by Fawzia Koofi
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 kept and hid behind a large rock ledge, watching as they looted the house, stealing all they could carry: the radio, the furniture, the pots and pans.
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 woke us up with blows from their rifles, yelling and screaming, demanding to know where Abdul Rahman’s sons were. My brother Muqim was just seven years old, but we knew that they would kill him if they found him. Somehow my mother managed to pass him to a cousin on the next roof, who hid him underneath her skirt. Unlike other women in some parts of Afghanistan where the shalwar kameez is the norm, village women in Badakhshan traditionally wear loose pantaloons covered by a long, full skirt. That skirt saved my brother’s life that night.
The Mujahideen grabbed my elder sister Maryam and my sister-in-law, my elder brother’s wife. Both girls had just turned sixteen. The rebels started to beat them. My uncle tried to stop them but was beaten back. They took the girls off the roof and down towards the hooli, my uncles and male cousins screaming at them that this was against Islam. It was haram, forbidden, for any Muslim to 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, demanding again and again to be shown where the weapons were hidden. No one claimed to know. My mother was grim-faced and white as a sheet, but she said nothing. We all watched as they put the bayonet of the gun to my sister’s chest and pressed it in until she began to bleed. We had a guard dog called Chamber who was chained near the gate of the hooli. Desperate to protect his family, he tugged at his chains until they broke and rushed towards the men, barking and snarling. They simply turned and shot the poor dog dead.
The men beat the two girls until dawn, when the call to prayer reverberated over the mountain. They left then—presumably to go and pray.
Two days later, they came again and threatened to kill us all. This time they forced Nadir, then a teenager, to show them where the guns were. My mother had known all along and had watched silently as her daughter and daughter-in-law were beaten without betraying the whereabouts of the weapons. She knew that with the guns gone, we would have no means to protect ourselves. They had taken everything we had, and the next time they came they would murder us.
The men of the village were so horrified by what had happened to our girls that they sent word to the Mujahideen that if they came back the villagers would take up shovels, pickaxes, sticks, whatever they had, to protect their women. The Mujahideen agreed not to terrorize the village, but they wanted the family of Abdul Rahman dead. Their commander gave permission for his men to execute us. For the second time in my short life, I would stare death in the face and win.
They came early the following morning. By now, the Khalifa and her children had moved to Khawhan, another village where my father owned a big house and more land that needed guarding, so my mother was the only wife left in the hooli. Fortunately, my brothers Ennayat and Muqim were out playing and were able to hide in neighbouring houses. My mother grabbed me, and the two of us ran into the cattle barn. Our neighbours frantically started to pile up pieces of dung on top 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 of being heard. We remained like that for hours, silent and terrified, the only comfort coming from the sensation of 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 to reveal us. For reasons only God knows, they did not.
After they finally left, we came out of our hiding place to find the world had turned to terror. My mother didn’t waste time collecting our clothes; she grabbed me, my two brothers and my elder sister, and we ran—through the garden, into the hay fields and onto the river banks. We were leaving all we had behind and we didn’t dare even to glance back.
It was as though my mother’s life was disintegrating with each step she took. All the beatings, all the pain, all the years of drudgery and work had been to build a home and a life. A life that ended as we ran for our very survival along the river bank.
As we expected, the men had returned to search again and saw us running away. They started to give chase. They were stronger and faster than we were. I was getting tired and began to stumble, slowing 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 in.”
She almost did. My mother picked me up and lifted me into the air as if to throw me but then looked into my eyes and recalled her promise at my birth that no more harm would ever come to me. From somewhere deep inside, she gathered reserves of strength, and instead of throwing me to my death she put me on her back, where I clung on as she ran with me. We were behind the others, and I could hear the men’s footsteps getting closer. I thought that at any second they would be upon us, tear me from my mother’s back and kill me. If I shut my eyes, I can still feel the clammy, cold, terrible fear of that moment.
Then suddenly, we saw a Russian soldier.
We had reached the other side of the valley, which was government-controlled land. Our would-be assassins turned and ran back, and 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 on Afghan land, and although they would bring education and development in some areas they would also commit many atrocities against innocent Afghans. This man, though, was kind to me. Tall and blond, handsome in his uniform, he called me over to him. Hesitantly, I walked towards him. He handed me a bag of sugar, and I ran to give it to my mother. That was the first time my mother had ever taken charity from a stranger, but it was not to be the last.
