Dear Zari: Hidden Stories from Women of Afghanistan (31 page)

When I heard these words I began slapping my face and beating myself. I shouted to my mother in disbelief. How could it be true when I could still feel the warmth of his hands? I began to curse everyone; I even cursed God
.

‘
My children were shouting, Padar jan, dear Father, is dead!
’

I think I must have collapsed – someone carried me back into the house. After a few hours relatives and neighbours started arriving and gathered in my house to mourn but I kept asking for my husband; I wanted him brought to me. I saw that my two older children were sitting beside me. My brother had gone to fetch them home from school. They too were crying and shouting. My world had come crashing down. I was devastated, and I now knew that those premonitions I’d had in the morning had come true
.

A short while later they brought my husband’s body home. It was already in a coffin. My brother had organised everything for the body. I can’t describe what my feelings were at this time; all I remember is that I sat near his head and my children sat around the rest of the coffin. We could only see his face; it had a few bruises but we still didn’t know the cause of his death. His face looked as if he was smiling at us, and his eyes were open. I spoke to my darling’s dead body
.

‘
Who took you from us? Look at us! Who will take care of us now? You were the one always talking about being with the family and living together for ever. You’re the unfaithful one, leaving me halfway through our lifetime. Get up! Look at us! You can’t leave us alone!
’

The children were crying and calling on their dear father. Even if our worst enemy or the cruellest person in the world had seen my children and me clustered around that coffin, their hearts would have melted. Our lives had shattered in one day. My brother came up to me with tears in his eyes and said it was time for them to take the body
.

I screamed. It was as if they wanted to cut out my heart and put it into the coffin where it would have no feelings or life. When they covered the coffin I became hysterical. I held on to it tightly and wouldn’t let it go. My scarf came loose from my head as I struggled to follow the coffin outside. Our yard was full of men but I didn’t care. I fell to the ground and my dress and
shalwar
got covered in dust and dirt. My children ran after me as I tried to stop them taking my husband away. My mother and other women tried to hold me back. It was a terrible scene. Eventually, my father caught me and held me tightly in his arms so I couldn’t follow the coffin any more. I wanted to be dead too. I had lost everything. I cried and cried until no more tears would fall, my voice wouldn’t come out and my lips were cracked and bleeding
.

I had lost my direction in life; I couldn’t even think what to give my children to eat so my mother had to look after them. I had no appetite. It began to get dark; women were sitting around me and some were dampening my forehead with water to refresh me when I suddenly realised that I didn’t know how he had died. I called out for my father and brother and then got up and ran to the men’s room. My brother saw me and led me outside
.

‘
What are you doing in here, Mahgul? Control yourself. What will happen to your children if you go mad?
’

I began crying. ‘Brother, I’ve just come to ask you what happened. I need to know how he died
.’

My brother started to weep. ‘He was in his taxi taking some passengers
to Pul-e-Khumri. He’d just reached the main road when a tank hit his taxi. It drove straight over the top of it. As the tank drove over his car, it crushed his chest against the steering wheel. He died there. When I got to the scene, I saw his smashed car but the tank had gone. I don’t know which group the tank belonged to. One of the passenger’s sons told me what had happened. The passengers were saved but your husband died
.’

My brother and I both wept. I went back to my room and looked at my four children huddled close to my mother. They were devastated. I remembered how in the morning he had kissed each one of them. He was right; it was the last time he was going to see all of us. My nightmare had come true. The tank that had killed him had been the monster in my dream
.

Days and weeks passed, and the number of guests who visited us diminished. In our culture, relatives and close friends cook food for a bereaved family for forty days after the death. So, for forty days, my family and friends brought me food and kept me company. At the time, I felt the huge loss but I didn’t fully realise the challenge ahead. I didn’t appreciate the responsibilities for me now as a widow and mother
.

For a while I was able to pay for my children to continue in school with the money that my husband and I had saved, but this was coming to an end. I also had to repay a large amount of money to my brother for the cost of the funeral. My family was kind and refused to accept all the money I owed them, saying I would need it for my life ahead as a widow with four young children. I had no income and so inevitably the day came when I ran out of money. I had to borrow from my parents and brother just so we could eat. We all started to grow pale and weak. Our faces looked as if the dust had settled into them. I kept borrowing money as I had no other choice
.

Every day I felt my husband’s loss more and more. I had lost my partner with whom I shared every detail of my life, I had lost a close friend who would make me angry but could also make me laugh, and I had lost my love. On top of all that, we had lost the person who provided for us
.

My family started to get impatient with me borrowing money from
them all the time. I don’t blame them because they were not very rich themselves, but it hurt my feelings when they got angry with me. Eventually they stopped lending me money altogether. Yet I was too proud to borrow from strangers like my husband’s friends or neighbours
.

One evening my children and I were walking home – empty-handed – from my parents’ home. My mother had told me: ‘My daughter, your brother only earns enough to fill our stomachs and those of his children. You have borrowed from us a hundred times with no sign of paying anything back. Please don’t ask us again. Go and do something. You’re still a young woman; go and marry another man because it’s getting too much for us. From the day your husband died we have had to look after five more hungry mouths
.’

I was digesting my mother’s words, even though they were painful. I tried to work out what she really meant. In my culture, it’s usual for widows to marry again, often to a brother-in-law, but in my case I didn’t have any. The only other alternative was to beg on the streets
.

I had no money to buy food for my children. When we reached home I told them to go to bed early because there was nothing to eat. They didn’t say anything, but my youngest daughter cried all night
.

