ending, many intellectuals and professionals fled to Pakistan. They would load the essentials for an uncertain life—mostly clothes, documents, and jewelry—into their cars, try to secure their homes, and then slip out of the city during a lull in the fighting. Most Afghans live with their extended family, so usually it was the father and his wife or wives, plus the children, driving to Pakistan. Elderly or more distant relatives were left behind to guard the house and scratch out an existence as best they could.

  Nobody judged them for their decision to leave. Many who stayed behind would have gone, too, if they had the chance. And when the fighting intensified, it appeared their choice had been correct. One morning a friend of Mirshakay’s appeared at the door. He was visibly frightened, having driven though some of the areas of in
tense fighting. He insisted we come with him immediately. My brother had sent him to take my mother and me back to the apartment at Makrorian. My mother refused to leave, and she and the man argued for a while as he pleaded with her to follow my brother’s wishes. But my mother was adamant she would not leave her son’s grave unattended, and there was nothing this bedraggled messenger could say or do to make her change her mind. My mother was an immovable force, and she was determined that we would remain in the house, whatever the risks.

  Or so she said at the time. But the news we got just a few hours later instantly changed her mind. My mother had been out trying to buy food when she heard the story. The night before, a few doors away, a group of mujahideen had smashed their way into a house and raped all the women and girls inside. My mother showed little concern for her own safety, but the virginity and sanctity of her daughter was paramount. In Afghan culture rape is despised, but it is an all-too-common crime in times of war and peace. While the rapist can be put to death, the woman must endure a much longer punishment, where she becomes a social pariah, even in her own family. The victims of rape are often cast out like a kind of broken harlot, as if they did something to provoke the attack or inflame the loins of the man, who was driven mad by lust and unable to control himself. No Afghan man would marry a woman who had been raped. Any suitor would want to be certain his bride was pure, no matter how violent or unjust the circumstances of her deflowering.

  My mother went from being determined to stay to being determined to leave. She didn’t give me the full details of the attack but ordered me to collect my things and she set about doing the same. I was really scared, but I also knew better than to debate the subject with her. We were leaving. Now.

  My brother’s messenger had already left in his car, so the only way back to the apartment was on foot. The memories of my journey through the city the first time still haunted me, and the thought of doing it again made me feel like I was going to be sick. We’d have to run down boulevards of sniper fire, go through checkpoints, and risk seeing dead bodies left from the shelling of the night before.

  My mother left our relatives with instructions to keep guarding and maintaining the house, and we nervously stepped onto the street. We started running. We both knew we had a long way to go and I think we just wanted to get it over with. We ran from house to house, careful not to linger in the open, scanning doorways and darkened windows for any signs of movement, listening for gunfire that might signal the presence of a machine gun or sniper up ahead.

  We hadn’t gone far when a woman came running toward us. She was screaming hysterically about her daughter. She just stood there screaming, “My daughter, my daughter.”

  I could hear from her accent that she was Hazara—one of Afghanistan’s minority Shia Muslim population.

  I was too scared to open my mouth, but my mother asked her what had happened. The woman’s head was shaking with uncontrollable emotion, the blue hood on her burqa wobbling every time she convulsed with grief. Her tears formed little beads on the mesh, embroidered and glistening in the sunlight.

  The woman’s house had been destroyed days earlier in the fighting. She and her daughter had no alternative but to flee. They took shelter in a Shia mosque, where around 150 other women, their husbands dead or caught up in the fighting, were taking shelter.

  She told us how the mosque was hit by rocket fire and caught alight, and I remembered then that I had seen the building blazing in the distance as I stared in silence through the window of my father’s house.

  The mosque had burned very quickly. Those who survived the explosion rushed for the exit, but in the smoke and dust and screaming dozens of others must have been trampled, or overcome by the smoke and the flames. The woman told us how she and her daughter were near the explosion when it hit, knocking them off their feet in a blast of concrete and roof tiles. When they came to, the building was already burning. Women and children were screaming and crying, running in panic. The only light came from the flames, which grew higher every second. Some women dragged their children to safety by stepping on the children of other women, while the screams of so many mothers trying to locate their youngsters separated in the dark was deafening, adding to the panic.

  Her daughter spotted a hole in the wall caused by the explosion, and the pair of them crawled through it and wriggled to safety.

