The Favored Daughter (25 page)

We left the city early one morning, creeping through the city streets as dawn broke over the mountains, the springs in the taxi creaking over every bump in the road. Our plan was to drive east, following the path of the Kabul River until we reached an area called Surobi. The Taliban had control of Southern Afghanistan and the capital Kabul, but they didn't control certain sections of the north of the country. Once outside the city, their influence extended only a few hundred miles to the north of Kabul, where General Massoud's Northern Alliance forces had so far managed to keep them at bay. But to get to them we had to find a way through the battle lines. One that wouldn't get us killed or draw too much attention to ourselves—the Taliban were suspicious of people going north and worried that they were spies.

Surobi is a small town in a lush valley surrounded by lakes that from as early as the 1950s have provided much the of capital's erratic supply of electricity. It's a relatively short drive, only 43 miles, but the valley saw some of the heaviest fighting during the civil war, so even by the standards of hardy Afghan travelers the road was in an appalling state, full of potholes and craters. That meant we had to drive at walking speed most of the way, nose to tail with all the other traffic. Beyond the edges of the gravel road the earth was embroidered with a deadly latticework of landmines. During the past 20 years over ten million landmines have been littered across Afghanistan. To this day these evil weapons maim and kill our population, and the majority of the victims are children.

Occasionally frustrated or fatigued drivers would stray from the safe middle road, sometimes without consequence. Other times their vehicle would erupt in a geyser of smoke and flaming metal. The largest landmines are designed to destroy 60-ton armored battle tanks—driving a rusting 2,000-pound sedan onto one is like holding a dandelion in front of a screaming jet engine. The most terrible scenes would occur when a gung-ho bus driver would try a short cut. Sadly, he would be the first to die in the blast, which would usually rip the wheels and the entire front of the vehicle away. The terrified and shaken survivors would then face an awful choice as the flames from the explosion grew in intensity. Either perish in the blazing wreck of the bus or leap out a broken window and take their chances in the mine field. There really only was one choice, but it was a life-and-death gamble that not all of them won.

The road to Surobi passes over arid dusty plains outside the capital and passes Bagram Airbase. Today Bagram is the main US military base in Afghanistan, but even then it was already a huge installation, having served as the Soviet's center of air force operations.

The expanse of valley soon gives way to steep and rocky mountains and the road cuts its way through the narrow gorge.

Once we got to Surobi our car turned north toward Tagab. The road from Surobi to Tagab got even worse. This area is just under 100 miles northeast of Kabul and saw some of the heaviest fighting during the Soviet area. The road had been heavily bombed, or blown up by the mujahideen to prevent the Red Army advance, and when we got to Tagab I was a little shocked by how many of the simple mud houses were in ruins. Many of the people there were living among the rubble, sheltering in whatever part of their house still stood.

Hamid and I were very anxious. So far we had managed to get through the Taliban checkpoints without any problems. The next leg of our journey would be more difficult. Tagab marked the end of the Taliban front line in this part of the mountains. There was a lot of military equipment and large depots that appeared to be full of fuel for the tanks and trucks, and ammunition for rifles, artillery, mortars, and rockets. Tired-faced young men stood on guard and the traffic backed up as we neared the main checkpoint. Hamid and I stiffened. This would be where our escape succeeded or failed. We were worried that Hamid's name might be on a Taliban watch list, and that his presence here might be enough to cause the Taliban to arrest him again. As the line of cars and trucks crept forward I could see nervous men and their wives in burqas being ordered out of their vehicles and made to present their luggage for inspection. Fervent young men with black turbans rifled through open bags and suitcases, tossing neatly packed clothing and treasured personal possessions on the ground. One stood up suddenly with a whoop of excitement, holding a video tape aloft like a trophy. This was contraband. A woman lurched at the cassette as the Talib dangled it out of her reach. She was wearing a burqa but I could tell she was young. I imagined she, too, was a new bride, torn between her anger and frustration at the injustice being dished out by her tormentor and the fear she felt knowing that by protesting she was in danger of inviting more serious consequences. Her husband stayed a few paces behind, murmuring at his wife to stop. He would not let himself restrain his bride, knowing her actions were just, but neither could he challenge the Talib and condone her dissent. The gunman pushed her hard in the chest, his hand lingering on the outline of her bust, which showed vaguely beneath her burqa. She recoiled in shock for a moment before rushing back toward the Talib, fueled by anger at the sexual assault. He just laughed and groped her once more before ramming his shoulder under her chin and knocking her to the ground. For a moment she lay there stunned, and as she got onto her hands and knees the young Talib dropped the black plastic video cassette on to the ground in front of her and brought his heel heavily down upon it, smashing the brittle case. The woman didn't utter a word, but elevated her head so she could better see the cruelty and pointlessness etched on the man's face. He grinned at her theatrically and scooped up the spilled entrails of tape. He let the coils of plastic unspool between his fingers as he walked backward, watching her for any reaction. Turning to a tree, he hurled the tangled remains high into the branches, where the ribbon tumbled through the leaves. Her head fell forward, sobbing as her husband stooped to help her up. The Talib's dark eyes blazed triumphantly, clearly pleased by another so-called moral victory. The branches of the tree glistened in the midday light, filled with the innards of dozens of similar tapes. This was clearly a game played out on a regular basis.

