Dear Zari: Hidden Stories from Women of Afghanistan (5 page)

My father had managed to get a message to us through a male relative, and had told us to hire some form of transport and go first to Jalalabad, a city in the east of Afghanistan that was seventy miles from Kabul. My mother and a neighbour duly made plans to hire a minibus, but on the day we were due to leave Afghanistan, the Pakistani government closed the border at Torkham (the main crossing between Afghanistan and Pakistan) in an attempt to stop the flood of refugees trying to flee Afghanistan. We would have to change our escape route.

When the time came to leave Kabul, my mother and our neighbour, Auntie Nasfeesa, both wept. I began to cry, too, but I was only crying because my mother was. I didn’t understand that I was fleeing my homeland to escape the war. My mother told us to say goodbye to the land we’d been born in, which we dutifully did, but at the time I understood neither the significance of what I was doing nor what was actually happening to us. We left Kabul very early in the morning, when it was still cold and dark. We’d packed the minibus with basic things like bread, drinking water and bottled milk for my baby sister. We didn’t reach Jalalabad until nightfall, staying the night at my mother’s cousin’s house where we all slept in
one large room. My mother had two requests for her cousin when we arrived; first, could she help us get to Peshawar where my father was waiting for us? Second, could she offer us anything to get rid of our head lice? Thankfully, her cousin was able to produce a bottle of grey liquid – with a sharp antiseptic smell I can still remember – and my mother got to work with it straightaway. It was the first time any of us had had head lice and we didn’t realise that it’s considered embarrassing, and so were surprised when my mother’s cousin’s daughters began laughing and pointing at us. In turn, they were shocked at how openly we talked about the annoying little insects that were laying dozens of eggs in our hair every day. My mother, however, was mortified and apologised to her cousin for bringing us into her home infested with lice.

The next day we were up early again and drove the minibus to the border with Pakistan. As the official crossing at Torkham had been closed, we were going to have to cross the border illegally through the mountains, via the same route that people living in the border area were using to carry refugees between Afghanistan and Pakistan in exchange for money. We had to cross a narrow river at Naw-a-Pass in a wooden long-tail boat, then when we’d reached the other side we travelled in an open-back military truck. There wasn’t a lot of space in it so we were all sitting on top of one another. Apart from the driver and his two assistants, we were all females, with no male relatives (other than my three-year-old brother) to protect us.

To add to our difficulties, we had with us my one-year-old baby sister who drank formula milk, so my mother somehow had to find clean, warm water to mix with the powder. We all took turns to hold my baby sister while she slept. I remember clearly being driven a long way through mountains and rocks, and how I screamed because I was only small and was being flung around all over the place. The mountains were so full of dust that we sometimes couldn’t see where we were going. Sometimes we couldn’t even see each other’s eyes. The dust covered everything: the lorry, our clothes, our faces. I think even our minds were affected by it.

We had entrusted our lives to a random driver commandeering an old Russian military truck and his two helpers. So while I feared we
might crash and fall down the mountainside, my mother was no doubt more worried about being in a truck full of women accompanied only by men we didn’t know. She would have been only too aware that we could have been robbed, raped or killed; we’d even heard stories of Afghan women and girls being sold to Arab Sheiks.

As day turned into night, my mother and the other women got more and more worried. We’d been told that we would arrive in Peshawar before it got dark, yet night had come and we were still in the mountains. We were risking our lives trusting that we would eventually arrive in a better place, and hoping we would finally see my father again after so many weeks apart from him. During that cold night, I thought back to those evenings listening to Muzgan’s endless stories, craning our necks to catch the BBC news and being nagged by Muzgan’s mother. I missed Muzgan. Before I’d left Kabul I had promised to write to her. I’d told her I wanted to hear the end of the story of the little girl in the red hat whose grandmother had been eaten by a wolf, but she had said it would take too long. We’d told each other we would see one another again if we didn’t die in a rocket attack, but that still hasn’t happened. I heard from someone that she’s married and has children, but I don’t know where she’s living. That’s the strange thing about war, it can bring you so close to people, then it pulls you apart. You have to get used to losing friends, leaving one place and moving to another.

