by Fawzia Koofi
We ran as fast as our legs could carry us. I was so terrified of him after that, I didn’t ever want to see my father again, petrified even weeks later that if he saw me he would be so angry that he would kill me.
In my childhood fantasies, little could I have imagined that it was he who would soon be killed and that my golden existence was about to come to a brutal end.
Dear Shuhra and Shaharzad,
I grew up in the 1970s and ’80s. I know that seems a very long time ago to you. It was a time of great political change around the world and a time when the people of Afghanistan suffered from the Soviets and from the lawless commanders of the Mujahideen.
Those years were the beginning of disaster for the people of Afghanistan and for my childhood. When the Communist revolution started, I was three years old, an age when a child needs love, security and the warm bosom of home. But at that time, most of my friends’ parents were talking about immigration to Pakistan and Iran, preparing for lives as refugees. Children listened as their parents whispered about things people had never seen before, equipment called tanks and helicopters.
We overheard terms like “invasion,” “war” and “Mujahideen,” but they were meaningless to us. Yet although children did not understand, they sensed something was wrong from the way their mothers clutched them close at night.
I am happy you have never experienced the uncertainty and fear of a time like this. No child should ever have to.
With love,
Your mother
· · THREE · ·
A Terrible Loss
{ 1978 }
THE YEAR WAS 1978, and both the Mujahideen and the Russians were beginning to make their presence felt in Afghanistan. We were still in the Cold War, and the Soviet Union was keen to show its strength. It had an expansionist agenda at that time; Afghanistan lay between Moscow and the warm-water ports of Pakistan, where the USSR wanted to place its naval fleet. It therefore needed control of Afghanistan and was beginning to exert its influence to achieve that end. Eventually, it would invade the country.
In later years, Afghan fighters known as the Mujahideen would defeat the Russians and become heroes of the people. But for now, the Afghan public knew of the Mujahideen only as anti-government rebels who first made their presence felt in northern Badakhshan.
The regime in Kabul changed again. President Dawoud, who had taken power from the king and forced him into exile, did not last long. He and his entire family were assassinated in his palace, and Communist sympathizers Nur Muhammad Taraki and Hafizullah Amin took control, Taraki becoming the first Communist-backed president. However, just a few months later, he was killed by Amin on the orders of the Moscow government.
Amin took over the presidency. He is remembered as one of the cruellest presidents Afghanistan ever had, heading a terrifying Soviet-backed regime in which torture and arrests were commonplace. He attempted to do away with anyone—intellectuals, teachers and religious leaders—who opposed the government or dared say a word against it; they would be dragged from the house at night and either taken to the Puli Charkhi, Kabul’s largest jail, where they faced interrogation and torture, or simply thrown into the river. In those days, Afghanistan’s rivers swelled with the corpses of thousands of people, all murdered without reason or trial.
During this time, my father continued his work, trying to remain focused on helping Badakhshan even through these days of terror. He was still outspoken, despite the risk of torture or imprisonment. Perhaps the regime knew he was more useful to them alive than dead, and he was eventually ordered by the government to return to his province with the instruction to settle and silence the Mujahideen. Government officials made it clear that the penalty for failure would be his death.
A man of peace, my father was certain he could reason with the Mujahideen—who after all were fellow Afghans. He understood the political uncertainties of the time and the calls for social justice. These were men from his own province, Badakhshan, and he was convinced that he could calm their fears, listen to their complaints and offer to help them in exchange for their co-operation with the government.
But the Afghanistan my father thought he knew, and the values of patriotism, Islamic tradition and natural justice that he believed in so strongly, had already begun to disappear.
It was with a heavy heart that he arrived in Badakhshan on his mission. He had no love for the Amin regime and in truth did not know what was best for the people of Afghanistan. He gathered his provincial elders together in a jirga, a meeting of tribal leaders and elders, and told them what he had seen in Kabul: a government that killed with impunity, that prevented young people from being educated for fear they would turn into dissidents and that had created a system in which teachers and intellectuals lived in fear. Political opponents were simply crushed. After the promise of the heady years of Zahir Shah’s reign—when Afghanistan had been seen as one of the world’s fastest-developing countries, a thriving tourist destination with bustling ski resorts, a modern electric bus system and a business-led burgeoning democracy—it was devastating to witness the reality of Communist rule.