At first, the five of us stayed near the river in the home of a teacher named Rahmullah. He was one of the kindest people I had ever met, with warm eyes that crinkled when he smiled and a neat grey beard. His family was poor and couldn’t really afford the extra mouths to feed, but as one of my father’s political supporters he felt honoured to give the Wakil’s family the hospitality of his simple two-room home.
His garden backed directly onto the river, and I remember splashing about happily with his daughters. The relationship with his family would endure. Years later, Rahmullah came to me for support when his daughter needed help escaping 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. The man’s family insisted that the match go ahead, but Rahmullah supported his daughter’s right to refuse. I negotiated with 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 to be a teacher like her father. In gratitude, Rahmullah gave me all the help he could in my political campaigns. When I visit the area today, I love nothing more than to share a simple lunch of rice and chicken by the river with this warm and loving family.
After staying with them for two weeks, my mother was restless, confused about what to do and where to go. We heard that our house had been burned and my sister and sister-in-law killed. Thankfully, the news was not accurate; the girls had survived.
My two elder brothers, Jamalshah, a student, and Mirshakay, a police chief, had moved to the provincial capital of Faizabad before the attacks began. When news of what had happened to us finally reached the town, they chartered a flight to pick us all up.
My mother sobbed with relief as the helicopter landed. It was the first time I had ever flown, and I remember running ahead of the two boys and my big sister.
Inside the helicopter were two large wooden chairs. I snuggled up in one and my mother and sister sat in the other. I remember smiling smugly at Ennayat and Muqim because I had a chair and they did not.
Mirshakay had rented a house for us in Faizabad. He couldn’t afford much on his policeman’s salary; it was a two-room mud shack. Local people gave my mother basic kitchen equipment. The fancy imported china on which she had served meals in the hooli was a thing of the past. She joked that we were living in a doll’s house because it was so tiny, but she did her best to turn it into a home for us by putting hangings and tapestries on the wall to brighten it up.
By now I was seven. I still looked like a typical village girl, dirty hair and face, baggy kameez trousers, a long scarf that trailed in the mud and a pair of red wellington boots. I was out of place in the big town.
From the doll’s house, I watched young girls go to school. They looked so smart and bright, and I yearned to be like them. No girl child in my family had ever been educated, because my father had not seen the need. But he was no longer here. So I asked my mother if I could go to school. She looked at me for what felt like hours before finally beaming a big smile at me. “Yes, Fawzia jan, you can.”
Everyone else was against it, particularly my elder brothers. But my mother stood her ground. I was to go with Muqim to the school the next day and ask permission to join. We entered the headmaster’s office. It was smart and clean with padded chairs, and I felt tiny and very grubby, my nose running and my face covered with dirty marks. Suddenly embarrassed, I took my scarf and wiped a large trail of snot from my nose with it.
The headmaster frowned and peered at me. How was a dirty little village girl here in Faizabad asking to be educated? “Who are your people?” he asked me. When I answered haughtily that I was the daughter of Wakil Abdul Rahman, his eyebrows shot up in surprise. How our family had tumbled down the social scale since my father’s death! The kindly man said that I was admitted to the school and could start the next day. I remember running home to tell my mother, my scarf trailing in the mud and tripping me up. My little heart was so full of excitement that I forgot my father’s death, the loss of our home and our life of poverty. I, Fawzia Koofi, was going to school!
I WAS so determined to make the most of every moment at Kockcha school that it didn’t take me long to catch up with the other girls; soon I was regularly achieving second or first position in class. Our education was fairly basic: we had general studies for half the day and then studied the Holy Koran at the local mosque with the Mullah Imam for the other half. My mother, who was totally illiterate, was very interested in Koranic studies.
At night I slept with 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 could remember and recite the Koran to her while she made verbal corrections. It was her way of being involved in our education and she was passionate about 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 to look like the other girls. My brothers were furious, but again my mother calmed them down and encouraged me in my newfound confidence and progress.
Sometimes we had access to television, and I learned about Margaret Thatcher in the U.K. and Indira Gandhi in India; both women remain political heroines of mine to this day. I would watch them with my mouth open and think to myself: how is it possible for a woman to stand in front of all those people, and where does she find the power to speak to them? How can a simple woman lead a nation?
Sometimes my friends and I would go up onto the roof of our school and play. Slowly, my horizons were broadening. Just as I used to stand in the kitchen of the hooli when I was a toddler, looking up at the sky and thinking my whole existence was contained there, I now stared down at the city streets surrounding the school. I had moved on to believe that the whole sky stood on the mountains around Faizabad and that all the world, my world, consisted of that city and the surrounding areas.
