Letters to My Daughters (12 page)

My relatives brought us tea and some food, but neither of us could eat anything. We tried to force down a little tea at their pleading. Blankets were fetched and we went to bed, on my mother's insistence, in Muqim's room. Neither of us slept that night. I lay wrapped in a blanket thinking about my brother and the terrible things I had seen that day. How it felt to watch my country implode. How a taxi driver loading dead bodies into his car was the most civilized and humane thing I had seen all day; how a woman will walk through rocket fire to mourn a beloved son; and why men with guns who fought with such bravery to free Afghanistan from the Soviets were now destroying this country to satisfy their personal lust for power.

My mother wept all night, her knees pulled to her chest, lamenting her loss. That night seemed to drag on forever. In some ways I wish it had. By dawn, there was enough light in the room to see the bullet holes from the rounds that had sprayed from the gunman's Kalashnikov and killed Muqim. That terrible sight only seemed to strengthen my mother's resolve. Her determination and pragmatism were returning. That morning, she made hot green tea for me, then staunchly announced we would be moving out of the apartment at Makrorian, and moving here, closer to the cemetery. My mother's logic was impeccable as always—if you must walk in a war zone, better make it a short walk.

But the real reason was that she wanted to live here in this room with its physical memories of Muqim. There was the small single bed, the cover riddled with bullet holes. The wardrobe with his suits and other clothes still hanging inside. A small shelf holding his books and karate trophies. And, nailed to the wall above the shelf, his karate belts of yellow, brown and black. As upsetting as all these reminders of him were, they gave my mother comfort and helped her feel close to him.

This house had spectacular views of the city. But now, instead of enjoying a stunning cityscape that stretched out towards the mountains, we were forced to witness the fighting that raged beneath us like a horror movie. Machine guns spluttered and rockets hissed and roared as they exploded into buildings. From our high lookout, we could see the two sides exchange fire, tracers from the explosives lighting up the darkness. I watched the fighters as they organized themselves and directed fresh attacks on enemy positions.

Some of the homes in the city had been built using coloured plaster. I was watching the battle one day when an artillery rocket landed directly on top of a pretty pink house. The blast made the earth tremble and sent chunks of masonry flying more than a hundred metres into the air. The place where a house had stood just a few seconds previously was now a mist-like cloud of pink dust settling over the surrounding buildings. I saw the same thing happen to a blue house—there was nothing left when it exploded like a ghastly firework, fading out with a trail of blue fog rolling through the streets. The tragic inhabitants inside had been blown to smithereens.

For me, one of the saddest moments was when the polytechnic, a good institution built by the Soviets, got hit in the fighting. During their time in Afghanistan, the Russians had built many educational institutions. All Afghans wanted the Russian invaders gone, but at the same time they were thankful for some of their infrastructure and buildings. A lot of young high school graduates studied at the polytechnic, which remained open after the Russians had left, graduating in vocational skills such as computer science, architecture and engineering. Even the great Ahmad Shah Massoud had studied there.

As a little girl, I had longed to go there one day. That dream ended the day the polytechnic library was destroyed. It was late in the day, and the fighting was beginning to die down. I don't know if whoever fired the rocket intended to hit the polytechnic, if he wanted to destroy it and all it represented. Neither side was using it as a base, so perhaps it was an accident. Either way, the result was the same. When the rocket exploded in the side of the library, I gave a little gasp of shock. Then, in the way you watch a scary movie, not wanting to see the horror but unable to turn away, I looked on, feeling more and more sickened as the smoke gave way to flames, licking at the gaping wound. Inside were thousands of books that had helped educate many young Afghans. Books that were now fuelling an ever-growing fire. There was no fire brigade, of course. Nobody rushed to save all this knowledge that could help improve our country and educate our people. Nobody except me even seemed to notice. I watched it burn until it was time to go to sleep. I went to bed numb with the idea that so many words, so much literature and learning, had perished. But I also felt guilty for caring about books when people were burning too.

My mother quickly settled into her routine in that house. Every morning, she would wake, eat a simple breakfast of
naan
bread and green tea and make the dangerous journey to my brother's grave. She would take the shortcut down the hill, weaving through the alleys and rocky tracks that ran over the hillside before creeping across the open ground to the cemetery. She would return a little later, puffy around the eyes from crying.

This routine upset her, but it also seemed to strengthen and galvanize her despite the risks, and her return to the house was usually marked by a flurry of domestic activity. My relatives had been living there and guarding the property, but they hadn't turned it into a home. My mother set about this job, organizing, rearranging and decorating. Furniture was cleaned and aired, rugs beaten, pots and pans scoured and buffed until they gleamed black or copper. The yard was emptied of rubbish and swept.

Sometimes she would go sit in my brother's room wailing in grief. But she never cleaned it. It was left as we found it, broken and bullet-marked. It was simply understood that for however long we were living here, the bedroom was to stay untouched, at least until my mother decided otherwise. My brother was to be remembered in death as he was in life: bright and beautiful like the silk flowers on his grave—not for the violence of his last living moments.

My brother Mirshakay tried to visit us every day. He wasn't very happy, to put it mildly, about my mother's decision to stay at the house. But he understood her reasons and was prepared to let us remain there for the moment. Sometimes he would also bring my sisters or his wife, and on those nights we would sit down and have the kind of meal we might have had in more peaceful times. We would gossip and laugh, but despite the banter there was no escaping the underlying fear we all shared about our future.