My decision to leave the photos of my family at home hurt at the time, but I was thankful now that I had. I hurriedly began unloading our luggage from the car, while Hamid quietly asked some other men where we could hire a horse and a guide. Our plan was to go through the narrow mountain passes and strike out northwest to an area called Jabul Saraj, which was not under control of the Taliban. Effectively our plan was to loop west through the mountains and around the front lines of the fighting, rather than take the most direct but also most dangerous route north.

I was worried they would take our passports and tear them up, but when it was our turn to face the Taliban checkpoint, the armed men didn't actually pay us much attention. Their friend's game with the newlyweds had put them in a good mood, and apart from a quick search of our luggage they let us pass largely unbothered.

A woman a little further back in the queue was not so lucky. It was obvious she was from a Northern province because she was wearing a white burqa. The Taliban turned on her for daring to wear such a garment, beating her with sticks and lengths of wire cable. I wasn't looking forward to the horse ride, but after what we had witnessed I couldn't wait to be away from these terrible, inhuman men and in the comparative safety of the hills beyond.

At more than seven months pregnant it was a struggle mounting the horse that Hamid had managed to hire. But with his help and my natural desire to escape what I had just witnessed I managed to get on. Hamid walked beside the animal, and I felt very strange as we left the Taliban behind. It was as if my life had been diverted to some strange parallel universe where my country had regressed half a millennia. Here I was, an educated, ambitious young woman, with her educated, urbane, intellectual, and loving husband. As a couple Hamid and I were what I felt the picture of future Afghanistan should be, yet here I was dressed in a burqa riding on horseback as my longhaired and bearded husband walked beside me through the mountains. This Taliban ideology threatened to shackle my country in the Dark Ages.

But beneath this fear I also had a powerful sense of optimism. The Taliban didn't represent the true spirit of the Afghan people I knew and loved so well. The Taliban were an aberration, a disease that had taken hold after so many years of sickness brought about by war and suffering. As we climbed through the mountains, fording streams and negotiating narrow paths, I felt the weight of their oppression begin to lift. With each cautious step it seemed to get lighter, until finally, after several hours of hard trekking, we made it to Northern Alliance lines.

Not that there was any great accompanying fanfare when we got there. We simply arrived at a small town, at which point our guide turned to us as if to say: “Here we are.” People went about their business in a very ordinary way.

We arranged for another car, which would take us to Jabul Saraj. It was just a few hours' drive but it really was like entering another world. The markets were thriving and full of shoppers. Women were walking and talking to men without the strict supervision demanded by the Taliban, and the restaurants were busy with diners. Hamid and I checked into a hotel, which in Kabul would have been an impossibility but here felt incredibly normal.

