The Favored Daughter

by Fawzia Koofi

  Dear Shuhra and Shaharzad,

  There will be times in your life when all hope and strength leave you. Times when you just want to give up and turn your face away from the world. But my darling daughters, giving up is not something our family does.

  In those early days of my marriage when your father was arrested I wanted to give up myself. Perhaps if I had not been pregnant and felt Shaharzad kicking in my belly, I may have done so. But knowing I was about to give a new life meant I had to fight even harder for the life I had. I also remembered my mother, your grandmother. Imagine if she had given up after my father died. Imagine if she had taken the easy route and married a man who didn’t want us and placed us in an orphanage or neglected us. She never would have done this because giving up was something that woman did not know how to do.

  Imagine also if your grandfather had given up when the central government had told him it was not possible to build the Atanga road pass. If he had given up think of how many lives would have been lost on the mountains. By refusing to give up and building the road, he saved countless lives over the years.

  Thank God I have both of their blood in me. Because of them giving up is not something I can do, either.

  And you, my dear daughters, come from that same blood, too. If there comes a day in your life that the fear takes hold of you so hard and it squeezes the fight out of you, then I want you to remember these words: Giving up is not what we do. We fight. We live. We survive.

  With love,

  Your mother

  FIFTEEN

  BACK TO WHERE I BEGAN

  Three months after his incarceration began, Hamid was released. He had been beaten senseless, manacled, and left outside for days in the wind, rain, and snow as a punishment, and he contracted a fatal disease. And for what? Nothing. They had charged him with nothing.

  It was the beginning of spring 1998 and the heavy snows of winter were thawing fast as each day got progressively warmer. It was a welcome relief to feel the sun again. It was good for Hamid, too. He was still very sick and coughed constantly.

  By now I was almost seven months pregnant and my baby was very active, kicking and wriggling inside me. I was having trouble getting a good night’s sleep with my unborn child testing her growing strength and Hamid exploding into coughing fits at regular intervals throughout the night. He was too ill to work and the medication the doctor had prescribed didn’t seem to be making much of a difference for his condition.

  Despite the sun’s growing rays Kabul felt very oppressive. Taliban rule in the capital was absolute. We lived in constant fear that the Taliban would show up at our front door and drag Hamid back to prison. It was more a question of when, not if, they would come to detain him again.

  But those times in prison had taken such a toll on Hamid’s health that a fourth detention would most certainly be a death sentence. We knew we had to flee beyond the control of the Taliban. Pakistan wasn’t really an option. Hamid became a target for the Taliban after Pakistani spies reported his visit baCK To where i began to President Rabbani’s compound, so we feared he would also be followed there. We decided to return to our home province of Badakhshan. General Massoud and President Rabbani’s forces still held out against the Taliban in this northern stronghold. Even the might of the Soviet war machine couldn’t defeat the mujahideen there, so we felt hopeful we could find some genuine refuge. But getting there was fraught with danger.

  Hamid was prescribed six months of medication and we set off. It was a difficult journey in any circumstance, across rough tracks and winding mountain passes, but now it was fraught with the danger of the Taliban, too. Hamid’s health and my pregnancy made us even more vulnerable, and it was a measure of our desperation to get away from Kabul that we even considered traveling at this time. The city that had once been a safe-haven now felt like a prison overrun by sadistic guards.

  I packed a few belongings for the journey—mostly wedding gifts and things that reminded me of my family. I wanted to take the few precious photographs of my mother and my murdered brother Muqim and hide them beneath clothing in the bottom of a suitcase, away from prying Taliban eyes. But I knew the risk would be too great. If the Taliban found them they would be destroyed, and as much as I wanted those pictures with me, I dared not take the risk.

  My sister-in-law, Khadija, was determined to stay with her children in Kabul. I argued and pleaded with her, but she would not be budged. I think she felt she owed it to Hamid’s brother to stay in Kabul and raise her children. She had become such a close friend it was hard for me to leave her in the house, but I respected her decision to stay. Perhaps if I had felt as though there was even a chance the Taliban would leave us alone I would have stayed, too. But there was no chance of that and Hamid and I were living on borrowed time. Sooner or later some Taliban administrator would review the list of all the people they had detained and released, and decide once again to send more fanatical young men to re-arrest Hamid out of mere suspicion. Their attitude seemed to be: “He’s bound to doing something wrong. Let’s arrest him, torture him, and then he will tell us.” Of course, if you torture someone for long enough they will tell you anything. And if they don’t, then by Taliban logic they died guarding some terrible secret. Ordinary people were being imprisoned for the most trivial of so-called offenses. When Hamid was in jail he spoke to taxi drivers who had been arrested for taking unaccompanied female passengers. Ironically, although the driver would be thrown in jail the woman in question often got far worse for “tempting” the driver. The Taliban’s rules were often as unique as the man holding the gun. Their arbitrary nature and enforcement created an environment of paranoia in which it was safer to stay at home rather than risk breaking some new law. It was terrifying and infuriating at the same time—these men thought they were ruling my country, when all they were doing was ruining it. And all their actions were done in the name of Islam, which they used as a political catchall to silence their critics. You don’t like the way we treat women? You’re un-Islamic. You want to listen to music? You’re un-Islamic. You disagree with our justice system? You’re unIslamic. What do you mean we are misinterpreting the Quran for our own purposes? That’s un-Islamic. These uneducated men had a two-dimensional view of the world that seemed to be firmly anchored in the dark ages, and that’s exactly where they were determined to take my country, too. So as much as it pained us, we felt we had no choice but to leave Kabul.

