Letters to My Daughters (11 page)
Essentially, despite having a shared government and having been allies when fighting the Russiansâwhen they were given the name of the Northern Alliance, as most of them originated from the north of Afghanistanâthese commanders were now fighting each other for power. As the civil war grew more brutal, short-term allegiances shifted and changed with the weather.
The fiercest opponent of the Mujahideen government was Hekmatyar, who was unhappy with his role in the government and wanted more power and seniority. Every day, his men fired scores of rockets into Kabul from their base in the higher ground at the edge of the city. The rockets exploded in marketplaces, schools, hospitals and gardens, and scores of people were being killed or injured. Sometimes the situation changed overnight. A group that had previously supported the government might suddenly turn against it and start fighting. A few days later, with hundreds of civilians dead, the group might use the national TV station to announce it had all been a misunderstanding and it was now supporting the shared government again. The public had no idea what would happen from one day to the next. Probably our leaders didn't either.
The journey from home to my English class was once a simple short taxi ride, but the route took me through some of the areas of fiercest fighting. Some neighbourhoods and streets could be avoided, but others I had no choice but to cross, whatever the risk. I would take a convoluted route that changed depending on what political group currently held the upper hand. Gathering intelligence from people on the street was essential to successfully navigating the route, as was the taxi driver's constant search for the scarce supplies of petrol.
Packs of gunmen would roam the streets, and the danger of snipers was constant, their choice of target indiscriminate. A crack from a rifle accompanied by the dull thump of the bullet would often send some poor soul toppling to the ground, another desperate search for food, water or medicine brought to a premature end. Machine gunners set up in the damaged homes around key intersections, their positions carefully chosen to both conceal themselves and give the maximum field of fireâall the better to catch your enemy in the open. Often all that could be glimpsed of them was the tops of their heads in the gloom of their cover among the rubble, but everyone knew they were peering over their steel gunsights for any sign of movement. Vehicles often drew the deadliest attention, but overall they were still the fastest and safest way to travel. On more than one occasion, my taxi was targeted by artillery rockets.
Some roads were targeted by the artillery commanders. When their spotters signalled an approaching car, all they needed to do was open fire and chances were the car, truck or possibly tank would be blown off the road. I remember gasping once as rockets came rushing down a street towards me. But over our heads, the boughs of trees stuck upwards like fingers waiting to catch the projectiles. The rockets hit the branches and exploded, filling the street with shrapnel and shards of splintered wood as we sped along the road and out of range. If it were not for the trees, the rockets would have ripped the flimsy car apart, and both me and the driver with it.
Few taxi drivers would risk going out among the fighting for the meagre payment of a fare. Those brave enough to do so were motivated by the threat of starvation. Not driving meant that they and their families would not eat, spelling a death even more certain than the bullets that hummed through the air. So it was often impossible to find a taxi to take me to class, and on those days I would have to walk, darting from cover to cover, trying to avoid the areas where I knew the gunmen were and praying I didn't stumble across the path of others I didn't know about.
I would have to walk back again after class, sneaking along alone in the dark. Sometimes it took me as long as two hours to get home. It was very dangerous for anybody to be on the streets at night, but especially a young girl by herself. Aside from bullets and rockets, I ran the additional risk of being raped. When night fell, the shooting became more unpredictable. Nervous in the dark, the gunmen would curl their fingers a little tighter around their triggers and nothing more than a loud footstep or the tumble of rubble could attract a burst of bullets.
Often, my mother would nervously keep watch for me at the bottom of our apartment building dressed in her burka, peering out into the night and scanning the shadows. The occasional clatter of gunfire echoing across the sky would send her heart jumping into her mouth. Her imagination must have tormented her as she waited for her daughter to reappear from her journey through the war zone. Her relief at my return was obvious, but she never showed it by hugging me. Instead she would be quick to scold me, putting her hand into my back as she pushed me firmly up the stairs and through the safety of the front door, all the while tutting and clucking at me: “Even if these English classes make you president of this country, I don't care. I don't want you to be president. I want you to be alive.” My brothers and sisters also didn't like me taking such great risk to go to the class, but they would never tell me this directly. Instead, they would nag my mother and ask her to stop me from going. They could not understand why she willingly let me risk my life like this, night after night.
