by Fawzia Koofi
But politics became a husband of a different kind. Politics was in my blood, and I believe it was my destiny. God wanted me to live for a purpose, and what greater purpose can there be but to improve the lot of the poor and bring pride to a nation torn apart by war?
In 2004, Afghanistan held its first-ever democratic elections. Back in the 1970s, when my father was an MP, Zahir Shah had promised to bring more democracy, and there had been similar elections for local MPs, but that process was derailed by the Russian invasion and then the war. Now, thirty years later, it was in motion again, and the country was elated.
Hamid Karzai had been interim president since the fall of the Taliban in 2001. He was still a popular figure and was elected in a landslide victory. There had been fears that this election day would be marred by violence, but it passed relatively peacefully.
It was a chilly autumn day with a thick grey fog swirling in the streets. Hundreds of thousands of people came out to vote. In some polling stations, a sea of women in blue burkas queued to vote from 4 o’clock in the morning. It was an extraordinary moment for Afghanistan, and despite my grief the significance of it was not lost on me. I think that was the first day since Hamid’s death that I had allowed myself to feel emotion.
Back then, President Karzai had promised women’s rights, civil society, all the things I believed in. Since his initial victory, his attitude has changed and he has become much more focused on appeasing the hard-liners, but in those days he was like a breath of fresh air. Sadly, the resounding victory he secured in 2005 was not repeated in 2009. He won that election too but amid allegations of widespread fraud. It was another reminder that in my country everything can change for the worse, in just four short years.
In 2005, it was announced that parliamentary elections would be held to select the members of parliament who would represent the various districts and provinces of Afghanistan. My family decided the Koofis should reaffirm their political history and be part of this new generation. One of us had to stand for election. There was much negotiation within the family as to who should run. My brother Nadir Shah, the son of Dawlat bibi, one of the two wives my father had divorced, wanted to stand. Nadir had been a respected Mujahideen commander. Later, he had become the first of us children to enter the family business of politics and held an important political post at the local level. He had the position of district manager in Koof district in Badakhshan. So understandably he believed he was the person best placed to represent the family.
But I disagreed. I thought I was the best and most experienced person for the job. Although I didn’t yet have the local political experience Nadir had, my years with the UN had taught me much. I had contacts, both nationally and internationally, and experience in organizing and mobilizing volunteers as well as providing local services and running projects. I knew I would make a good MP. But I didn’t know if any of my brothers would even consider allowing it.
First, I called my brother Mirshakay. As a child, Mirshakay had been one of my father’s favourite sons. He had been made an arbab (community leader) at a young age. My father used to lift him up on his horse and allow him to sit at the front of the saddle. Mirshakay would look down at me from the horse with a snooty, proud expression. I hated him then and I was torn up with jealousy. I so wanted to be allowed to ride my father’s horse too, but a daughter would never have been given that treat. But as we grew older, Mirshakay became one of my biggest supporters. We had shared our life together during Taliban rule, constantly moving. And it was he who had finally allowed me to marry Hamid and who was there on my wedding day at the emotional moment I left the family home for my husband’s home.
After leaving Afghanistan for Pakistan, he had eventually gone to Europe, settling in Denmark with one of his wives. But he and I remained close, and to this day we still speak at least once a week on the phone. He listened quietly as I made my case and told him why I was the best Koofi to be an MP. He hung up the phone promising me he would talk to the others.
The family was split, and the debate raged for a few weeks; it was almost like an internal election within the family. But to my surprise, by the end of it most relatives supported me and Nadir was persuaded not to stand. The family decision was that only one person could stand for election, because to have two siblings stand against each other would have created too much disharmony among us all.
I wished my mother had been there to see it. I suspect she wouldn’t have believed it was happening. In my childhood, my father didn’t even speak directly to his daughters, and no one bothered to celebrate the girls’ birthdays; that’s how far down the scale we girls were. But here we were, only a generation later, electing a woman as the political leader of the clan.
I don’t think my family is alone in accepting rapid change like this. Many Afghan families have gone through similar processes as more and more women have had to go out to work simply due to economics. The same thing has happened in many other countries. Once women become an economic force, they become emancipated. I believe that change in gender attitudes cannot be forced on a country from the outside, however well-meaning such forces may be. Where outsiders have tried to force change on people it usually only makes them dig in their heels deeper. Change can come only from within a country and it begins with individual families. I am living proof of this.
Several of my brothers and half brothers didn’t believe I stood a chance of winning. My father had married all but one of his wives for their political usefulness. In doing so, he had created a local empire of allies, networks and connections. But my brothers thought these old networks had been too badly dismembered during the war and Taliban years, and that no one would remember the Koofis anymore. I had travelled to the villages in my work with the UN and knew that wasn’t true. Many people I had met remembered my father, and the respect for our family was most definitely still there.
