Letters to My Daughters (2 page)

My mother had stood on the large stone terrace, safely behind the gates of the
hooli
, as the party of a dozen or so men on horseback ambled its way down the hillside, my father dressed in his finest white
shalwar kameez
(a long tunic and trousers), brown waistcoat and lambskin hat. Beside his white horse, which had bright pink, green and red wool tassels dangling from its decorated bridle, were a series of smaller horses carrying the bride and her female relatives, all wearing white burkas, accompanying her to her new home, the home she would share with my mother and the other women who also called my father husband. My father, a short man with closeset eyes and a neatly trimmed beard, smiled graciously and shook hands with the villagers who came out to greet him and witness the spectacle. They called to each other, “Wakil Abdul Rahman is here,” and “Wakil Abdul Rahman is home with his very beautiful new wife.” His public loved him and they expected no less.

My father, Wakil (Representative) Abdul Rahman, was a member of the Afghan parliament, representing the people of Badakhshan, just as I do today. Before my father and I became members of parliament, my father's father, Azamshah, was a community leader and tribal elder. For as long as my family can remember, local politics and public service have been our tradition and our honour. It can be said that politics runs through my veins as strongly as the rivers that flow across the mountains and valleys of Badakhshan.

The Badakhshani districts of Koof and Darwaz, from where my family and my surname originate, are so remote and mountainous that even today it can take up to three days in a four-wheel drive to reach them from the provincial capital of Faizabad. And that is in good weather. In the winter, the small mountain passes are completely closed.

My grandfather's job was to help people with their social and practical problems, connecting them with the central government offices based in Faizabad and working with the provincial district manager's office to provide services. The only way he could go to speak to the government authorities in Faizabad from his home in the mountainous Darwaz district was by horse or donkey, a journey that often took him a week to ten days. In his lifetime, he never once flew in a plane or drove in a car.

Of course, my grandfather was not the only one who travelled in this rudimentary way. The only way any of the villagers could connect with the bigger towns was on horseback or on foot; that was how farmers bought seed or took cattle to market, how the sick got to a hospital and how family members separated by marriage visited each other. Travel was possible only in the warm spring and summer months, and even then it was dangerous.

The greatest risk of all was the Atanga crossing. Atanga is a large mountain bordering the Amu Darya River. This clear green waterway is all that separates Afghanistan from Tajikistan, and it was as dangerous as it was beautiful; in spring, as the snow melted and the rains came, its banks swelled, creating a series of deadly, fast-flowing currents. The Atanga crossing was a series of rough wooden stairs fastened to either side of the mountain for people to climb up and then down the other side.

The steps were tiny, rickety and slippery. One small stumble and a person would fall down straight into the river and be swept away to certain death. Imagine returning from Faizabad with the goods you had just purchased, perhaps a seven-kilo bag of rice, salt or oil—precious cargo that had to last your family all winter—already exhausted after a week of walking, and then having to risk your life negotiating a treacherous pass that had probably caused the deaths of many of your friends and relatives.

My grandfather could not bear to see his people being killed in this way year after year, and he did all he could to force the government to build a proper road and a safer crossing. However, although he might have been richer than most people in Badakhshan, he was still just a local official living in a remote village. Travelling to Faizabad was as much as he could do. He did not have the means or the power to travel to Kabul, where the king and the central government were based.

Knowing change would not come in his lifetime, my grandfather decided his youngest son would take over his campaigning role. My father was just a little boy when my grandfather began grooming him for a future in politics. One day years later, after months of solid lobbying, one of my father's biggest successes in parliament would be the realization of my grandfather's dream to get a road built over the Atanga Pass.

There is a famous story about the road and my father's audience with Zahir Shah to discuss the project. He stood in front of the king and said, “Shah sahib, construction of this road has been planned for years, but there is no action—you and your government plan and talk but do not keep your promises.” Although the parliament at that time was made up of elected representatives, the king and his courtiers still ran the country. Direct criticism of the king was rare, and only a brave or foolhardy man would attempt it. The king took off his glasses and looked long and hard at my father before stating severely, “Wakil sahib, you would do well to remember you are in my palace.”

My father panicked, thinking he had gone too far. He hurriedly left the palace, fearing that he would be arrested on the way out. But a month later, the king sent his minister of public works to Badakhshan to meet my father and make plans for the construction of the road. The minister arrived, took one look at the mountain and declared the job impossible. There was no more to be said; he would return home at once. My father nodded sagely and asked him to go for a short horse ride with him first. The man agreed, and they rode together to the top of the pass. As they dismounted, my father grabbed the man's horse and raced back down, leading it behind him, leaving the minister alone on the mountain all night long to give him a taste of what it was like for villagers who got trapped on the passes.

The next morning my father returned to pick up the minister. He was furious, half bitten to death by mosquitoes, and he had lain awake all night terrified that he would be eaten by wild dogs or wolves. But now he had some direct understanding of how harsh life was for the local people. He agreed to bring engineers and dynamite so the pass could be created. My father's pass at Atanga is still there, and this feat of engineering has saved thousands of Badakhshani lives over the years.

But long before the pass was built and my father became an MP, my grandfather had appointed the little Abdul Rahman an arbab, a community leader. This effectively gave the boy the powers of a tribal elder at the age of twelve. He was asked to settle the villagers' land, family and marriage disputes. Families who wanted to arrange good matches for their daughters' weddings would come to him for advice in choosing a suitable husband. Before long, he was negotiating health and education projects, raising funds and meeting with the provincial officials in Faizabad. Although he was barely more than a child, these officials knew that under our
arbab
system he had the support of local people and they were prepared to deal with him.