Some of the Afghans who had gone to the mountains to support the Mujahideen truly believed they were fighting for the future of Afghanistan. My father might have been a government servant, but he understood and respected the Mujahideen for their efforts. He asked the elders for their advice.
The jirga debated for hours. Some wanted to join the rebels, whereas others wanted government rule, for better or worse. In the end, local imperatives won the day. A man stood up to address the assembly in a clear voice. “Sir,” he said, “we are already very poor and we cannot bear the burden of fighting. We should talk to the Mujahideen and bring them down from the mountains.”
The group eventually agreed to go and talk to the rebels. My father’s determination to bring fundamental changes to the lives of those he represented and his refusal to accept no for an answer were qualities that had endeared him to his supporters. So on this day when he asked hundreds of local elders from all over the province to go with him to talk to the Mujahideen on behalf of a new government regime no one respected, not one of them refused. They all went gladly.
This large group of elders led by my father set off on horseback to go to the rebels’ camp. The beautiful Pamir mountain range is as high as it is treacherous. Fertile, lush valleys soon give way to rocks of different colours—blues, greens and orange ochres that change with the light—then to towering snow-covered peaks and plateaus. Even today there are few roads in Badakhshan, but then there were only donkey and horse tracks, some so narrow and steep that the only way to pass was to get off and walk behind your mount, hold onto its tail, close your eyes and pray the sure-footed beast didn’t slip. To fall was certain death—you would plunge down the mountainside into the icy river below and be swept away by the rapids.
After a day and a half of solid riding, the men reached the highest point of the Pamir, which 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 original form of the western game of polo. It is a game that tests the skills of both rider and horse, in which the players race to pick up a heavy cow carcass and place it into a 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 is a game as wild, dangerous and clever as the men who play it and it expresses the true essence of the Afghan warrior.
As my father rode, however, thoughts of the pleasures of a buzkashi game were far from his mind. He remained calm and composed, wearing his lambskin hat as always, mounted on his white horse at the head of the group. And then, all of a sudden, three men appeared in the middle of the road, aiming rifles at them.
One of them shouted, “So it is you, Wakil Abdul Rahman. I have waited a long time for this chance to kill you.”
My father shoute
d 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 co-operate 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 out from behind the mountains. Pandemonium ensued. The village men, who were mostly unarmed, ran for their lives.
My father’s horse was hit. As the animal reared up in pain, my father lost his stirrup footing and was dragged along as his mount galloped away. The wounded horse headed for a small river that ran along the edge of the buzkashi pitch. Some of the younger men tried to follow my father, but he shouted at them to flee and save themselves. “I’m an elder,” he yelled as he was pulled along the ground. “They will talk to me, but they will kill you. Just go.”
The Mujahideen gave chase and caught up with my father. They captured him and held him hostage for two days. I don’t know if they gave him an opportunity to talk, listened to his reasoning and considered his offers or if they beat and humiliated him. All I know is that two days later they executed him with a bullet straight through the head.
News of his death reached the village quickly. Despite the remoteness of the region, news has always travelled fast in a well-developed system of urgent messages being relayed from hamlet to hamlet along the way. Some of the men who had accompanied my father had already arrived home and reported the shooting of his horse. In Islamic rite, a body must be buried within twenty-four hours, facing Mecca. My family could not bear the idea of my father’s body being left alone on the mountainside without proper burial. 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 himself while bringing home a dead body.
So it fell to a woman to show bravery. My aunt Gada gathered her long skirts and put on her burka, announcing to the shocked male gathering that she would go to 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 one of my father’s cousins had little choice but to follow her.
After walking for thirteen hours, they found him; his body had been dumped halfway between the village and the rebel camp.
I was three and a half years old. I remember clearly the sadness of the day he was shot, hearing both men and women weeping and feeling alarmed by the fear and confusion in the village. I lay awake that night listening, until at around 2 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 all right. Father was here. He would know what to do. He would restore order and stop everyone’s tears.
I ran into the street barefoot and stopped dead in my tracks at the sight of my mother weeping and clutching at her clothes in horror. I darted past her and saw my father’s dead body. The top part of his skull, where he had been shot, was missing.