Furthermore, I was confident about my own networks. In the four years I had spent living in Faizabad with Hamid, I had volunteered for women’s groups, taught over four hundred students English, visited internally displaced people camps and set up sanitation and school projects. People knew me there. My friends were civil society leaders, teachers, doctors and human rights activists. This was the new Afghanistan that I was part of and felt I could represent. I was still only twenty-nine, but I had also lived through Soviet occupation, civil war and the Taliban.
And my concerns went much wider than just gender and women’s issues. Men suffer just as much as women from poverty and illiteracy. I wanted to promote social justice for all and education for all, tackle poverty and its root causes, and in doing so move Afghanistan out of the Dark Ages and into its rightful role in the world. It didn’t matter if those prepared to join me in that struggle were male or female. I am the child of my mother, who was the epitome of the suffering and endurance of so many Afghan women. But I am also the child of my father, who was the very model of a committed and dedicated politician. Both of my parents have been equally major influences on my life. And both of them have led me to this great calling.
I went to Badakhshan to start campaigning. Within a couple of days, the news had spread that I was to run. I set up an office in the centre of Faizabad and I was thrilled when I began receiving phone calls from hundreds of young people, both male and female, volunteering to campaign for me. The youth wanted change and they saw me as the candidate to bring change. My office was buzzing with vitality and optimism.
The campaign was gruelling. We didn’t have much time; we had very limited funds and a massive geographical area to cover. My days began at 5 A.M., more often than not to face a five or six-hour journey across dirt roads to reach a remote village or town before nightfall. Then back again to Faizabad the following day and a different town the day after.
I was exhausted but determined. And I was elated at the reception I received. In one village, women came out to greet me, singing and playing a daira, an instrument similar to a tambourine and made of goatsk
in. They sang and clapped and threw flowers and sweets at me. I already knew for sure I would win the women’s vote because I spoke a lot about the issues that mattered to them: maternal mortality, lack of access to education, child health. In some areas of Badakhshan, women work just as hard as men and are out in the fields from dawn to dusk. Yet they still don’t have the right to own property. If their husband dies, then the house is often passed to another male relative instead of to the wife. To me, that’s wrong.
I understood these women and admired them. My life now was radically different from theirs. I dressed in the latest fashions and used a computer, while they came to greet me with filthy hands and had never read a book. But I had grown up with their way of life. My mother’s life had been just like theirs. I understood their daily struggles and respected them without patronizing them. I know many people in the West will consider these women to be the nameless, faceless victims of our country, but I don’t see it like that. They are proud, strong, intelligent and resourceful females.
Convincing male voters, especially the older ones, was harder. In another village, I was supposed to give a speech in a mosque, the largest building in the place and the only venue able to hold a large number of people. But the speech almost didn’t happen because some of the elders didn’t want me to go inside the mosque. I had to sit in the car while the local men and male members of my campaign team debated it. When they finally agreed I could go inside, I was so nervous I forgot to say “In the name of Allah” when I started my speech, a very silly mistake on my part. I expected a hostile response after that. But as I talked, I saw some of the old men at the back were crying. They were wrinkled, grey-haired men in turbans and traditional long striped coats who had tears streaming down their cheeks. After I had finished, they told me that they had known my father and that hearing me speak had been a reminder of the passion and sincerity he also used to put in his speeches. Hearing them say that made me cry too.
I didn’t wear the burka when I was out campaigning because I needed to look people in the eye and communicate with them. But I did make sure I wore respectful and extremely modest local clothes, a long baggy dress over loose trousers—the same type of dress that had once been used to hide my six-year-old brother from would-be assassins.
As the campaign rolled on, so did my levels of support. In one extremely remote district called Jurm, I was thrilled to arrive and find a convoy of over seventy cars waiting for us while elders and young men sat waving Afghan flags and my campaign posters. This wasn’t an area I knew particularly well or one that my father had represented. But they supported me because they really cared about the elections. They were interested in the democratic process and wanted to make their voices heard by selecting their own local leader.
Critics of the United States often say that America has forced democracy on an unwilling Afghanistan and that it is pointless to have democratic processes in such a seemingly underdeveloped country. I strongly disagree. America has supported democracy in Afghanistan but has in no way forced it upon us. Afghanistan has had democratic traditions for centuries, whether in selecting arbabs (community leaders) or in the tradition of elders voting on local issues at loya jirgas (community councils). Voting for national government is only one step further on from that. And I had no doubt that the people I met, even the illiterate and poor, wanted this chance to vote for change. Who in the world would not want to vote for their own leader if it was safe to do so and they were given the opportunity?
As I drove around the province, it felt strange to see my poster and picture staring down at me. My face on the poster adorned cars, shop windows and houses. I began to feel a sense of rising panic. What if I let these people down? What if I couldn’t justify their belief in me? What if I couldn’t deliver the services they badly needed?
At night, I would be racked with self-doubt. I was afraid that I would win this time but then lose all trust by the next set of elections. I could not bear the thought of losing the trust of these kindly old men with their honest faces or the women who grabbed me with their callused hands and told me my struggle was their struggle.