Early the next morning I took my
burqa,
left my children at home and went out in search of work. I only told my oldest son what I was doing and that I would be back soon. I knocked on the door of every house, asking if anyone needed a servant. One woman whose husband was rich gave me some clothes to wash, and after a while I became popular in the neighbourhood for washing and cleaning. I had no education so this was the only work I could do. Some families were kind and gave me enough money to buy food; others took advantage of my situation and gave me a very small amount of money or just food in exchange for a whole day’s work. I was desperate, though, and would accept anything to feed my children
.

One afternoon when I was on my way home from cleaning and washing at a house in the village, I noticed some young boys running around and creating clouds of dust. They were looking up at the sky and shouting
, ‘Azadi! Azadi!’

They each wanted the honour of catching the free-flying kite. It was autumn, the season for kite-flying, when the winds are just right. We call it
Gudiparan Bazi,
which means ‘flying doll’. The kite looked beautiful, like an exotic bird swooping and soaring in the sky. I got such pleasure from seeing the excitement in the children’s faces and their hunger for these pieces of coloured paper and bamboo, which together made the
azadi.

Every autumn in Mazar, boys and sometimes men would form teams and start a kite-flying competition. Two groups would have two large kites and two people would fly each one. One would be the leader, the person who actually flies the kite, and the other would be the
charkha gir
(the person who holds the wire). The kite is controlled by the
tar
– the wire – which is wound onto the
charkha
(wooden spool for the kite wire). My father used to love kite-flying, and I knew that special attention has to be paid to the
tar.
It takes hours to prepare it for fighting. A
sheesha
(a paste used to coat the wire) is made using glass ground up and mixed with crushed rice. The wires or strings of a kite are found in many different colours and sometimes match the kite. The kite whose string cuts another kite is the winner
.

Kite-flying is a traditional game for Afghan men and boys. No one is sure when it started but it’s been played for more than a hundred years. It may have come from China where kite-flying is believed to have originated. The Taliban banned kite-flying, claiming it was un-Islamic, but since their fall it has become legal and popular again. It can be dangerous, though – some people are injured when they are chasing kites across the roof tops and fall or they are so distracted that they run into the road and are hit by a car
.

Girls aren’t allowed out to fly kites but my father would tell me how much he loved it. He used to make kites for my older brother. I was allowed to help with the cutting and pasting of the paper around the two sticks that hold the kite together. As I watched the
azadi
scene an idea came to my head and a smile to my face. When I got home I found my eldest son trying to mend his own small kite. I asked him if he thought he could repair it
.

‘
Yes, of course, Mother; I can even make a kite
.’

In that moment he looked and sounded so much like his father it made my heart cry. I went up to hug him
.

‘
Look, my son, I have an idea. I don’t want you to stop going to school just because we’re now very poor. I’ll make sure we fulfil your father’s wishes. I will start kite-making
.’

I could tell he didn’t believe me but he came with me to the local shop to ask where we could get material to make kites. The shopkeeper suggested we visit the main bazaar. So, I took all the money I’d earned from that day’s washing and cleaning and spent it on different coloured paper, wooden sticks, drums and wire for the kites. My son and I were both excited as we carried home all the parts. On the way back, we stopped off at the local shopkeeper to ask him if he would buy our kites from us. He was very enthusiastic: ‘Now the Taliban have gone, kites are selling well. If they’re any good I’ll buy them from you
.’

When we got home, I told the other children that we were going to start a kite-making business. My children and I didn’t really have a clear idea of how we would do this, but we were determined to make it work. My son was confident he knew about kites and could make them. To begin with we made lots of mistakes, which was very upsetting because if we made a cut in the wrong place or damaged the materials it was an expensive waste. The paper has to be assembled correctly or the kite won’t fly properly. Afghan children are experts and won’t buy a kite that isn’t made well. I used to get so angry if anyone made a mistake and reminded them that we couldn’t afford to buy more material. My youngest daughter cried a lot because she was told off the most for getting it wrong. In the end we learnt how to make really good kites by going to the main kite shops and looking in detail at how they were put together. We then applied this knowledge to our own kites
.

From that day onwards my children and I began working. My eldest son would sell the kites to the local shopkeeper after school and my eldest daughter was skilful at creating new designs. We all know what sort of designs the boys in the village like and what sort they will buy with their pocket money. It’s like a factory; I cut pieces of coloured paper into
triangles, squares and circles and my daughters attach sticks to them and then glue on a tiny flower or star to the corners. We are all involved in the family business. Eventually my younger children reached school age, and we had enough money to send them to school, too
.

For a while after my husband’s death I had lost the will to live. If I closed my eyes, though, I could see his kind face and hear his voice telling me never to lose hope. I vowed to myself that I would become the breadwinner, that I would be the mother whose children went to school and became teachers and doctors
.

I see myself and my children as being magicians for other children. With a few pieces of wood, some sheets of coloured paper and wire we can make a doll dance in the sky. I like to think that in those kites are carried the dreams and hopes of Afghan children, soaring and swooping in the sky, freely. Our handmade kites are much sought after in the bazaar in Mazar in the north of Afghanistan
.

Fareshta, my youngest daughter once told me, ‘Mother, when I put this flower on the kite it makes me happy. I can see the bright colour of the flower high in the sky when it’s flying and feel like I’m flying too because I’ve made it
.’

My family is now famous as kite-makers. Sometimes children even call at our house asking for the latest model – but it’s painstaking and tiring work. Concentration is needed to get the details right. If we make a mistake in the cutting of the paper then the kite can’t be put together. The boys complain about the work. They want to be out playing with other boys, not selling kites in the streets, but I tell them that it’s necessary for them to do their job because it makes money that buys them an education. I remind them of their father’s dream for them to become teachers, doctors and engineers
.