But my mother would probably have thrown herself head first into machine gun fire if it meant I could still go to school. She was illiterate but fiercely intelligent. By seeing me get educated, she was somehow educating herself too. She took genuine delight in talking to me about my classes, and her commitment to me never wavered. She just ignored my siblings' pleas and nagging, placating them with her winning smile.
Looking back on those times, however, I too am staggered that she allowed it. I feel guilty when I think about the fear I must have caused her every time I disappeared into the bullet-riddled night. A fear that must have been made all the more acute by the recent loss of Muqim. His death affected the whole family, but none more so than my mother. Every morning, she would visit his grave and put fresh flowers on it. But this simple loving act of a bereaved mother soon gave way to more erratic and, for the family, very worrying behaviour.
BY NOW the city was turning into a killing zone. From the neighbourhoods where the fighting was worst, we heard reports of hundreds of civilians dying each night. We could hear the crackle of gunfire ripple across the city. On still nights, it would echo off the hills and mountains that surround Kabul, haunting the whole city with the terrible events it was witnessing.
Rocket fire was most common. The rockets were indiscriminate and would land without warning, sometimes destroying a family home, leaving its residents buried beneath the earth walls, sometimes a shop or a school or a group of women buying vegetables for the evening meal at a market stand. All you would hear was a whizzing sound as the rocket flew through the air; then the whiz would suddenly stop, and seconds later the weapon would fall and detonate. You never knew where or on whom it would land.
For Afghan women, the constant fear of death was made worse by the twin threat of sexual violence. The tragic story of my friend Nahid illustrates this. Nahid was just eighteen and lived in an apartment near ours. One night some gunmen burst into her house, apparently to rape or kidnap her. Rather than face this fate, she threw herself from a fifth-floor window. She died instantly.
In other stories, we heard how women had been found with their bodies mutilated or their breasts cut off. In a country where morality is everything, it was hard to believe we had descended into such evils.
One evening, at around 7 o'clock, I was cooking the family meal of rice and meat when I realized my mother wasn't home. Normally she would be in the kitchen or organizing other aspects of household life. I had an unpleasant feeling that I knew where she had gone and I had to go in search of her. I was still in my mourning period for Muqim, so I put on my black head scarf and slipped out the door. When a guard near our apartment building told me which direction she had gone in, I knew my worst suspicions were right. She was on her way to visit my brother's grave.
There weren't any taxis about and buses weren't running at all, so I set off on foot towards the centre of the city. At first, the streets were eerily quiet. The Kabul I had known before the war was bustling at night with cars and motorbikes and people walking to visit friends. Now the streets were all but deserted, cleared by the rattle of gunfire that lay between me and my brother's grave.
I kept walking nervously, aware that my mother was somewhere ahead. I began to see bodies in the street, freshly shot or torn to pieces by explosions, their corpses not yet beginning to bloat. I was terrified. But I wasn't afraid so much of dying as of the fact that these dead bodies were people's family members. And that tomorrow, it could be my family lying here.
When I got to an area called Deh Mazang, I came across a taxi. The driver had removed the back seat. He was piling the car with bodies. He was covered in blood, his white shirt now streaked crimson, with darker flecks congealing around the pockets and buttons. His car looked like a slaughterhouse; the victims of the fighting, men and women with twisted limbs and shattered heads and torsos, oozed blood into the footwell, forming thick pools that dribbled through the rusted holes in the floor and onto the dusty road beneath. The driver, clearly in shock, was lathered in sweat as he tried to stuff another corpse into his car. In Islam, a swift burial is very important, and it may not even have occurred to him that his life was in danger. He simply worked at his grim task as though he was loading sacks of rice.
