Letters to My Daughters

by Fawzia Koofi

  As I was leaving the prison, a senior Talib came to me and asked, “How much is your husband’s release worth? $2,500? $5,000?”

  They obviously knew by now that Hamid was not political. They could beat him all day and all night and he wouldn’t tell them anything. He couldn’t because he didn’t know anything. But his detention still created an opportunity for them to profit. I would have given them all I had but I didn’t have any money. We weren’t that rich, not cash rich anyway. And even if we could arrange financing from Pakistan via my brother, the Taliban had effectively ruined the banking system, so transferring money or borrowing large amounts of cash was now impossible. I just could not pay it. Something I will forever feel guilty about.

  Hamid was now getting very sick from all the abuse he was suffering. He was half starved and frozen to death. A cold entered his lungs and became more and more serious. The lethal combination of his failing immunity, close proximity to many very sick prisoners and lack of a place to wash led to him contracting tuberculosis.

  I prepared a letter pleading for his release and planned to give it to the executive board of the intelligence service. In it, I talked of Hamid’s innocence and the fact that he now carried a communicable disease that threatened the health of the other prisoners. I delivered it myself to the office of a career bureaucrat. He wasn’t a Talib but rather an ordinary, bespectacled man seemingly a little bemused and baffled by his latest masters. Given his age, I imagine he had served the Russians, the Mujahideen and now the Taliban. Different bosses for the different ages of Afghanistan.

  He took the letter from me, and I burst out with the story of Hamid, his illness and our recent marriage. I wanted to gain his sympathy so that he might present the letter to the board with greater urgency. He peered through his glasses as I stood on the other side of the partition in my burka. Then he looked down at the letter and said, “Sister, who wrote this letter for you?”

  “I did,” I replied. “I am a medical student and just want to get my sick husband out of prison.”

  “Your husband is lucky,” he said. “He has a wife who cares for him and is educated. But sister, what if they put me in prison? Who will take care of me? My wife is not educated; who would write the letters for me?”

  He let out a long, dramatic sigh and put the letter underneath a pile of other letters, doubtless written by other desperate relatives. “Go now, sister, I cannot promise. But I will do my best to take your letters to the executive.”

  With tears stinging my eyes, I left his office. Hamid’s life and liberty was just another letter underneath a hundred others. I knew it had little chance of being delivered by the bespectacled bureaucrat.

  I walked home in the snow. As I climbed up the stairs to our apartment, I felt that my home without my husband was as empty as my stomach. As I entered the apartment, Hamid’s sister Khadija ran to greet me, asking if I had any news about his release. I had no answer for her. I went straight to my bedroom and lay down trying to hold back the tears. I dozed off to sleep. Hours later, the sound of a mullah calling iftar (the evening meal that breaks the fast) woke me up. I lay back and listened: Hai Alal falah, Hai Alal falah!

  Feeling hungry, I got up and went to the other room, expecting to see Khadija and her children about to eat. But she was feeling as low as me and she had also slept the day away. No one had prepared any food. I felt a pang of guilt. This was Hamid’s home, and I was his wife. In his absence, it fell to me to keep the home running and look after his family. After all, it was the fault of my family that he was in prison at all. I went out to buy some rice and a little meat and came back to cook it. Khadija came into the kitchen fussing over me, telling me I was pregnant and should rest. She took the knife from my hand and took over the job of cutting the onions. We continued to cook together in companionable silence. It was a cold winter night in Kabul, snow was falling thickly and the city was silent with both fear and boredom.

  I turned to Khadija with tears in my eyes. “I’m so sorry, jan [dear]. I feel all I have done is bring trouble to your family. I wish poor Hamid had never wanted to marry me. I have brought all this pain on him.”

  She put down the knife, wiped away an onion tear and took my hand. “Well, Fawzia, he is a strong man. And prison will only make his character stronger. You should not be sorry, you should be proud of him. He is a political prisoner, not a criminal.”