  We left the city early one morning, creeping through the city streets as dawn broke over the mountains, the springs in the taxi creaking over every bump in the road. Our plan was to drive east, following the path of the Kabul River until we reached an area called Surobi. The Taliban had control of Southern Afghanistan and the capital Kabul, but they didn’t control certain sections of the north of the country. Once outside the city, their influence extended only a few hundred miles to the north of Kabul, where General Massoud’s Northern Alliance forces had so far managed to keep them at bay. But to get to them we had to find a way through the battle lines. One that wouldn’t get us killed or draw too much attention to ourselves—the Taliban were suspicious of people going north and worried that they were spies.

  Surobi is a small town in a lush valley surrounded by lakes that from as early as the 1950s have provided much the of capital’s erratic supply of electricity. It’s a relatively short drive, only 43 miles, but the valley saw some of the heaviest fighting during the civil war, so even by the standards of hardy Afghan travelers the road was in an appalling state, full of potholes and craters. That meant we had to drive at walking speed most of the way, nose to tail with all the other traffic. Beyond the edges of the gravel road the earth was embroidered with a deadly latticework of landmines. During the past 20 years over ten million landmines have been littered across Afghanistan. To this day these evil weapons maim and kill our population, and the majority of the victims are children.

  Occasionally frustrated or fatigued drivers would stray from the safe middle road, somet
imes without consequence. Other times their vehicle would erupt in a geyser of smoke and flaming metal. The largest landmines are designed to destroy 60-ton armored battle tanks—driving a rusting 2,000-pound sedan onto one is like holding a dandelion in front of a screaming jet engine. The most terrible scenes would occur when a gung-ho bus driver would try a short cut. Sadly, he would be the first to die in the blast, which would usually rip the wheels and the entire front of the vehicle away. The terrified and shaken survivors would then face an awful choice as the flames from the explosion grew in intensity. Either perish in the blazing wreck of the bus or leap out a broken window and take their chances in the mine field. There really only was one choice, but it was a life-and-death gamble that not all of them won.

  The road to Surobi passes over arid dusty plains outside the capital and passes Bagram Airbase. Today Bagram is the main US military base in Afghanistan, but even then it was already a huge installation, having served as the Soviet’s center of air force operations.

  The expanse of valley soon gives way to steep and rocky mountains and the road cuts its way through the narrow gorge.

  Once we got to Surobi our car turned north toward Tagab. The road from Surobi to Tagab got even worse. This area is just under 100 miles northeast of Kabul and saw some of the heaviest fighting during the Soviet area. The road had been heavily bombed, or blown up by the mujahideen to prevent the Red Army advance, and when we got to Tagab I was a little shocked by how many of the simple mud houses were in ruins. Many of the people there were living among the rubble, sheltering in whatever part of their house still stood.

  Hamid and I were very anxious. So far we had managed to get through the Taliban checkpoints without any problems. The next leg of our journey would be more difficult. Tagab marked the end of the Taliban front line in this part of the mountains. There was a lot of military equipment and large depots that appeared to be full of fuel for the tanks and trucks, and ammunition for rifles, artillery, mortars, and rockets. Tired-faced young men stood on guard and the traffic backed up as we neared the main checkpoint. Hamid and I stiffened. This would be where our escape succeeded or failed. We were worried that Hamid’s name might be on a Taliban watch list, and that his presence here might be enough to cause the Taliban to arrest him again. As the line of cars and trucks crept forward I could see nervous men and their wives in burqas being ordered out of their vehicles and made to present their luggage for inspection. Fervent young men with black turbans rifled through open bags and suitcases, tossing neatly packed clothing and treasured personal possessions on the ground. One stood up suddenly with a whoop of excitement, holding a video tape aloft like a trophy. This was contraband. A woman lurched at the cassette as the Talib dangled it out of her reach. She was wearing a burqa but I could tell she was young. I imagined she, too, was a new bride, torn between her anger and frustration at the injustice being dished out by her tormentor and the fear she felt knowing that by protesting she was in danger of inviting more serious consequences. Her husband stayed a few paces behind, murmuring at his wife to stop. He would not let himself restrain his bride, knowing her actions were just, but neither could he challenge the Talib and condone her dissent. The gunman pushed her hard in the chest, his hand lingering on the outline of her bust, which showed vaguely beneath her burqa. She recoiled in shock for a moment before rushing back toward the Talib, fueled by anger at the sexual assault. He just laughed and groped her once more before ramming his shoulder under her chin and knocking her to the ground. For a moment she lay there stunned, and as she got onto her hands and knees the young Talib dropped the black plastic video cassette on to the ground in front of her and brought his heel heavily down upon it, smashing the brittle case. The woman didn’t utter a word, but elevated her head so she could better see the cruelty and pointlessness etched on the man’s face. He grinned at her theatrically and scooped up the spilled entrails of tape. He let the coils of plastic unspool between his fingers as he walked backward, watching her for any reaction. Turning to a tree, he hurled the tangled remains high into the branches, where the ribbon tumbled through the leaves. Her head fell forward, sobbing as her husband stooped to help her up. The Talib’s dark eyes blazed triumphantly, clearly pleased by another so-called moral victory. The branches of the tree glistened in the midday light, filled with the innards of dozens of similar tapes. This was clearly a game played out on a regular basis.

