The Favored Daughter (14 page)
Read The Favored Daughter Online
Authors: Fawzia Koofi
Ironically, the latest mujahideen peace treaty allowed the Rabbani government to function effectively for the first time. The civil war was over, and the mujahideen government was finally sharing power peacefully and doing a decent job of running the country. But it was all too little, too late to placate a desperate population. Calm had descended, but calm in Afghanistan is as fleeting and fragile as the life of a butterfly. The Afghan people were already looking for new heroes to believe in. The Taliban were on the ascent.
PART TWO
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My dear mother,
I still wait and hope that you will come back. Even now my breath catches in my throat when I remember that you are not in this world. I'm a politician now. But sometimes I'm just a silly girl and I make mistakes. When I do make a mistake, I imagine you'll be there, gently chiding me and correcting me. If I arrive home later than usual, I still expect you to be waiting in the yard for me with your burqa.
I still wish I could sleep curled next to you, like I used to sleep with you until the last days of your life.
I want to lay next to you and listen again as you tell me stories of your life. Stories of your good times, bad times, sufferings, patience, and hopefulness.
Mother, your stories taught me how to live.
Those stories taught me that as a woman I should learn to suffer and be patient. I remember as a child when I was not happy during the dayâwhen one of my brothers would tell me not to go to school, or my mind couldn't concentrate properly in class, or I would see that my classmate's father would come to pick up my friend from school with his nice car to take her home, or when my girlfriend Nooria would talk about her father and I would feel very sad and an unknown sorrow would take over my heart.
At those times I thought that I was the weakest and the poorest girl in the world, but then I remembered your stories in the nightâ how you married when you were 16 years old, how so often you would witness a new woman marrying my father, and how despite your pain you stayed with my father and his other wives so that your children could have a good futureâthese stories gave me strength.
It was important to you that my father should be the best man in the world, that is why you would always tried to make the best food for his guests, and why you always kept the yard tidy. That is why you
I think of how you would use all your natural intelligence to try to solve the problems of the poor people when my father was not around, and how after my father was martyred it was important for you that all his childrenâboth girls and boysâshould go to school and should live with you in the same house so you could be aware of their problems and be there for them.
It was important to you that my brothers should grow to be men of good character and become people who could do something for their country. You suffered and starved yourself so my brothers could study and go to university.
When I remember all this I still feel amazed that through all these problems and heavy responsibilities you laughed. You laughed all the time.
I wish I was able to face my problems laughing like you.
Mother, my entire world was in these stories.
The interesting thing was the older I became the more interested I was in these nighttime storiesâthey would make me feel calm and safe in bed. Maybe I was trying to escape from my surroundings.
You were my refuge from it all. The best moments in my life were after you'd finished the stories, and you would turn your attention to me.
The way you promised me I'd become something important.
How my father had also apparently told you after I was born that I would grow to become like you. Beautiful, clever, wise, and warm.
They were small words, but those words became my inspiration to struggle.
When I asked what I would become you'd smile and reply: “Maybe, Fawzia jan, you will be a teacher or a doctor. You will have your own clinic and will treat the poor patients who come from the provinces for free. You will be a kind good doctor.”
Then I would laugh and say: “No Mother, maybe I will be a president.”
I said this because once I heard you tell a neighbor: “My daughter tries so hard. I am sure she will become president.”
I learned so many life lessons from those stories.
And I have never felt so calm and safe with anybody else as I did with you.
Mother, I learned from you what self-sacrifice really means.
I learned from you that literacy alone is not enough to bring up good children, but intelligence, patience, planning, and self-sacrifice for others is what really counts. This is the example of Afghan women, women like you who would walk miles with an empty stomach to make sure your children get to school.
I learned from you that any human, even a “poor girl,” can change everything if they have a positive and strong attitude.
Mother, you were among the bravest of the bravest Afghan women.
I am glad you were not here to witness the horrors that came next in our livesâthe Taliban years.
Your daughter,
Fawzia
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NINE
ONE ORDINARY THURSDAY
I will never forget the day the Taliban came to Kabul. It was a Thursday in September. I hadn't gone to university that day and had been at home studying. My sister Shahjan needed to buy bread and I needed a new pair of shoes, so in the afternoon we walked to the bazaar.
I was wearing one of my favorite brightly colored headscarves and tunic. My sister told me a joke and I giggled. The shopkeeper smiled at us and said: “You ladies will not be able to come here dressed like this tomorrow. The Taliban will be here tomorrow and this will be your last day of pleasure in the market, so be sure to enjoy yourselves.”
He was laughing when he said it; his green eyes were smiling and the lines around them crinkled. I thought he was joking but his joy over the repression of women made me angry. I snapped and told him this was a wish he'd be taking to the grave; it would never come true.
I only vaguely knew who the Taliban were. I knew they were religious students who had formed a political movement, but didn't know what they stood for. During the years we were fighting the Russians, the Afghan mujahideen had been joined by thousands of Arab, Pakistani, and Chechen fighters. They had been funded to help the battle against the Soviets by other countries, such as the United States, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia. Each of those countries had their own vested interests and political reasons in helping us. While their help in our battle was initially welcomed, these fighters brought with them a fundamentalist version of Islam that was new to Afghanistan, Wahhabism.
Wahhabism originated in Saudi Arabia and is a particularly conservative branch of Sunni Islam. Madrassas (religious schools) in the border regions between Pakistan and Afghanistan promoted this type of Islam to young Afghan men, many of them vulnerable refugees barely out of childhood.
But there was a lot of misinformation in those days. Some people in Kabul even thought the Taliban were the communists coming back in a new guise. But whoever they really were, I could not and would not believe they, or anyone, had beaten the mujahideen. The mujahideen had defeated the entire might of the Red Army, so how could a few students possibly defeat the men who had done that? The idea that they would be in the shop where I was now standing was just ridiculous.