These early years gave my father such a solid grounding in the issues facing our community that by the time he grew into adulthood he was ready to lead. The timing was perfect, for at that time real democracy was beginning in Afghanistan. In 1965, the king decided to establish a democratic parliament, giving people a role in decision-making by allowing them to vote for their local members.

The people of Badakhshan felt they had suffered years of neglect by the central government and were excited that their voices would finally be heard. In the election, my father was voted into the new assembly as the first-ever member of parliament for Darwaz, representing people who were not only among the poorest in Afghanistan, but also among the poorest in the world.

Despite their poverty, Badakhshanis are also people with pride, people who stick to their values. They can be as wild and angry as the ever-changing mountain climate but also as tender and tenacious as the delicate wild flowers that grow on the granite river banks.

Abdul Rahman was one of them and knew their qualities better than anyone. He took on his new role with nothing short of total dedication.

In those days, the only contact Badakhshanis had with the outside world was through radio. My father had inherited from my grandfather the only radio in our village, a chunky wooden Russian wireless with brass controls. On the day of my father's first address to the parliament in Kabul, all the villagers gathered at our house in Koof to listen to the broadcast.

No one except my elder brother Jamalshah knew how to turn on the radio or even increase the volume. Bursting with pride that her husband was a member of parliament, my mother threw open the gates of the
hooli
to allow the public in to hear the speech and called for Jamalshah to turn on the radio for her.

My brother, however, was not at home. In panic, she ran through the village calling him, but he was nowhere to be found. The speech was about to start, and back at the
hooli
a crowd was gathering: cousins, village elders, women, children. Some had never heard a radio before, and all wanted to hear their new representative address parliament. She could not let my father down but had not the faintest idea how the contraption worked.

She went up to the radio and tried all the knobs, to no avail. As the crowd watched her in anticipation, she felt a wave of rising panic and fear and started to cry. Her husband was going to be humiliated, and it would be her fault. If only Jamalshah were there. Where was the boy? In frustration, she brought her fist down hard on the top of the radio—and, amazingly, the thing spluttered and crackled into life.

She couldn't quite believe her luck, but still no one could hear it, as the volume was too low. She didn't have a clue what to do. One friend, my father's fourth wife, suggested bringing the loudspeaker. The women had no idea what it did or how it worked but had seen the men use it before. They carried it over and placed it next to the radio, doing what they could to connect it. It worked. The entire village heard my father's speech in the live parliamentary proceedings. My mother beamed with joy and satisfaction. She was a woman who lived through her husband, and she later described this to me as one of the happiest days of her life.

My father soon gained a reputation as one of the hardest-working members in the king's parliament. Although Badakhshan remained desperately poor, these were good days for Afghanistan overall; national security, the economy and society were generally stable. This, however, was not a state of affairs that our neighbours could easily accept. There is a saying in Afghanistan that our location and geography—between the great powers of Europe, China, Iran and Russia—is bad for Afghanistan but good for the world. It is true. Ask anyone who plays Risk, the board game in which players aim to take over the world, and he or she will tell you that if you win Afghanistan, you win a gateway to the rest of the globe. This has always been true. Back then it was the height of the Cold War, and my country's strategic and geographical importance was already shaping the tragic fate that would later befall it.

My father was outspoken, straightforward and hard-working, respected not only in Badakhshan but throughout the country for his generosity, honesty, faith and fierce belief in traditional Islamic values. He was also unpopular with some in the king's court for his refusal to kowtow to the elite or to play the political power games beloved by so many of his peers. Above all else, he was an old-fashioned politician who believed in the nobility of public service and in helping the poor.

He spent long months in Kabul advocating for roads, hospitals and schools and was successful in getting funds to complete some projects, though not all. The Kabul-based rulers did not see our province as particularly important, and it was hard for him to get central funding. This constantly angered him.

My mother recalled how she would start getting ready for his arrival a month before the annual parliamentary recess—preparing different kinds of sweetmeats and dried fruits for him, cleaning the house and sending the servants to the mountains to collect wood for all the cooking his arrival would inevitably involve. In the evenings, a long queue of donkeys loaded with wood would enter the
hooli
gates, and my mother would direct them into the wood store in the corner of the garden. In her own way, she worked as hard as my father did, never accepting second best and always seeking perfection. But my father barely thanked her for it. At home he could be a terrifying tyrant; my mother's bruises were testament to that.

Six out of my father's seven wives were political matches. By marrying the favoured daughter of a nearby tribal leader or powerful elder, he strategically consolidated and secured the power base of his own local empire. My mother's father was an important elder from the next district, a district that had previously fought with my father's village. In marrying my mother, he essentially secured a peace treaty.

A few of his wives he loved; two he divorced; most he ignored. Over his lifetime, he took a total of seven wives. My mother was without doubt his favourite. She was petite, with a pretty, oval-shaped face, pale skin, big brown eyes, long shiny black hair and neat eyebrows.

It was she he trusted the most and she who kept the keys to the safe and the food stores. He entrusted her with the coordination of the cooking for his huge political dinners. It was she who took charge of the servants and other wives as they cooked endless supplies of scented
pilau
rice, gosht and fresh hot naan bread in the
hooli
kitchen.