  This was the first time we had discussed the reasons why Hamid was in jail, and I was amazed she could be so calm and balanced about the situation. She had every right to be resentful of me and my family. Khadija has always been a woman I admire; she was strong, intelligent and reasonable. I was so touched by her tone, I couldn’t reply because the tears choked my throat. I carried on stirring the rice pot and tried to convey my thanks with a silent look.

  She hugged me and then ordered me into the dining room to find a date or a piece of fruit to break my fast with, telling me I needed to put my baby’s health first.

  I went and sat alone in the dining room, memories of my childhood starting to flicker across my mind. Long forgotten and half hidden until now, they came to the surface because of my melancholy mood. I recalled iftar at the hooli back in the days when my father was alive. A traditional napkin, like a large tablecloth but for the floor, would be laid out in the centre of the room.

  Local village women made the napkin by hand with delicately woven threads. It had the most beautiful vibrant colours, stripes of red and orange created by natural dyes made from mountain plants and flowers. Mattresses and cushions would be placed around the edge of the napkin, and everyone would sit cross-legged on them to eat.

  The napkin would be piled high with nutritious and delicious fast-breaking foods such as bolani (a tasty flatbread filled with vegetables), manto (parcels of steamed mincemeat with onions and yogurt) and qabuli pilau (rice mixed with raisins, lentils and carrots). My elder sisters would all rush to prepare the meal, usually finishing minutes before the fast ended and the hungry hordes of family members descended.

  All the family would sit together, apart from my father who was either away or sitting with his guests: all the wives and their children, my half brothers and sisters. We would sit and eat, talk and laugh. I was only a very small girl then, but I used to love those moments. It was a time when everyone relaxed and shared stories of the day. My heart ached to think of those pre-war days when we were a whole family untouched by grief and loss. I missed my mother and my brothers and sisters so much. I yearned to be back there again, an innocent village child whose only preoccupation was stealing chocolates or dressing up in a pair of wooden shoes.

  My thoughts were broken by Khadija entering the room with a plate of steaming pilau. I smiled gratefully at her. Her presence was a reminder that I wasn’t alone: Hamid’s family was also my family now. Khadija’s children ran in to join us, and my heart gladdened as we all tucked in.

  Every day, I tried to visit Hamid and on the few occasions I did get to see him he put on a very brave face and pretended he was being well treated. He didn’t want me to worry. But I could see the uncontrollable trembling that had developed in his hands and the bruises on his increasingly thin face. I pretended to believe him and tried to be a dutiful wife, knowing that to confront him with the evidence of his abuse would only make life even harder for him to bear. I think that trying to hide his ordeal from his young pregnant wife helped give him the strength to endure it. So we spent those few precious moments together talking about ordinary events of family life, as if he had just come back from a business conference or the bazaar or some other mundane occasion that husbands and wives everywhere take for granted every day. It was easier to pretend that this was just our ordinary life—as if nothing was strange or scary or out of place. Some people will tell you denial is wrong—perhaps it is—but when you are being tossed in the stormy seas of helpless despair, denial can become the tiny raft to which you fervently cling. Sometimes denial is the only thing that keeps you afloat.

/>   I decided to make another attempt to persuade the Badakhshani man who worked at Puli Charkhi jail to help us. After the long and tiring walk to get there, I was relieved when this time he invited me into his office. I told him how Hamid was innocent of any political crime, how he was being tortured and would soon die if he wasn’t released. But again it was to no avail. He said there was nothing he could do for us. I started to cry. He let out a long sigh, then reluctantly promised me he would try to talk to the guard in charge of Hamid’s section of the prison.

  It was a Friday afternoon, a day I could usually gain access to meet Hamid. Khadija put on her blue shuttlecock burka and I the black Arab-style niqab, and we walked to the prison together.

  As we waited at the gate, the guard went inside to call Hamid. As he did so, he left the door open and I was able to peek inside the main building. I watched as a second young guard, barely out of his teens, washed his hands and feet for the ablutions required before Islamic prayers. The first guard approached him and the man asked in Pashto, “Sa khabara da? What is up?”

  The guard replied, “Hamid khaza raghili da. Hamid’s wife is here.”