At this stage I personally didn't see much difference between the Taliban and mujahideen. As a child I had been very much afraid of the mujahideen. Now as a university student I was learning about the Taliban. In my view they were all just men with guns. Men who wanted to fight instead of talk. I was tired of all of them.
But that night we got the shocking news on BBC radio. We listened to it all night long, incredulous at what we were being told. The BBC reported that Ahmed Shah Massoud's men had withdrawn from Kabul and gone back to their stronghold in Panjshir valley. I still couldn't accept that it meant defeat. Tactical withdrawal was not an unusual military tactic for Massoud. I truly thought he'd be back to fight before breakfast to restore peace and support the Rabbani government. Most people in Kabul thought the same.
Suddenly, the front door opened and my brother Mirshakay, the senior police chief, came in looking terrified. He spoke rapidly, saying he didn't have much time. He had asked his wife to pack his bag. He, like many senior government officials, was leaving to join Massoud in Panjshir.
I had so many unanswered questions about the future. I started to argue with him. His wife began crying. He hissed at us and told us to be quiet in case anyone heard.
Mirshakay had two wives, and it was decided that one would stay in Kabul in the apartment with me, while the other would be taken by her family that same night to Pakistan, where my brother owned a house in the city of Lahore.
It all happened so quickly we could barely believe it was real. As my brother went back out the door, my sister threw a pot of water after him. This is part of our culture: if the water follows the target, it is said he will come back soon.
With Mirshakay gone, we women huddled around the radio. The latest reports stated that President Rabbani and his ministers had also fled. They had gone by plane to Panjshir and from there to Rabbani's home province of Badakhshan.
Then they reported that former president Najibullah, the man who had been regarded as Moscow's puppet and a communist sympathizer, had taken refuge with his family in the United Nations compound. Ahmed Shah Massoud had offered to take him back to the Panjshir valley with him, but Najibullah didn't trust the mujahideen anymore than he did the Taliban and feared a trap. That was to be his fatal mistake, because within hours of Massoud retreating Najibullah would be dead.
At 8 o'clock that night jets were flying overhead. My family was teasing me, joking that even in war I kept my nose in a book. Then my brother Mirshakay came home and informed us that he had to flee Kabul immediately. I was furious with him and told him he should be here defending Kabul and the government, not running away from these people. I couldn't believe the government was giving up so easily to a bunch of religious students. I wasn't particularly fond of the Rabbani government, but it was a government at least. And here were officials like my brother leaving their posts and running.
Throughout the night we barely slept. We just listened to the radio as the country unraveled around us once more. At 6 o'clock in the morning I looked out of the window and saw people wearing little white prayer hats. Everyone was wearing them all of a sudden. I quickly closed the curtain and returned to my studies. As I swished the fabric of the curtain I wanted to shut out this new world, this latest incarnation of Kabul that I didn't understand.
Then the rumors started.
It was a Friday, prayer day. Reports started surfacing that they were beating people to make them go to the mosque. We certainly realized at this stage that they weren't communists, but then, who were they?
Never in the history of Afghanistan had we experienced anything like this. It was clear they were a strange force and were not controlled by Afghans. They couldn't be, not behaving like that.
Next they killed former president Najibullah, forcibly taking him from the United Nations building, where he had gone with his family to seek sanctuary. Had he escaped with Massoud perhaps he would have lived, but his decision to stay under UN protection cost him his life. The Taliban stormed the UN compound, dragging him out and executing him. They hung both his body and that of his younger brother from a busy roundabout for everyone to see. For three days, as the bodies slowly turned yellow and bloated, they hung there as a warning. People drove past in scared silence. No one dared to take the bodies down.
Then they looted the museum, destroying thousands of artifacts reflecting the history of our landâancient Buddhist statuettes, Kundan ornaments, eating vessels from the time of Alexander the Great, artifacts dating from the times of the earliest Islamic kings. In the name of God these vandals destroyed our history. The world took notice when they blew up the Buddhas of Bamiyan. These ancient stone statues were regarded as one of the wonders of the world. They had been built in 6th century AD, during the reign of the Kushans, great patrons of art, before Islam was brought to Afghanistan. The giant Buddhas were not only a piece of important Afghan cultural history and a sign of our enlightened past, they also represented the livelihood for the Hazara people who live in Bamiyan. The Buddhas had long attracted visitors from all over the world as well as elsewhere in Afghanistan. As a result, a healthy tourist industry had developed in Bamiyan, an otherwise poor province, which was essential income for the people who relied on the tourism.
In shocking TV footage that was broadcast around the world, the Taliban blasted the statues with rocket-propelled grenades and heavy artillery until these great monuments fell into little pieces.
Then they started destroying our minds. They burned the schools and university buildings. They burned books and banned literature.
That weekend I was supposed to have an exam that I'd been studying hard for. I had only recently started my medical degree and I was loving it. But I was told not to bother going as my medical school had closed. Women were no longer allowed to be doctors, let alone study medicine at the university.
In an instant so much of Kabuli life, the things people took for granted, were gone. Even in the war the small, pleasurable thingsâsuch as meetings friends for a cup of tea in the bazaar or listening to music on the radioâand the big things, such as a wedding partyâhad still been possible. But under the Taliban they disappeared overnight. The wedding ban was particularly hard for people because weddings are such a big and important event. In our culture, as in most other cultures around the world, a wedding day is a rite of passage and one that involves the whole family.
Afghan weddings are traditionally very large, anywhere from 500 to 5,000 people. Owning a wedding hall or hotel can be a lucrative business. The best ones can command high prices, and it's not unusual for families to spend 20,000 or 30,000 dollars, paying the whole bill in advance.