Dear Zari: Hidden Stories from Women of Afghanistan (22 page)

The sellers jostled with one another to make sure their stall was on the corner where it could be seen from two sides. It was 8.45 a.m. by the time Wazma arrived at the bus stop and the sun was fully up. Wazma took out some change from her purse in readiness for the bus. The roar of the traffic and the shouts from the market sellers could be heard streets away; the sounds even carried up the mountain. People were fresh with enthusiasm for the start of a new day.

Wazma waited impatiently for the bus. At last she could see it coming in the distance. As it approached the stop, Wazma moved forwards together with the other women, men and children waiting to get on it. Suddenly there was a whistling sound that got louder and louder. Then there was a huge bang. Wazma turned round to see a ball of fire. The power of the blast was enough to throw her to the ground and shatter the windows of the bus. All that was left of it was a tangle of twisted metal and broken glass. The shouts of the fruit and vegetable sellers gave way to cries of pain and screams of panic. Acrid black smoke slowly filled the air until people could not see more than a few metres in front
of them. Bodies and body parts were strewn across the ground. An old woman who had been standing in front of Wazma at the bus stop now lay face-down in the dust. Blood seeped out of her head. A rocket had landed between the bus stop and the market place of Deh Afghanan.

Wazma lay on the ground. The breath had been sucked out of her. She didn’t know what had happened and she felt nothing. The police began blocking off that part of the city and ambulances arrived to take the injured to hospital. In those few seconds Wazma’s life changed for ever. There was her life before the rocket attack and her life after it.

During the 1980s a large number of rockets were fired into Kabul on a daily basis and the city’s inhabitants lived in fear for their lives – just going to school or to work was risky. As children, we didn’t understand all the politics behind the attacks but one name we feared was Gulbudeen Hekmatyar, the leader of the main Mujahedeen group in Afghanistan.

The government would launch Russian rockets called ‘stingers’, sometimes twenty at a time. We got so used to the different sounds of the rockets that when we heard the ones being fired at the Mujahedeen we didn’t hide in the corridors. My friends and I might be playing outside and if we heard those bangs, we’d tell each other not to be scared. ‘Those are our rockets, not Gulbudeen’s.’

At that time my friends and I didn’t stop to think that those powerful rockets were being aimed at human beings. This is what the war did to us. We were just happy that our government was firing twenty rockets in a row at the Mujahedeen. We were frightened and hated whenever a rocket landed in our city but we didn’t consider what our side was doing in terms of killing and injuring others.

I do wonder about both sides now. The war brings suffering and grief to families on all fronts. Some of the scars of war run so deep that they last a lifetime and the change is devastating. It was like this for Wazma.

I got to know Wazma in the second part of her life. It was several years since the rocket attack on Deh Afghanan and Wazma was now in her
late twenties. I went to interview her at a welfare centre in Kabul, which had been set up to help female amputees learn new skills and earn a living. The director led me into a room full of women who sat with their heads bent over various bits of cloth. He gestured towards a pale-faced woman, her eyes focused on a colourful Afghan dress. Although she was only in her twenties, Wazma might pass for a woman twice that age. She worked without much energy and, beside her, I noticed two crutches. I walked over and introduced myself to her. ‘
Salamalikum
(Peace be with you). I’m Zarghuna Kargar and I present Afghan Woman’s Hour on the BBC.’

Wazma looked up from her sewing. She said hello and gave a wan smile. I told her I had come to record her life story, which the BBCWorld Service would broadcast on the radio. She asked how I knew she had a story worth telling, and I said that one of my friends in Kabul had told me about a woman she’d heard about who was good at storytelling. She seemed pleased that someone she knew had contacted the BBC and now they wanted to interview her.

We moved to a quieter room. Wazma used her crutches to support her legs. She wore a black skirt and a large white scarf. When we got to the room and sat down, I set up the recording equipment and asked Wazma to tell me her story.

‘Dear Zari, I really want to explain my life to the listeners of Afghan Woman’s hour. I want my daughter to hear it and I want my husband to hear me. It’s the first time I have spoken openly about my feelings and I’m hoping that people will understand what I have gone through.

