by Fawzia Koofi
It was important to you that my father should be the best man in the world, that is why you would always tried to make the best food for his guests, and why you always kept the yard tidy. That is why you
I think of how you would use all your natural intelligence to try to solve the problems of the poor people when my father was not around, and how after my father was martyred it was important for you that all his children—both girls and boys—should go to school and should live with you in the same house so you could be aware of their problems and be there for them.
It was important to you that my brothers should grow to be men of good character and become people who could do something for their country. You suffered and starved yourself so my brothers could study and go to university.
When I remember all this I still feel amazed that through all these problems and heavy responsibilities you laughed. You laughed all the time.
I wish I was able to face my problems laughing like you.
Mother, my entire world was in these stories.
The interesting thing was the older I became the more interested I was in these nighttime stories—they would make me feel calm and safe in bed. Maybe I was trying to escape from my surroundings.
You were my refuge from it all. The best moments in my life were after you’d finished the stories, and you would turn your attention to me.
The way you promised me I’d become something important.
How my father had also apparently told you after I was born that I would grow to become like you. Beautiful, clever, wise, and warm.
They were small words, but those words became my inspiration to struggle.
When I asked what I would become you’d smile and reply: “Maybe, Fawzia jan, you will be a teacher or a doctor. You will have your own clinic and will treat the poor patients who come from the provinces for free. You will be a kind good doctor.”
Then I would laugh and say: “No Mother, maybe I will be a president.”
I said this because once I heard you tell a neighbor: “My daughter tries so hard. I am sure she will become president.”
I learned so many life lessons from those stories.
And I have never felt so calm and safe with anybody else as I did with you.
Mother, I learned from you what self-sacrifice really means.
I learned from you that literacy alone is not enough to bring up good children, but intelligence, patience, planning, and self-sacrifice for others is what really counts. This is the example of Afghan women, women like you who would walk miles with an empty stomach to make sure your children get to school.
I learned from you that any human, even a “poor girl,” can change everything if they have a positive and strong attitude.
Mother, you were among the bravest of the bravest Afghan women.
I am glad you were not here to witness the horrors that came next in our lives—the Taliban years.
Your daughter,
Fawzia
NINE
ONE ORDINARY THURSDAY
I will never forget the day the Taliban came to Kabul. It was a Thursday in September. I hadn’t gone to university that day and had been at home studying. My sister Shahjan needed to buy bread and I needed a new pair of shoes, so in the afternoon we walked to the bazaar.
I was wearing one of my favorite brightly colored headscarves and tunic. My sister told me a joke and I giggled. The shopkeeper smiled at us and said: “You ladies will not be able to come here dressed like this tomorrow. The Taliban will be here tomorrow and this will be your last day of pleasure in the market, so be sure to enjoy yourselves.”
He was laughing when he said it; his green eyes were smiling and the lines around them crinkled. I thought he was joking but his joy over the repression of women made me angry. I snapped and told him this was a wish he’d be taking to the grave; it would never come true.
I only vaguely knew who the Taliban were. I knew they were religious students who had formed a political movement, but didn’t know what they stood for. During the years we were fighting the Russians, the Afghan mujahideen had been joined by thousands of Arab, Pakistani, and Chechen fighters. They had been funded to help the battle against the Soviets by other countries, such as the United States, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia. Each of those countries had their own vested interests and political reasons in helping us. While their help in our battle was initially welcomed, these fighters brought with them a fundamentalist version of Islam that was new to Afghanistan, Wahhabism.
Wahhabism originated in Saudi Arabia and is a particularly conservative branch of Sunni Islam. Madrassas (religious schools) in the border regions between Pakistan and Afghanistan promoted this type of Islam to young Afghan men, many of them vulnerable refugees barely out of childhood.
But there was a lot of misinformation in those days. Some people in Kabul even thought the Taliban were the communists coming back in a new guise. But whoever they really were, I could not and would not believe they, or anyone, had beaten the mujahideen. The mujahideen had defeated the entire might of the Red Army, so how could a few students possibly defeat the men who had done that? The idea that they would be in the shop where I was now standing was just ridiculous.
At this stage I personally didn’t see much difference between the Taliban and mujahideen. As a child I had been very much afraid of the mujahideen. Now as a university student I was learning about the Taliban. In my view they were all just men with guns. Men who wanted to fight instead of talk. I was tired of all of them.
But that night we got the shocking news on BBC radio. We listened to it all night long, incredulous at what we were being told. The BBC reported that Ahmed Shah Massoud’s men had withdrawn from Kabul and gone back to their stronghold in Panjshir valley. I still couldn’t accept that it meant defeat. Tactical withdrawal was not an unusual military tactic for Massoud. I truly thought he’d be back to fight before breakfast to restore peace and support the Rabbani government. Most people in Kabul thought the same.