  The young man put down his water pot and started to walk towards us. I turned away so they didn’t see I had been watching. Some other men walked past and I heard them speak in Urdu, the most widely spoken language in Pakistan. They weren’t prisoners, and I can only assume they were Pakistani Taliban sympathizers working in our prisons. I took Khadija’s hand, hoping the young man might have good news about Hamid’s release. He walked straight up to us and asked, “Hamid khaza chirta da? Who is Hamid’s wife?” I stepped forward, holding my niqab across my face with my left hand. “I am.”

  Without saying another word, the man bent down, picked up a stone from the ground and threw it at my head. I recoiled in shock. “You woman. You complain to your Badakhshanis about us? Who are you to do this? Go, get out of here, woman.” For a few seconds I was too shocked to move. I started to speak, to try to explain that I had only been trying to free my innocent husband. The man picked up a second stone and threw it again. It just missed my head, and as it did so I moved my hand protectively, giving the man a glimpse of my painted fingernails.

  He sneered and spat at the ground. “Look at your nails! You are a Muslim yet you have the fingers of a whore.”

  The blood rushed to my cheeks in anger. I wanted to tell him that he had no business judging or commenting on another man’s wife. I was a Muslim woman unrelated to him, so he had no right to talk about me. He was the bad Muslim, not me.

  Khadija could read my thoughts and stepped forward to stop me. The man grabbed another stone and threw it. “Get out of here, woman.” Khadija grabbed me and we half ran, half walked back to the gate. Once at a safe distance, I turned and said to her loudly, so they could hear me, “These men are not Muslims; they are not even human beings.” The man waved another stone at me menacingly and then turned to go back inside, cursing and swearing with words no decent Muslim I know would ever use.

  Then, the awful reality of what had just happened hit me: I had been insulted and my attempts to speak to the Badakhshani in Puli Charkhi had backfired badly, which would now make things even worse for Hamid.

  I started to shake and cry loudly under my niqab. Khadija also cried. Luckily we managed to find a taxi driver who was prepared to break the rule against driving female non-relatives. I don’t think I trusted my legs to walk; I was shaking too much from a combination of anger, fear and pure humiliation. Once home, I threw myself on my bed and howled.

  That evening, Khadija and I reached the awful decision that it was safer not to try to visit Hamid for a while. We feared it would only make things harder for him and lead to more beatings. The guards had decided his wife was an insolent whore for trying to protest his imprisonment and for wearing nail varnish. I was furious with the Badakhshani from Puli Charkhi. I suspected that not only had he chosen not to help us, but he had deliberately caused trouble for us. The fact was, I hadn’t even complained to him of conditions. I had spoken only of Hamid’s illness and his innocence.

  That night, my last hopes for Hamid’s release died.

  FOR TWO weeks I didn’t attempt to see him. I didn’t want to be insulted or humiliated by those guards, and I feared that even if they did let me see him I’d break down and cry in front of him. The last thing he needed was to worry about my being upset. But by the following Friday, I could bear it no longer. I needed to see my husband. I also needed to ask him something important. As a married woman, I needed his permission to travel and I had decided that I wanted to go to my brother’s in Pakistan to give birth. I couldn’t bear the thought of delivering my first baby in Kabul, where the Taliban had banned all female doctors from working and male doctors from treating women.

  Khadija insisted on coming with me for safety, and as we approached the prison gates I was a bag of nerves. I wasn’t very optimistic that they would let me see him. I stayed a few paces back, while Khadija approached the guard and asked for Hamid. He disappeared, then came back accompanied by the same young guard who had thrown stones at me. I kept quiet, and so did Khadija, expecting a rock to come flying at my head at any moment. He looked straight at me and ordered, “Come close, woman.”

  Slowly I inched forward, promising myself that if he threw another stone at me, I would throw it right back at him.

  “Show me your left hand,” he ordered. I said nothing and I didn’t show him my hand, instead hiding them both under my niqab. The man was coarse and rude and, in my eyes, totally unfamiliar with the Afghan custom of showing politeness and manners at all times.

  He laughed as I hid my hands and said, “I am telling you. Don’t put nail polish on your fingers anymore. If you do, you are not a Muslim.”