People liked me, but only because they needed someone to help them. However, realistic delivery is one thing. Convincing people I wasn’t able to make them rich or wave a magic wand was another. One woman asked me if I could make sure she was given a free house in Kabul. She really believed I could do that for her. I had to explain that that is not an MP’s job, at least not an MP who doesn’t believe in corruption.
As the campaign wore on, I got more and more excited. Dawn broke at 4 A.M., and with it my day began. Most days I didn’t get to bed until after midnight. I got as many as two hundred calls a day from people wanting to ask me questions or offering to volunteer. The whole thing took on a momentum of its own.
I remember one man who rang me and told me none of the women in his family, his wife or his mother, had voting cards because he had not given them permission to vote. But these women had all been urging him to use his own vote to vote for me. He had no idea who I was or what I represented so he called me up to ask. He was so traditional; a man who would not let his wife vote but who respected her view enough to bother to find out about the candidate she liked. He reminded me a little of my father. At the end of the conversation, he promised me his vote. I hope in later years he let his wife vote too.
Some of the calls were hostile. I had several men, complete strangers, call me and tell me I was a whore because I was standing for election. Some simply screamed over the phone at me, telling me to go back home and leave politics to the men. Others told me I was a bad Muslim and should be punished. I tried not to let such calls upset me, but of course they always did.
In one town, we visited the house of some of my mother’s sisters. As a child, I used to love visiting these relatives because I remembered the woman as highly glamorous, particularly one aunt who always wore makeup. Their house then had been noisy and warm, and I remember being smothered in hugs and kisses and the scent of perfume. Now the house was silent. Only two old ladies had survived and living with them were several children, assorted relatives who had been orphaned. It was so heart-rending: a house of widows and sad-eyed children.
One boy, Najibullah, about nine years old, stood out to me. He had lovely, deep brown eyes that resembled those of my brother Muqim, the brother who was murdered. I asked who he was and learned he was the grandson of my mother’s favourite brother—the brother who had once galloped his horse back to our house after learning of my father’s beatings and offered to take my mother away if she wanted to leave. He and his family had all been killed during the war, leaving only this little boy named Najibullah. I couldn’t leave him there in that house of sadness, so I offered to take him home with me. Today, he’s a lively teenager and he lives with Shaharzad, Shuhra and me in our house in Kabul. He goes to school and is excelling at his studies. He’s wonderful with the girls and is a great help to me in the house.
Thirty-six hours before the election, I still had two districts to visit, both of them five-hour drives away in opposite directions. The rules dictated that all campaigning must cease twenty-four hours before voting began. I don’t know how we managed it, but we made it to both districts. In one of them, I was touched to find that my local campaign had been led by Uncle Riza, the father of Shahnaz, my father’s seventh and last wife, my half brother Ennayat’s mother. All these years later, and here he was supporting and helping me. The poor man had lost most of his children, including Shahnaz, in the war. By now he was a very old man but he was still sprightly and fit, and he insisted on walking everywhere with us. We ate dinner and spent the night at his house. It was another reminder to me of how powerful the tendrils of the extended family system can be.
But the district I had been both dreading and longing to visit was my ancestral home of Koof. I hadn’t been there since I was four years old. The last time was the day my mother had grabbed me and my siblings and we had run for our lives along
the river bank while being chased by gunmen. Going back had dredged up all those old feelings of fear and loss. As our car bumped along the precipitous tracks and over the high plateau where my father had been murdered by the Mujahideen, I felt an ocean of pain wash over me. This was where my family had begun and where it had been destroyed.
I could barely breathe by the time we reached the village. As we drove along the main track that wove its way through the houses, the same track my father had ridden down in procession each time he took a new wife, the reality of the damage wrought by the war was all too devastatingly clear. The spring where we had played as children was now almost dry. The once fresh, clear water that had gushed and gurgled was now just a trickle of brown. My mother’s gardens and orchards, which had been her pride and joy, were dust. In her day, the gardens had shone with seasonal colour: greens in the spring, pink berries and blossoms in summer, fat red and orange pumpkins and peppers in the autumn and brown nuts and purple vegetables in the winter. Now there was nothing, just the branches of a few dead trees poking into the sky like twisted skeletons.
The hooli—our house—was still standing, but only just. The whole west wing, including the guest house, had been destroyed. The huge pear tree that had stood in the centre of the yard was just a stump. It had taken a direct hit from a rocket during the war. This tree had witnessed so much. It was where I hid from my mother when I’d been naughty, where my father had hidden his weapons and where my sister and sister-in-law had been whipped with rifle butts by Mujahideen trying to steal my father’s guns.
My father’s suite of rooms, the Paris suite, was still there. The gaily painted murals on the wall were still visible. This was the room where my mother and father lay together as man and wife, where I had been conceived, where my mother had washed my father’s dead body with half its skull missing in order to prepare him for his funeral. I touched the cold plastered walls with my hands, tracing what I could of the patterns. Those murals had been my father’s pride and joy. In his eyes, they were like the ones from the French royal palace at Versailles—only in his view, his were better.