  My decision to leave the photos of my family at home hurt at the time, but I was thankful now that I had. I hurriedly began unloading our luggage from the car, while Hamid quietly asked some other men where we could hire a horse and a guide. Our plan was to go through the narrow mountain passes and strike out northwest to an area called Jabul Saraj, which was not under control of the Taliban. Effectively our plan was to loop west through the mountains and around the front lines of the fighting, rather than take the most direct but also most dangerous route north.

  I was worried they would take our passports and tear them up, but when it was our turn to face the Taliban checkpoint, the armed men didn’t actually pay us much attention. Their friend’s game with the newlyweds had put them in a good mood, and apart from a quick search of our luggage they let us pass largely unbothered.

  A woman a little further back in the queue was not so lucky. It was obvious she was from a Northern province because she was wearing a white burqa. The Taliban turned on her for daring to wear such a garment, beating her with sticks and lengths of wire cable. I wasn’t looking forward to the horse ride, but after what we had witnessed I couldn’t wait to be away from these terrible, inhuman men and in the comparative safety of the hills beyond.

  At more than seven months pregnant it was a struggle mounting the horse that Hamid had managed to hire. But with his help and my natural desire to escape what I had just witnessed I managed to get on. Hamid walked beside the animal, and I felt very strange as we left the Taliban behind. It was as if my life had been diverted to some strange parallel universe where my country had regressed half a millennia. Here I was, an educated, ambitious young woman, with her educated, urbane, intellectual, and loving husband. As a couple Hamid and I were what I felt the picture of future Afghanistan should be, yet here I was dressed in a burqa riding on horseback as my longhaired and bearded husband walked beside me through the mountains. This Taliban ideology threatened to shackle my country in the Dark Ages.

  But beneath this fear I also had a powerful sense of optimism. The Taliban didn’t represent the true spirit of the Afghan people I knew and loved so well. The Taliban were an aberration, a disease that had taken hold after so many years of sickness brought about by war and suffering. As we climbed through the mountains, fording streams and negotiating narrow paths, I felt the weight of their oppression begin to lift. With each cautious step it seemed to get lighter, until finally, after several hours of hard trekking, we made it to Northern Alliance lines.

  Not that there was any great accompanying fanfare when we got there. We simply arrived at a small town, at which point our guide turned to us as if to say: “Here we are.” People went about their business in a very ordinary way.

  We arranged for another car, which would take us to Jabul Saraj. It was just a few hours’ drive but it really was like entering another world. The markets were thriving and full of shoppers. Women were walking and talking to men without the strict supervision demanded by the Taliban, and the restaurants were busy with diners. Hamid and I checked into a hotel, which in Kabul would have been an impossibility but here felt incredibly normal.

  As I stood in the foyer of the little hotel I felt enormously overwhelmed by the events of the past year. Life under the Taliban had changed me in ways I hadn’t really understood until now. I wasn’t the same person I had been—my confidence had evaporated and the daily fear had exhausted my reserves of strength. I stood there quietly, like a good Taliban wife, whereas once I would have been organizing our check-in, inspecting the room, and making sure the porter brought in our bags.
Now I was passive, just waiting for my husband to make all the arrangements. It saddened me to realize how much I had changed. Even as a little girl I was a great organizer, it was something my mother would always comment on when we talked about stories of my childhood. The Taliban had taken that confident little girl and determined teenager and turned her into a diminutive, cold, scared, and exhausted woman beneath the invisibility cloak that was her burqa. I couldn’t bring myself to talk to the hotel manager or the owner who waved his greetings cheerily. My attitude toward men had changed. They were cruel and not to be trusted, merely existing to exploit women at the first opportunity. And this terrible shift in my attitude had been done in the name of Islam, but it wasn’t an Islam I recognized. This division between the sexes was not an Islam of peace; it was born of fear and suspicion, not respect as I had been raised to believe.

  My mother came from a much more conservative generation, yet even she enjoyed the kinds of liberation and empowerment that were being denied to me and hundreds of thousands of other women under the Taliban. She was allowed to visit her family when she wished and was given the responsibility of managing my father’s businesses in his absence, of supervising his cattle herds on their annual journey to the higher pasture. Yes my father beat my mother, but as wrong as it seems now, it was normal for the time and in the village culture. But I know he truly respected her. The Taliban had all and more of the violence toward women, but none of the respect.

  There was a huge silence inside me. Until now I hadn’t even noticed it. Little by little it had grown, caused by the visits to the prison, the reality of watching women get beaten on the streets, the public executions of young women just like me.