‘I’m a twenty-four-year-old woman. I got married when I was seventeen. I had a happy life with my husband Waheed. I think he loved me. He was kind to me. My marriage was arranged but I was contented with it. Sometimes I do wonder if my husband didn’t really love me but I’d rather believe that he did care about me. Sometimes we human beings prefer to live under the shade of pleasant memories, don’t we?’

She looked at me as if expecting a reply. I told her I didn’t understand
exactly what she meant. At this her eyes filled with tears and she began again in a low voice.

‘I have lost so much that living with some happy memories, believing that my husband did once love me and that once I had a beautiful daughter gives me hope. But to be honest, there are many times when I wish I had died in that rocket attack. Living like this is not easy for a woman.’

At this she pointed to her right leg.

‘Who will want me like this? I’m a disabled woman with a false leg. I’m not strong enough to be a mother and wife any more. I knew there was a civil war going on and at any time a rocket could land and kill or injure me, but at the same time I didn’t believe it would happen.

‘My daughter, Farah, was only a year old at the time.’ I had one eye on the recording equipment and kept another on Wazma. I saw her wipe her tears away from her face. ‘I didn’t know what had happened at first, but when I woke up in the hospital I looked down and saw that I didn’t have my right leg. My leg had been blown off from above my knee by the impact of the rocket. All I can remember is that I felt a lot of pain. I forgot who I was and where I was.

‘When I was young my mother told me that when you cut your finger with a knife while cooking it hurts a lot, so you should be kind to people who lose their limbs in war because their pain will be much greater. Of course, then I had no idea what she really meant. It was all beyond my experience or imagination.’

Wazma then began to quietly weep. She bent her head down as if she didn’t want me to see her tears.

‘From the moment I accepted I was a disabled woman, I felt stronger. I realised I had to fight the pain and difficulty. I thought about my dear Farah and Waheed and this gave me hope. I became stronger just thinking about them. So what if I only have one leg? I was still young; I had my little family and my life ahead of me. Once I realised this, things became easier and I coped better.’

I found it hard to believe Wazma’s description of the caring relationship
she had shared with Waheed. In my experience, that kind of love doesn’t exist in an Afghan marriage. I thought that a happy married life meant you weren’t beaten or forced to wear a
hijab
; a happy married life meant that my husband accepted me working outside the house, and that I was able to have a conversation with another man. It didn’t cross my mind that a happy marriage could simply come from two people loving each other. I guess it was the way I was brought up. I believed I should respect my husband however he behaved. It wasn’t that I didn’t feel unhappy when he refused to go with me to a close friend’s wedding, or when I made plans to go shopping on a weekend and he declined to come with me. I was told so many times that he was a perfect husband, so when I saw other Afghan women talking about their caring and loving husbands, I thought they were just showing off.

It seemed normal to assume that a wife’s job was to keep the house clean, iron my husband’s clothes and prepare his meals, even though he always criticised my cooking. I was relieved he allowed me to carry on with my job, but I’m a talkative person, and I longed to have conversations with him, but he just wasn’t interested in the programmes I was making or the stories I was covering. My voice wasn’t good enough for radio, he would say, and he certainly never appreciated what I did for Afghan women. And it felt like I was supposed to just ignore this behaviour – it hurt that my husband cared so little about the things that were important to me, but what choice did I have?

On one occasion I tried to complain about these feelings to my family. ‘Look, Zarghuna! Does he beat you?’ When I said no, my relative went on, ‘Well then, accept this life. He is a good man; it is just his way.’

But as time passed, accepting his way became hard for me. For him an easy life was more important than ensuring my happiness. I was earning good money, paying for the mortgage and most of the bills. I never asked him to buy me clothes but I did my own shopping, so why would he prevent me from working?