I was extremely happy there, but when I was eleven my brother Jamalshah was promoted and 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 pictures of on TV, but I was also transferring to a big high school there. I was so excited as we drove through the city streets for the first time that I thought my heart might burst with joy.
Kabul was exactly as I had dreamed it would be: exciting and loud. I marvelled at the yellow taxicabs with black stripes down the sides and gazed in wonder at the blue Millie buses with female drivers in their smart blue miniskirt uniforms. (In those days Kabul had the world’s only electric bus system, called the Millie bus; the glamorous female drivers were nicknamed Millies.) I loved the glitzy shops with all the latest fashions on display in the windows and the smell of delicious barbecued meat floating from the hundreds of restaurants. The city entranced me and embraced me, and I loved it back with all my heart. I still love it today as much as I did then.
Those three years we stayed in Kabul were some of the happiest of my childhood. My mother loved the city too. To her, shopping in the big bazaars was a wonderful, exciting adventure. It may not sound like much, but this was an independence she could never have dreamed of when she was married to my father. I too enjoyed undreamed-of liberty. I experimented with fashion and talked about poetry and literature with my friends. We would walk home from school along tree-lined boulevards, carrying our school books with pride.
These new school friends seemed to me extremely sophisticated and glamorous. Their families had houses with swimming pools, their mothers were chic with bobbed hairstyles and their fathers were indulgent and kind, trailing the faint scent of aftershave and Scotch whisky behind them. Some of the girls even wore makeup and nail varnish. My brothers banned me from using cosmetics, but one day I put some on at a friend’s house, also borrowing some long socks and a short skirt. My friend and I were casually sauntering along the road, delighted with our sophisticated appearance, when Jamalshah drove past. He saw me and slowed down, staring out of the open window. With no time to hide, I turned and faced the wall. My thinking was, ostrich-like, that if I couldn’t see him, he couldn’t see me. But of course he did. And he was waiting for me when I got home. When he made as if to beat me, I ran away to hide. I heard him bellowing with laughter, calling my mother to tell her the tale. She laughed too, and shamefaced I quietly sneaked back in for dinner.
Those days in Kabul were carefree and light. Once again, however, the wider world was about to collide violently with my safe 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 to go to school. I had big dreams, but I also wanted a contented life. I want the same for you. 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 the joy of having children of your own.
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 changes 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.
Sometimes tolerating something is the wrong approach. All great leaders have shared the ability to adapt and start anew. Change isn’t always our enemy, and you must 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
{ 1991–1992 }
IT WAS TH
E beginning of the 1990s. Apartheid in South Africa had ended, the Berlin Wall had come down and the great Soviet Empire was dismantling. The Cold War was reaching its final years.
The Mujahideen fighters were seasoned veterans by now. They had fought a war of attrition against the Russian invaders, and in 1989 they succeeded in sending the Soviet army back to Moscow. Crowds cheered and clapped as the Red Army was forced to make a humiliating retreat. The rebels’ morale had never been higher, and many people saw them as heroes. The most popular of them all was Ahmad Shah Massoud, the man known as the “lion of the Panjshir.” He was seen as the most brilliant of all the Mujahideen leaders and the strategist behind the Russian defeat. His image is still found on posters all over Afghanistan.
Now, with the Red Army gone, the fighters were eager to seize the full power of government. They sent their armies sweeping towards Kabul. The Mujahideen resented what they saw as a Communist puppet government, which still had very close links to Moscow even though there was no longer a Russian military presence. The government at the time was headed by President Najibullah, a leader who did bring some economic progress and development but who would always be unpopular for having allowed the Russian military on Afghan soil. For three years, the Afghan army remained under his control and fought to keep the Mujahideen at bay, but eventually it was overwhelmed and Najibullah’s government collapsed.
People hoped this would bring stability and with it a new, purely Afghan government. But almost immediately after defeating the government, the Mujahideen began to fight among themselves. With the common enemy defeated, simmering ethnic tensions rose to the surface. Although they were all Afghans, these generals spoke different languages and had different cultural beliefs depending on what part of Afghanistan they came from. They could not agree on how to share power. These battles and power struggles between different commanders would eventually turn into the Afghan civil war, a bloody, brutal war that lasted well over a decade.