As I stood in the foyer of the little hotel I felt enormously overwhelmed by the events of the past year. Life under the Taliban had changed me in ways I hadn't really understood until now. I wasn't the same person I had been—my confidence had evaporated and the daily fear had exhausted my reserves of strength. I stood there quietly, like a good Taliban wife, whereas once I would have been organizing our check-in, inspecting the room, and making sure the porter brought in our bags. Now I was passive, just waiting for my husband to make all the arrangements. It saddened me to realize how much I had changed. Even as a little girl I was a great organizer, it was something my mother would always comment on when we talked about stories of my childhood. The Taliban had taken that confident little girl and determined teenager and turned her into a diminutive, cold, scared, and exhausted woman beneath the invisibility cloak that was her burqa. I couldn't bring myself to talk to the hotel manager or the owner who waved his greetings cheerily. My attitude toward men had changed. They were cruel and not to be trusted, merely existing to exploit women at the first opportunity. And this terrible shift in my attitude had been done in the name of Islam, but it wasn't an Islam I recognized. This division between the sexes was not an Islam of peace; it was born of fear and suspicion, not respect as I had been raised to believe.

My mother came from a much more conservative generation, yet even she enjoyed the kinds of liberation and empowerment that were being denied to me and hundreds of thousands of other women under the Taliban. She was allowed to visit her family when she wished and was given the responsibility of managing my father's businesses in his absence, of supervising his cattle herds on their annual journey to the higher pasture. Yes my father beat my mother, but as wrong as it seems now, it was normal for the time and in the village culture. But I know he truly respected her. The Taliban had all and more of the violence toward women, but none of the respect.

There was a huge silence inside me. Until now I hadn't even noticed it. Little by little it had grown, caused by the visits to the prison, the reality of watching women get beaten on the streets, the public executions of young women just like me.

We went up to our room, which was typical of Afghan guest houses: small, with a mattress on the floor. I was in a strange mood, with the emotion of being free of the Taliban churning up feelings I had buried deep for a long time. Hamid was in good spirits and almost danced around our little room with a boyishness I thought had been crushed out of him by those frozen nights in the prison yard. His enthusiasm was infectious, and I finally allowed myself to relax. Taking off my burqa, I threw it in the corner of the room—casting it aside—and with it, some of my cares. Looking at the crumpled and dirty burqa in a heap, I wanted to jump on it and grind it into the floor.

“Put your scarf on, my darling,” Hamid said. “We're going out.”

The words seemed so strange that for a moment I felt as though he had just dared me to do something very naughty, like we were mischievous children plotting to do something they know they shouldn't.

That's when the wave of euphoria washed over me. I could. We could. Go out on the street, like a normal couple. And I only needed to cover my hair, not my face. My pregnant belly was very large, but to this day I can't recall my feet touching the stairs as we scampered outside like a pair of giggling teenagers.

The wind on my face was like the kiss of freedom. My scarf covered my hair in full and my clothes were modest in accordance with the teachings of Islam, yet without my burqa I felt strangely naked. I began to think about how much the Taliban had damaged Islam. These were men who acted in the name of Allah, but they didn't respect the God they claimed to represent. Instead of following the Quran, they placed themselves above the teachings of the holy word. They believed they, not God, had the right to become the moral arbiters, deciding what was righteous and what was forbidden. They had hijacked and corrupted Islam, turning it into a tool to pursue their own selfish purposes.

The following morning we took a small bus to Puli Khumri, the capital of the Baghlan province. Afghan buses can be a very chaotic. Hamid and I had already gotten aboard, and we were waiting for the rest of the passengers to finish saying goodbye to friends and relatives, or argue with the driver, or try to stack an extra piece of luggage onto the already overflowing roof. Nearby a street hawker was selling Ashawa panir—a type of cheese that is a regional specialty. Like most pregnant women I had a very good appetite and I asked Hamid to go and buy me some. Like a kind husband should, he dutifully indulged my request. The bus was nearly ready to depart when he climbed back aboard, out of breath but clutching a small white cheese—mild and chewy and not unlike mozzarella. It's a favorite ingredient in many Afghan family picnics. However, despite Hamid's chivalry in dashing out to buy the mother of his child some cheese, he hadn't remembered to get raisins. These are the traditional accompaniment to the cheese because they help bring out the flavor. I didn't want to seem ungrateful, but I was a little disappointed. The bus was beginning to move and there was no time to go back and get some. I was resolving to enjoy the cheese despite the absence of raisins when a sharp knock at the window startled me. I spun around expecting to see the black menace of a Taliban turban. Instead, I was greeted by the kind eyes of the elderly cheese merchant.