I remember one day I had had a particularly hard time at work. I was very upset by the behaviour of a colleague – it was just office politics but
it had hurt me a lot. When I came home, I told him that sometimes I felt like leaving my job and staying at home, that perhaps I would go back to my studies. As an Afghan wife I was expecting him to protect me and tell me not to worry, that he would work hard and find enough money to look after our financial needs. I was hoping for a hint that he would protect me, so that if I ever chose to leave my work, I would still have some security. At the time, I was just angry with people at work and I was unlikely to leave such a good job, but somehow I felt tired and fed up of all the responsibility I had shouldered from such a young age. But he lashed out: ‘No way are you leaving that job – who would pay the mortgage?’ I was very hurt by his attitude and the burden of economic responsibility became heavy on me. Just the thought of not having any money scared me and I felt terribly alone.

Our relationship started to falter, and soon there were long periods where we would hardly see each other. He would leave the house earlier than me and I spent more and more time at my parents’. I would try to be asleep when he came home at night, and those nights that I was awake I would pretend to be asleep so we didn’t have to talk. My self-esteem was at an all time low; my respect for him and any residual love I felt for him was fading fast. Talking to Wazma showed me that this was not the only way to live. You don’t have to feel like a prisoner in your own home, even if, like Wazma, your home is on top of a mountain in Kabul with very limited facilities.

I was in hospital for a long time. I was given a lot of morphine because my leg hurt so much. The pain was so bad, I couldn’t think clearly. After a while, it did get better but then I started to worry. My parents came to visit me every day. They would bring me food and look after me. Each day I would ask for my husband and daughter but they never came to visit me in hospital. I missed them so much. I couldn’t wait to hold my daughter in my arms again. After more than a week, I had heard nothing from them. I kept asking my mother where they were and why they hadn’t come. She made all sorts of excuses, saying that they had visited the other day but I
was asleep or that Farah was ill so they had had to stay at home. The stronger I became, the more determined I was to see them. Weeks passed and I didn’t hear anything from my husband. I became convinced that my parents were hiding something from me but the truth was worse than I could possibly have imagined
.

One afternoon, my mother came with cherries on a plate. She had just washed them. She kissed me on the forehead and said, ‘Wazma, my child. You look so pale, as if you don’t have a drop of blood in your body. I’ve brought you some cherries because the doctors told me they’re good for the blood
.’

I took my mother’s hand, placed it on my head and told her I could see how much she loved me. She reassured me that she did, but wanted to know why I was holding her hand so tightly. I replied, ‘I’m a mother too. I also have a daughter. Can you feel my pain?
’

I tightened my grip on her hand
.

‘
Where are Farah and Waheed? Swear on my life that they’re safe
.’

I began to shout and cry. My mother started crying too. She said they were safe and coping well without me. She told me to concentrate on getting well myself. At this point, a doctor came into the room. He took my blood pressure and told me I was ready to be discharged
.

‘
Wazma, you’re a strong woman. Your life will be different now. I want to wish you all the best for the future. Don’t lose hope or strength. Our country is going though a difficult time
.’

I thanked the doctor for looking after me. My mind, however, was really on my daughter and husband. I was upset that in all these weeks they hadn’t visited me even once but at least now I was being discharged and I would see them again
.

My mother packed my things into a bag, helped me into a wheelchair and pushed me in it to a taxi. It felt strange to be in the fresh air again, seeing and hearing the sights and sounds of the street. My parents were strangely subdued. I thought they would be pleased that their daughter had recovered enough to go home but perhaps they were upset they had a disabled daughter
.

I didn’t dwell on this, though, as all I wanted to do was to see my daughter again. In hospital, I had planned to be angry with Waheed and find out why he hadn’t visited me, but now the moment had come to see him again I was just excited and happy. When we got into the taxi I heard my father tell the driver to take us to Khairkhana. I protested. ‘No, wait. Why are we going to your home? I can come and see you later with Waheed and Farah
.’

Instead, I told the driver to take us to Deh Afghanan. I informed him it was my home and my husband and daughter would be waiting for me there. My father told me to be quiet in front of the driver and he would explain everything later – for now their home was my home once again. I didn’t know what to make of it all
.