  I glared at him through the safety of my covered face. He dared to tell me I wasn’t a Muslim, but then permitted himself to comment on the makeup worn by another man’s wife! “Why do you wear it? Tell me,” he ordered.

  I replied as calmly as I could. “We have been married for only four months. It is customary and cultural for a new bride to wear makeup and nice clothes for the first year of marriage. Surely as an Afghan man you know this?”

  He laughed a mocking and guttural laugh, showing a hint of his yellow teeth as he did so. “I see. So do you want me to release your husband?”

  I didn’t know what to say. I assumed he was just mocking me. I answered, “What is his crime? He has committed no crime.”

  The guard shrugged his shoulders and said, “Go, and come back with a male relative. Bring a man who is prepared to show me evidence of property. If the man will use his property as a guarantee that your husband will not attempt to leave Kabul, then I will release him.”

  I didn’t say a word but turned and ran out the gate as fast as my legs could carry me. Khadija ran after me. We didn’t know if he meant it, but we knew we had to try. We stood looking at each other, two women standing on the streets of a male-dominated world gone mad. We didn’t know who we could ask or what to do next. My brothers had all left Kabul, and Hamid’s family were mostly living in Badakhshan.

  Then I remembered a cousin who owned a shop. We ran across the streets to get there. We reached it, both panting and out of breath, only to find it closed. In our excitement, we had forgotten it was Friday, the day of prayer and rest.

  I didn’t want to give the prison guard the chance of changing his mind and losing this possibility of releasing Hamid. We ran back to the prison. The guard was sitting on a chair enjoying the sunshine. I was pleased to see he looked relaxed.

  I didn’t want to go close to him in case I made him angry again. So Khadija went and explained the situation. He stood up, not saying a word to her, and went back inside the prison for what seemed like hours but was in reality only a few minutes. Then he reappeared with Hamid and another, even younger-looking guard. Then he spoke. “Hamid can go with you and this man will go too. If you can bring a letter back from a neighbour or frien
d, then I will release him.”

  He ordered a Taliban driver with a Hilux pickup truck to take us. We all got in. I dared not look at Hamid for fear of the guard, but I sneaked a sideways glance at him and saw he looked white as a sheet and on the verge of collapse.

  The young Talib who was accompanying us told us he was from Wardak province. He seemed kind but very young, and I doubted he had any power or influence in the prison. I was terrified none of the neighbours would be able to help us and he’d drive Hamid straight back to prison. Dusk had fallen by the time we drove into Makrorian. Khadija recalled that one family among our neighbours owned their apartment; she didn’t know them very well but we had no choice but to approach them for the guarantee. She went to talk to the man while Hamid and I and the young Talib went upstairs to wait in our apartment. It was emotional agony. Hamid was sitting in his own living room, but I couldn’t even talk to him and at any second he might be taken back to prison.

  I was still wearing my niqab but I noticed the young Talib was looking at my face, trying to read my eyes. I was scared and looked down. I think he saw how sad and scared I was. He was a native Pashto speaker but he spoke to me kindly in broken Dari, the language he knew Hamid and I spoke. “Don’t worry, sister. I too am newly married, only twenty days. So I understand your pain. Even if you don’t find a guarantee, I will leave Hamid here tonight and will come again tomorrow to get the letter.”

  He risked the wrath of his superiors by making that offer. It was another one of those surprising acts of random kindness when least expected. Hamid and I both thanked him.

  We all sat and waited in silence for Khadija to return.

  I heard male voices in the corridor of our apartment. I went out and saw half a dozen male neighbours. They smiled and said how happy they were that Hamid was being released. All of them told me not to worry; they would collectively offer Hamid his guarantee. I was so grateful to them that I could do nothing but cry. They went into the room and Hamid hugged them all. Two of the neighbours who owned property signed the letter of guarantee, which stated that Hamid, an engineer, would not leave Kabul and would attend appointments at the Interior Ministry whenever the Taliban required it. Failure to do so would result in the two men forfeiting their property. It was an awfully big risk for our neighbours to take, and once again I was amazed at the generosity some people show to others at such times of war and conflict.