As it turned out, we were lucky. The driver and his two helpers were not rapists. The sky was becoming lighter and the driver said his dawn prayers – Salat Ul Fajr – and then announced in a loud voice that we were going down the mountain, that this road would be easier and that we were on our way to Peshawar. ‘
Inshallah
(God willing), the road will be faster and we will get there by midday.’ Full of relief that nothing had happened to any of us in that wild mountain range, my mother told us to thank God for keeping us safe. The rest of the journey was much less dusty and we soon reached a small Pakistani tribal village where a street-lamp cast light on the smooth road ahead. I no longer had to cling on to the bar of the truck, and while my skin was dry from the wind and
the smell of the hairlice lotion lingered in my hair, the dust no longer bothered me. I had swallowed so much of it that it almost felt normal. In comparison, the fresh air and tarmac road felt strange. I had been in those mountains for one and a half days and one long night.

We finally came to a bus terminal where some local people were selling bread, but the dust in my mouth had killed my appetite. Here we exchanged our Russian truck for a smaller Japanese one, which would take us on the final leg of our journey to Peshawar. The Pakistani border police knew when they saw us that we were refugees who had crossed the border illegally, but there was an arrangement in place between them and the drivers. Our driver simply handed over some money to them, and we continued on our journey into Peshawar. We had with us the telephone number of a friend of my father’s who was living in Peshawar, and he was able to tell us where my father was staying. When we arrived at the house, my father was there waiting for us.

I had always seen my father clean-shaven and in a suit, smelling of after-shave and smiling. Yet here he was now in a dark green
shalwar kamiz
(loose trousers and dress or top) looking older and greyer. My parents cried as they hugged each other, and we girls wept too as we clung to him, but my baby brother behaved as if nothing had happened while my baby sister stayed asleep. My dad ended up holding her in his arms for hours. After a while we became worried that she was showing no sign of waking, but my mother simply said she was tired after all her crying and the long journey, and would wake up later. My father, meanwhile, told the other women how grateful he was to my mother. He said she was his hero because she had managed to bring his family back safely to him.

At last I was able to change out of my old black corduroy trousers and grey jumper, and have a hot shower. Finally, the smell of the head-lice lotion disappeared, and all the lice were dead. I think the journey had been as effective at killing them as the lotion had. In the evening my baby sister woke up, my mum washed her and she contentedly drank her milk, while we were given a traditional Afghan meal of Kabuli pilaw rice, lamb and spinach. The food tasted wonderful after so many hours
of hunger and it was such a relief to be reunited with my father, but looking back I can see I didn’t fully appreciate what a narrow escape we’d all had. I now give thanks to God for keeping us safe in that old Russian truck, and for reuniting my family.

After dinner that first night my father’s friend’s wife said to my mother, ‘Sister dear, you do know this is Peshawar, don’t you?’ My mother replied that, of course, she knew we had come to Peshawar. But the friend continued, ‘Sister, you must appreciate this is a very different kind of society to the one you’ve left behind in Kabul.’ My mother was now uncertain as to what she meant, and asked in what way it was different. ‘It’s very strict, and your daughters are not dressed appropriately. They will have to wear a
hijab
and cover their faces.’ My mother protested that we were still very young, but our hostess insisted that in Peshawar we would be considered women and it would be dangerous for us to go out dressed as we had done in Kabul.