Suddenly, the front door opened and my brother Mirshakay, the senior police chief, came in looking terrified. He spoke rapidly, saying he didn’t have much time. He had asked his wife to pack his bag. He, like many senior government officials, was leaving to join Massoud in Panjshir.
I had so many unanswered questions about the future. I started to argue with him. His wife began crying. He hissed at us and told us to be quiet in case anyone heard.
Mirshakay had two wives, and it was decided that one would stay in Kabul in the apartment with me, while the other would be taken by her family that same night to Pakistan, where my brother owned a house in the city of Lahore.
It all happened so quickly we could barely believe it was real. As my brother went back out the door, my sister threw a pot of water after him. This is part of our culture: if the water follows the target, it is said he will come back soon.
With Mirshakay gone, we women huddled around the radio. The latest reports stated that President Rabbani and his ministers had also fled. They had gone by plane to Panjshir and from there to Rabbani’s home province of Badakhshan.
Then they reported that former president Najibullah, the man who had been regarded as Moscow’s puppet and a communist sympathizer, had taken refuge with his family in the United Nations compound. Ahmed Shah Massoud had offered to take him back to the Panjshir valley with him, but Najibullah didn’t trust the mujahideen anymore than he did the Taliban and feared a trap. That was to be his fatal mistake, because within hours of Massoud retreating Najibullah would be dead.
At 8 o’clock that night jets were flying overhead. My family was teasing me, joking that even in war I kept my nose in a book. Then my brother Mirshakay came home and informed us that he had to flee Kabul immediately. I was furious with him and told him he should be here defending Kabul and the government, not running away from these people. I couldn’t believe the government was giving up so easily to a bunch of religious students. I wasn’t particularly fond of the Rabbani g
overnment, but it was a government at least. And here were officials like my brother leaving their posts and running.
Throughout the night we barely slept. We just listened to the radio as the country unraveled around us once more. At 6 o’clock in the morning I looked out of the window and saw people wearing little white prayer hats. Everyone was wearing them all of a sudden. I quickly closed the curtain and returned to my studies. As I swished the fabric of the curtain I wanted to shut out this new world, this latest incarnation of Kabul that I didn’t understand.
Then the rumors started.
It was a Friday, prayer day. Reports started surfacing that they were beating people to make them go to the mosque. We certainly realized at this stage that they weren’t communists, but then, who were they?
Never in the history of Afghanistan had we experienced anything like this. It was clear they were a strange force and were not controlled by Afghans. They couldn’t be, not behaving like that.
Next they killed former president Najibullah, forcibly taking him from the United Nations building, where he had gone with his family to seek sanctuary. Had he escaped with Massoud perhaps he would have lived, but his decision to stay under UN protection cost him his life. The Taliban stormed the UN compound, dragging him out and executing him. They hung both his body and that of his younger brother from a busy roundabout for everyone to see. For three days, as the bodies slowly turned yellow and bloated, they hung there as a warning. People drove past in scared silence. No one dared to take the bodies down.
Then they looted the museum, destroying thousands of artifacts reflecting the history of our land—ancient Buddhist statuettes, Kundan ornaments, eating vessels from the time of Alexander the Great, artifacts dating from the times of the earliest Islamic kings. In the name of God these vandals destroyed our history. The world took notice when they blew up the Buddhas of Bamiyan. These ancient stone statues were regarded as one of the wonders of the world. They had been built in 6th century AD, during the reign of the Kushans, great patrons of art, before Islam was brought to Afghanistan. The giant Buddhas were not only a piece of important Afghan cultural history and a sign of our enlightened past, they also represented the livelihood for the Hazara people who live in Bamiyan. The Buddhas had long attracted visitors from all over the world as well as elsewhere in Afghanistan. As a result, a healthy tourist industry had developed in Bamiyan, an otherwise poor province, which was essential income for the people who relied on the tourism.
In shocking TV footage that was broadcast around the world, the Taliban blasted the statues with rocket-propelled grenades and heavy artillery until these great monuments fell into little pieces.
Then they started destroying our minds. They burned the schools and university buildings. They burned books and banned literature.
That weekend I was supposed to have an exam that I’d been studying hard for. I had only recently started my medical degree and I was loving it. But I was told not to bother going as my medical school had closed. Women were no longer allowed to be doctors, let alone study medicine at the university.
In an instant so much of Kabuli life, the things people took for granted, were gone. Even in the war the small, pleasurable things—such as meetings friends for a cup of tea in the bazaar or listening to music on the radio—and the big things, such as a wedding party—had still been possible. But under the Taliban they disappeared overnight. The wedding ban was particularly hard for people because weddings are such a big and important event. In our culture, as in most other cultures around the world, a wedding day is a rite of passage and one that involves the whole family.
Afghan weddings are traditionally very large, anywhere from 500 to 5,000 people. Owning a wedding hall or hotel can be a lucrative business. The best ones can command high prices, and it’s not unusual for families to spend 20,000 or 30,000 dollars, paying the whole bill in advance.