I began to cry. I didn’t yet fully understand the enormity of what had happened, but I understood enough to know 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 went to see the body and prepare it for the funeral the next day. Of all the wives, only she went into that room to say her final farewell to him. In the room where I and her other children were conceived and where husband and wife had, in all too rare moments, lain and talked, creating their own private world together, she endured this task, as she had endured all the other tasks in her harsh life, with dignity and duty. She did not scream or wail but quietly washed and prepared the body in accordance with God’s wishes. 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 their last goodbyes to him. Their sadness and fear for their own futures created an atmosphere so heavy it felt like the very sky was falling down on our heads.
Grey-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, the loss of the man who had championed their causes and supported their needs was a turning point in their lives. It also marked the beginning of the political upheaval that was about to become a full-blown war in Afghanistan.
For my family, the loss of my father meant the loss of everything: our life, our wealth, our figurehead, our entire 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 that sadly all Afghan children are familiar with today.
Until the age of four, I knew only happy words.
I long for those summer nights when we would all sleep on the big flat roof of my uncle’s house. His house was just next door to the hooli, and its roof had the best view of the valley so the whole family liked to gather there. My mother, my uncle’s wives and the woman I called “my little mother”—my father’s fourth wife and my mother’s best friend—would sit and tell well-worn tales until late into the night.
We children would sit quietly enchanted under the blue sky or the bright yellow moon listening to these sweet stories. We never closed the door at night, and there were no security men with guns like there are today. There were no thieves or other dangers to worry about.
In those happy times and with everyone’s love surrounding me, I little realized that my life had begun with my mother’s degradation and sorrow at my birth and that I had been put out in the blazing sun to die.
I never felt that my birth had been a mistake. I felt only that I was loved.
But this happy life did not last for long. I had to grow up fast. My father’s murder was just the first of many tragedies and deaths that would befall our family. My childhood ended when we were forced to leave those beautiful gardens of Koof, with their cold spring water and shady trees, to become homeless refugees in our own country.
The only thing that did not change was the constant smile of my mother, your grandmother.
With love,
Your mother
· · FOUR · ·
A New Start
{ 1979–1990 }
ALTHOUGH SHE GRIEVED deeply 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 ability came to the fore. It was she who took control of the family, organizing resources and deciding the fate of children. Her years as my father’s right hand, her efficient home management and her ability to foster peace within our extended family enabled 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 reason she had once refused to divorce my father she rejected all suitors. She would not risk losing her children.
In our culture, a stepfather is not obliged to take on children from a previous marriage, as the tragic experience of Ennayat’s mother demonstrated. Still young and somewhat flighty after my father’s death, she married a handsome young man who had worked for my father as a shepherd guarding the family cattle. He had recently returned from Iran, where he had gone to find work, bringing back exciting consumer goods that could not be found in our remote village, such as a tape recorder. He wooed her with his tales of sophisticated life in Iran and with his newfangled machinery.
Aside from Ennayat, my father’s seventh wife had borne him three other children: a girl, Nazi, and two boys, Hedayat and 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, who was sympathetic to her, visited a few weeks later, she found Ennayat, Nazi and Hedayat crying outside in the yard. They were not allowed into the warmth of the house and were hungry and dirty. She immediately took them home with her.
But the young woman refused to give up her baby, Safiullah, and my mother left without him, something she regretted forever because a few days later he became feverish 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 first-born son Safiullah in his brother’s memory.
Khal bibi, who had been so dear to my mother, was luckier. She married a local leader, a kindly man who had no children of his own. Almost unheard of in our culture, he raised her two sons as though they were his, even leaving them his property when he died.
Niaz bibi, the wife who didn’t get on with my mother, married a teacher and remained in Koof. Despite the disagreements between Niaz bibi and my mother, years later when I was campaigning for parliament this man helped me enormously, arranging my transport 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. Such 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 the second-eldest son, Nadir, the son of my fifth mother—one of the wives my father divorced—inherited it. He still lives in it to this day.
WE DID not have much time to grieve in the first days and weeks after my father was killed. The world beyond the mountains was looming ever closer, and the rapidly disintegrating political situation was about to come crashing down on us.