The next day while my father looked for a place for us to rent, my mother went shopping to buy us
shalwar kamiz
and
hijabs
, and for the first time in my life I felt repressed. In Kabul the restrictions on women and girls’ clothes hadn’t affected us that much; I’d had to wear a headscarf outside and for school a long black
hijab
, but I had also been allowed to wear jeans, corduroy trousers and blouses or sweaters. I’d been comfortable in trousers all my life, yet now I was expected to wear a
shalwar kamiz
, and even though I didn’t actually mind wearing one, I didn’t like the fact that I
had
to wear it. I asked if I could wear my jeans with a
kamiz
shirt, but was told I couldn’t. Worse still I had to wear a large scarf called a
chador
, which covered my head and face, and left only my eyes showing. For an eleven-year-old child like me, this was too much. The
shalwar kamiz
might have been a traditional piece of clothing for Pakistani women and children, but it wasn’t one I had grown up with. During my early childhood the dress code had been relatively relaxed before the Mujahedeen had made women wear the black
hijab
(something they’d enforced even in the refugee camps). I noticed now that some Mujahedeen groups treated Afghan and Pakistani women differently,
and that they looked down on Afghan women and called them ‘Kabulis’, meaning they’d come from a liberal country that didn’t adhere closely to Islamic laws. And we were instantly recognisable as refugees because we had to wear the black
hijab
while the Pakistani women didn’t – instead they could wear colourful clothes as long as their hair was covered.

Peshawar is in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, in the north-west of Pakistan and is one of the most traditional areas of the country, so its tribal code of conduct remains very strong. Women and men do not mix outside the family, boys and girls go to separate schools and men and women socialise in different rooms at parties and weddings. Compared to other cities in Pakistan like Islamabad, Karachi and Lahore, Peshawar is conservative, male dominated and practises a strictly fundamental form of Islam.

My sisters and I found that men in Pakistan looked at us as if we were pieces of meat, and it frightened us enough to make us change our behaviour and act like older women. At this time we were sharing a house with another Afghan family, and as our family had only two rooms I no longer had my own bedroom and comfortable bed with a proper pillow and blanket. Our existence had become far more basic. I was no longer the daughter of a government minister. We were poor, and my father was looking for work. At that age I didn’t understand that my parents were doing the best they could for us under difficult circumstances, so my sisters and I would moan about how the food we ate was too plain and how it was uncomfortable to have to sleep on the floor. My mother told us off for complaining, reminding us that we should be thanking God for keeping us all alive. I’m sure that if I were ever in that situation again I’d be far more supportive of my mother, particularly when I think of everything she went through, coping with the war and holding the family together. I see her now both as a strong woman and as a role model.

My sisters and I were soon given places in a school for refugees and even though I missed our house back in Kabul, life was much better than it had been during those long weeks of bombing and shelling, not knowing whether we would live or die. Gradually I adapted to life as an ordinary
Peshawar schoolgirl, and my tastes began to change. I tried to make the best of having to wear
shalwar kamiz
by choosing ones made of brightly coloured material and searching out those in the most fashionable styles. When I was at school, though, I had no choice but to wear the black
hijab
. Our refugee school was directly funded by Saudi Arabia – a country supportive of the Mujahedeen – and it concentrated heavily on Islamic studies. I found learning Arabic extremely difficult because even though I could read it – as I’d learnt to recite the Quran – I had no idea how the grammar worked or what the words actually meant. When it came to Arabic exams, I remember crying because I found them so difficult.

Life improved when my father got a job with an education project at the BBC World Service. He worked as a writer on a radio drama for Afghans, and was sufficiently well paid for us to be able to rent our own house in a better area of Peshawar. At this time, my father decided that my sisters and I should all learn English, saying it was vital for our future. So while we were already studying English at school, he also enrolled us in private language classes. They cost a lot of money, but he was adamant we should have a good education.

After completing high school in Peshawar at the age of seventeen, I went to a university for Afghan refugees to study journalism. I chose journalism because I harboured an ambition to sing or speak on either the radio or the television. I was still young to be going to university at this age but had been able to jump ahead because I’d finished my school exams early. My real dream though was to be able go to Kabul University, not least because my father had studied there and my mother had always said it would be good to follow in his footsteps. My father had proudly told us about his old university’s high standard of education, and the quality of its teaching, but my ambition to study there remains unfulfilled. The collapse of the Soviet Union, followed by the period of rule by the Mujahedeen and then the Taliban, shattered those dreams.