But on their first weekend in power the Taliban banned all weddings in public places. Hundreds of couples had to frantically cancel their day. Those couples not only lost their day, the day little girls all over the world dream about, but their families, already struggling because of the bad economy caused by war, lost their money.
The Taliban ordered people to have private ceremonies at home with no guests, no music, and no fun. It’s interesting to think about some of the couples who married that weekend. Their wedding anniversaries are a kind of memorial day for Taliban rule. It wasn’t the wedding day they expected, but it’s something they will certainly remember until the end of their lives.
Of course many people tried to defy the ban. Proud fathers refused to allow these creatures to destroy such an important family day and attempted to go ahead as planned. Some hotel owners ignored the new rule and carried on trading as usual. But the Taliban, in black turbans, were driving around town in pickup trucks. They carried guns and whips with them, and when they heard music coming from a wedding party, they raided the location. They burst in shouting and yelling, smashing speakers, ripping tape from video cameras, and tearing photographic film. And they beat people. They beat the grooms in front of their brides and grandfathers in front of their frightened guests. They beat them senseless. I kept hearing these stories, but I still could not believe it was true. I think I was in denial.
The next day my sister went to the market to get some vegetables. This sister wore a burqa routinely so that wasn’t such a problem for her. But she came back from the market in a flood of tears. She said she’d seen them beating all women who weren’t in burqas and were only wearing head scarves. I listened in shock. She was describing them beating women who dressed like me.
She sobbed as she told me how she watched a man and wife laden with shopping bags push their bicycle along the street. The woman wasn’t even in modern jeans or a skirt. She wore a culturally traditional shalwar kameez and had covered her hair with a large scarf. The couple was chatting when the Taliban came from behind and attacked the woman. Three of them set upon her, beating her with wire cable and thumping her around the head so viciously that they knocked her to the ground. When they started to beat the man he denied that she was his wife. To save himself he denounced his own wife.
It was horrifying, the idea that an Afghan man could denounce his wife so easily. In traditional Afghan culture men will fight to the death to protect their wives and families, but the Taliban brought with them such fear, such evil, that they twisted some of the men of our nation. Some men who had previously been good men and kind husbands became swayed into believing this warped ideology, either because of their own fear or because they were taken in by the excitement of a mob psychology.
For the next week I didn’t go anywhere. TV had been banned. The state radio station had been taken over for Taliban propaganda purposes. Woman presenters, even the old ugly ones with no makeup, had been banned. A popular young male news presenter who used the wrong word in a report about the death of a Taliban commander was beaten on the soles of his feet and left in a container for three days with no food or water. He had mistakenly used the word “joyous” instead of “tragic” to describe the death. It’s an understandable slip when you consider men with whips were standing behind him as he broadcast live. Who wouldn’t be nervous?
I couldn’t even listen to the propaganda they called news. I wanted real news. I wanted to feel connected to the outside world. Not having contact made me feel like I was in prison. But the local grapevine news, delivered from neighbor to neighbor, was unavoidable, and each story was more horrible than before.
The fighting outside Kabul continued. The Shomali Plains, the area between Massoud’s stronghold of Panjshir and the city, became the new front line. Most people were still expecting Massoud’s troops to come back. We couldn’t believe this Taliban reality was going to be permanent.
The only place where I could meet other girls and talk was on the communal balcony of the apartment block when I was cleaning the house. Watching from the balcony, I could see other young gir
ls in the other apartments. Young, beautiful girls were being deprived of their basic rights, of breathing the fresh air and feeling the sun. As soon as these girls heard the sound of Taliban voices they fled, running as fast as they could back inside.
I needed to connect with my mother. I was missing her so badly but was thankful she didn’t have to witness this latest abomination on her country. I wanted to visit her grave but I still couldn’t bring myself to put on a burqa. I didn’t even own one. So I borrowed a black Arab-style hijab from my sister. It was like a large cape that also covered the whole face, so I thought I’d be safe wearing that. The streets were deserted, and fear made the air so thick you could almost cut it with a blade.
Few men dared to come outside and even fewer women; those who did were dressed in blue shuttlecock burqas, the new uniform of Afghan women. (A shuttlecock burqa is an old-fashioned, tent-like burqa, with a crocheted screen that covers the eyes. The Taliban brought this style back, and it replaced the “younger” burqas, which have a veil on the eyes, and fit closer to the woman’s figure.)
They scurried along silently, doing their shopping as quickly as possible so they could get home to safety. No one talked to anyone. Shopkeepers handed over bags wordlessly, and women took them without looking up. Occasionally a Taliban pickup truck would drive by, the men inside sneering menacingly, looking for new victims to beat, as loudspeakers on top of the trucks blasted out religious teachings. I thought that by now I knew fear in all its forms and shapes, but this one was a new form again—cold, clammy, and tinged with an icy fury. My fury. After that I didn’t leave the house again for almost two months.