  Earlier that morning, exhausted, dehydrated, and starving, she approached a mujahideen checkpoint, begging to be given safe passage. She told us how the mujahideen commander had agreed to allow her through so they could escape. The woman was cautious and had told her daughter to stay hidden while she approached the checkpoint. But now that they were going to go free, she called her daughter to come forward. The girl came out of her hiding place.

  This was the moment the men were waiting for. They grabbed the girl. The commander dragged her into a steel shipping container that served as his field office. Then he held her down on the table and raped her in front of her mother. The daughter screamed for her mother’s help as the men violated her, while others held the woman back, forcing her to watch. Some mujahideen soldiers were raping women with impunity at that time—it was every woman’s greatest fear. But there were some instances where Hazara women were especially targeted. Their brand of Shia Islam is predominant in neighboring Iran, which was seen as an unwelcome source of foreign influence, giving the attacks a political overtone. It was a situation not helped by Islam’s SunniShia schism. Sunni Islam is the dominant form of the religion for the world’s 1.5 billion Muslims. The key difference relates to a historic debate about the true successor of the Prophet Mohammed. Sunni believe the first four caliphs, or spiritual leaders, are the true successors, while Shia believe the Prophet’s cousin and son-in-law Ali ibn Abi Talib is the rightful successor. It’s a division almost as old as Islam itself, and over the course of history has proved as bitter and bloody as any seen in world religion. During the civil war Hazaras were massacred by many different sides, and later they were also targeted by the Taliban, who saw them as infidels. Today many Hazaras still feel they are regarded as being of lower status by other ethnic groups and are denied top jobs in government or the civil service.

  When the girl’s ordeal had ended, the commander simply took out his gun and shot her, as if disposing of something distasteful. Then he let the poor mother go.

  After she told us her story there was little my mother could say to this poor wretched woman. She just clutched the woman’s hand, and taking mine in her other hand, she started running. The three of us ran hand in hand through the battle-scarred streets, over the bodies, around the burned-out cars and through shattered buildings.

  We just ran and ran, terrified of what we might run into but more fearful of what we were trying to leave behind. Around a corner we saw the most wonderful sight we could have hoped for—a taxi.

  My mother urged the Hazara woman to come and stay with us at the apartment, but the woman announced she was going to try to find some relatives who lived further out of the city. They argued some more over it, but the lady was very determined. Eventually the taxi driver told us to hurry up. We got in and drove home to the apartment in Makrorian. My brother didn’t know whether to shout or laugh with joy when he saw us. He was furious at my mother’s refusal to come sooner and in his messenger’s car. When he heard that we’d walked alone and the story of the poor Hazara lady, he threw my mother a filthy look at even coming close to risking that happening to me. But he let it go. We were home now.

  But something had changed for my mother. In the weeks and months that followed she grew weaker and weaker. She began to have difficulty breathing. She had suffered allergies all her life and these started to get worse. She tried to convince us she was well and not to worry, but we could see her fading before our eyes. Yet still she fussed over me, cooking for me when I was studying, insisting I go to class, and waiting for me when I got home.

  As summer turned into winter that year I felt as though the
rest of the world was starting to lose interest in Afghanistan. The West seemed pleased the Soviets had been defeated and gone home, and that was all they needed to know about Afghanistan. For Pakistan and Iran, neighboring countries with a huge interest in what happens across the border, the different mujahideen commanders had become proxies, used to fight out their own battles on neutral soil. But even as the mujahideen fought for power, settled old scores, and struck deals with neighboring governments, a new power was growing elsewhere in Afghanistan. A movement was growing in the madrassas—religious schools—in the south of the country. A movement by the name of Taliban.

  And the movement would one day not only shake Afghanistan, but shake the world.

  Dear Shuhra and Shaharzad,

  Life is a miracle given to us by God. At times life can feel like both a blessing and a curse. Sometimes life gets almost too much to cope with, but we do cope; we cope because humans have a great capacity to endure.

  But we human beings aren’t great. Only God is great. Humans are like tiny little insects in the wider universe. Our problems, which sometimes seem so big and insurmountable to us, are really not.

  Even if we live a long time our time on earth is still very short.

  What matters is how we spend our time here. And the legacy we leave behind to those left on earth. Your grandmother left a far bigger legacy to all of us than she ever knew.

  With love,

  Your mother