I just stood and stared at the strange sight for a moment. He and I were the only people on the street that warm summer night. The only sound was the crackle of gunfire, and the grunts of a brave middle-aged taxi driver risking his life to ensure a group of people he'd never met got a decent burial.
When he was satisfied that he could fit no more bodies in his car, he started up the engine with a cloud of blue exhaust smoke and drove towards the hospital, the back doors still open, the passengers' dead limbs dancing as the suspension sagged over every bump and pothole. The sight of the dead and dying made me think of my family, and I had to battle with my mind as it transposed their faces onto these nameless victims. I wasn't far from the graveyard now, and I knew I had to keep going to find my mother.
It was getting dark, and I was walking past Kabul University when a group of uniformed men shouted at me. They wanted to know where I was going.
I didn't answer but just lowered my head and walked faster. One of the men raised his gun and asked me again, “Where are you going?” I stopped and turned, looking into the gun.
“I'm looking for my brother. Somebody said they had seen his body just around the corner. I need to go and check,” I lied. He thought for a moment before lowering his gun. “Okay, go,” he said. I hurried off, my heart pounding. For a moment, I had thought they were going to do something worse than shoot me.
The cemetery was a dusty spread of earth the size of several football fields. Years of war and fighting had pre-empted life's inevitable consequence, and the newest graves were cramped together, oblong piles of small rocks with roughly hewn gravestones pushed into the ground for support. On the higher ground, where the more prestigious plots lay, graves were often fenced with iron palings, now silently rusting in this lonely place. Tattered green flags, a sign of mourning, flew over them.
My mother was hunched over the grave. I could see her quietly organizing the bright bunches of yellow silk roses on Muqim's grave. Immersed in her thoughts, she didn't hear my footsteps as I approached. She was shaking as she cried and caressing a photograph of my brother. He looked so young and handsome in it. She turned and looked at me. I stood there crying tears of both relief at having found her and sadness at the scene.
Feeling overwhelmed, I knelt beside her. For a long time we held each other and cried. Then we talked about my brother and how much we missed him. I asked her why she had risked her life coming out here at night. Had she not seen all the dead people and the men with guns and did she not realize how worried I was? She just gave me a sad, tear-stained look as if to say, “You know why,” before turning back to the photograph.
We sat there so long I didn't realize how dark it was getting. There were few working street lights because of the war. I started to get very scared. We couldn't risk going back the same way we'd come; it was too far and too dangerous even to attempt. So we resolved to wait another hour until it was completely dark, and then crept out of the graveyard. We made for a shortcut we knew well to a different house that had belonged to my father when he was a member of parliament. It was on the edge of the city, in an area called Bagh-e-bala, opposite the famous landmark of the Intercontinental Hotel, home to affluent Kabulis, many of them former politicians. Some of my father's relatives had been living there to keep the house safe for us. We wouldn't be able to get home tonight, but at least we would be out of danger if we could get there. My mother and I crept through the tiny alleyways that separated the houses. Any noise or panicky movement could draw attention in the form of bullets, and so we inched our way forward, up the hill and towards safety.
The house was built in traditional Kabuli style, made from large grey-brown bricks and very square, with small windows to keep the heat out in summer and the warmth in during the freezing winters. A sloping roof of curved tiles ran parallel to the hill. At the back was a small courtyard with fruit trees and flowers. As we hammered on the door, I wondered if the trees were still there. My relatives answered, visibly scared. They thought it was the Mujahideen coming to rob or kill them. When they realized who it was, they dragged us inside and shut the door. I was so relieved to be safe, but I felt very sad to be back in this house so unexpectedly. This was actually the house my brother Muqim was living in when he was murdered. My mother knew this too, and she started crying again. We were both so physically and emotionally exhausted it was all we could do.