IT SEEMED to be a turning point for the city's middle class. Until now, most had been prepared to sit out the fighting and see what happened. Leaving prematurely meant leaving your house open to looting. But with the civil war showing no signs of ending, many intellectuals and professionals fled to Pakistan. They would load the essentials for an uncertain life—mostly clothes, documents and jewellery—into their cars, try to secure their homes and then slip out of the city during a lull in the fighting. Most Afghans live with their extended family, so usually it was the father and his wife or wives, plus the children, who drove to Pakistan. Elderly or more distant relatives were left behind to guard the house and scratch out an existence as best they could.

Nobody condemned those who left for their decision. Many who stayed behind would have gone too if they'd had the chance. And when the fighting intensified, the choice to leave seemed the right one. One morning, a man I knew to be a friend of my brother Mirshakay appeared at the door. He was visibly frightened, having driven through some of the areas of intense fighting. He insisted we come with him immediately. My brother had sent him to take my mother and me back to the apartment at Makrorian. My mother refused to leave, and she and the man argued for a while as he pleaded with her to follow my brother's wishes. But my mother was adamant that she would not leave her son's grave unattended, and nothing this bedraggled messenger could say or do would make her change her mind. My mother was an immovable force, and she was determined that we would remain in the house, whatever the risks.

Or so she said at the time. But the news we received just a few hours later instantly changed her mind. My mother had been out trying to buy food when she heard the story. The night before, a group of Mujahideen had smashed their way into a house a few doors away and raped all the women and girls inside. My mother showed little concern for her own safety, but the virginity and sanctity of her daughter were paramount.

In Afghan culture, rape is despised, but it is an all-too-common crime in times of war. While the rapist can be put to death, the woman must endure a much longer punishment, becoming a social pariah even in her own family. The victims of rape are often cast out like harlots, as if they had done something to provoke the attack or inflame the loins of the man who was driven mad by lust and unable to control himself. No Afghan man would marry a woman who had been raped. Any suitor would want to be certain his bride is pure, no matter how violent or unjust the circumstances of her deflowering.

My mother had changed from determined to stay to determined to leave. She didn't give me the full details of the attack but ordered me to collect my things before she set about doing the same. I was really scared, but I also knew better than to debate the subject with her. We were leaving. Now.

My brother's messenger had already left in his car, so the only way back to the apartment was on foot. The memories of my first journey through the city still haunted me, and the thought of doing it again made me feel sick. We'd have to run down boulevards of sniper fire, go through checkpoints, risk seeing dead bodies left from the previous night's shelling.

My mother left our relatives with instructions to keep guarding and maintaining the house, before we nervously stepped onto the street. We started running. We both knew we had a long way to go, and I think we just wanted to get it over with. We ran from house to house, careful not to linger out in the open, scanning doorways and darkened windows for any signs of movement, listening for gunfire that might signal the presence of a machine gun or sniper up ahead.

We hadn't gone far when a woman came running towards us. She stood immobile in front of us, screaming hysterically, “My daughter, my daughter.” I could hear from her accent that she was Hazara.

I was too scared to open my mouth, but my mother asked her what had happened. The woman's head was shaking with uncontrollable emotion, the blue hood on her burka wobbling with every convulsion of grief. Her tears formed little beads on the mesh, embroidered and glistening in the sunlight. The woman's house had been destroyed days earlier in the fighting. She and her daughter had no alternative but to flee. They took shelter in a Shia mosque, where around 150 other women, their husbands dead or caught up in the fighting, were taking shelter.

The woman told us how the mosque had been hit by rocket fire and set ablaze, and I remembered then that I had seen the building burning in the distance as I stared in silence through the window of my father's house. The mosque had burned very quickly. Those who survived the explosion rushed for the exit, but in the smoke, dust and screaming, dozens must have been trampled or overcome by the smoke and flames. The woman told us how she and her daughter were near the explosion when it hit, knocking them off their feet in a blast of concrete and roof tiles. When they came to, the building was already burning. Women and children were screaming and crying and running in panic. The only light came from the flames that leapt higher by the second. Some women dragged their children to safety by stepping on other children, while the screams of countless mothers trying to locate their youngsters separated from them in the dark were deafening, adding to the panic.

The woman's daughter had spotted a hole in the wall caused by the explosion, and the pair of them had crawled through and wriggled to safety. They had hidden all night and then in the early morning, exhausted, dehydrated and starving, they had approached a Mujahideen checkpoint, begging to be given safe passage. She told us how the Mujahideen commander had agreed to allow her through so they could escape. The woman was cautious and had told her daughter to stay hidden while she approached the checkpoint alone. But once the soldier told her she could pass freely, she called out to her daughter to come forward too. The girl came out of her hiding place.

This was the moment the men had been waiting for. They grabbed the girl. The commander dragged her into a steel shipping container that served as his field office. Then he held her down on the table and raped her in front of her mother. The daughter screamed for her mother's help as the men violated her, while others held the woman back, forcing her to watch.

Some Mujahideen soldiers were raping women with impunity—it was every woman's greatest fear. But the soldiers might have had an additional reason in this case. There were some instances in which Hazara women were targeted for rape or had their breasts cut off. Sunni Islam is the dominant form of the religion for the world's 1.5 billion Muslims. The key difference between Sunni Muslims and other Islamic sects relates to a historical debate about the true successor of the Prophet Mohammed. The Sunni believe that the first four caliphs, or spiritual leaders, are the true successors, whereas the Shia believe the Prophet's cousin and son-in-law, Ali ibn Abi Talib, is the rightful successor. It is a division almost as old as Islam itself and over the course of history has proven to be as bitter and bloody as any seen in world religion. During the civil war, Hazaras were often massacred just for this reason, and in later years they were also targeted by the Taliban, who saw them as infidels. Today, many Hazaras still feel that other ethnic groups regard them as having lower status.