Letters to My Daughters (5 page)

I was forever getting Ennayat into trouble. We would sneak into orchards and steal apples, or I would make him steal from my father's stores and distribute the stolen goods to my friends. I remember filling our shirts full of dried apricots from the kitchen one day, Ennayat encouraging me to get as many as possible. I tied my belt under the stash to hold it in. As we sneaked back across the garden in front of the wives who were preparing food on the terrace, the apricots began to drop out one by one. I was walking with my back to the wall, helplessly hoping they wouldn't see, when a large pile of apricots fell out onto the floor. I was mortified, and Ennayat was furious with me for failing in our mission. The women, however, just laughed at us both indulgently. Another of our favourite games was stealing cake and eating holes in it from the bottom up, then replacing it on the shelf so no one would notice—until, of course, it came to be eaten.

Recently, I asked Ennayat to recall what I was like at that age. He replied in a dryly humorous style typical of big brothers the world over, “You were ugly and very, very annoying.”

Today, Ennayat and my other brothers are the most wonderful any girl could wish for. They support my political life, campaigning for me and protecting me when they can. But growing up, we all knew that they were boys and I was a girl. In our family, as in every other family in Koof, boys were the ones who really mattered. A boy's birthday was celebrated, but a girl's never was, and none of my sisters ever went to school. Girls were second best, and our fate was to stay at home until we married and left to join our husband's family.

Boy children also had power within the family hierarchy, and a brother's word or order was often more powerful than the word of a mother. When my mother went to the cellar stores, my brother Muqim would follow her and ask for sweets. She wouldn't give him many because such delicacies were usually reserved for guests. He'd get angry, stomp his feet and leave the room, but then my mother would take hold of my hand and, without looking at me, silently put some chocolates in my hand. If Muqim saw, he would be furious and tell my mother that if I ate them he would stop me from going out. As a boy, he had the power and authority to control what I did or did not do, despite whatever my mother said to the contrary. I hated the idea of not playing outside with my friends, so I would begrudgingly give him the sweets and run out to play.

I heard the word
dukhtarak
often and early in my life. It's a common derogatory term for a girl that roughly translates as “less than a girl.” Instinctively, I never liked it. Once, when I was no more than five years old, one of my older cousins called me
dukhtarak
and ordered me to make him a cup of tea. I stood up in a room full of people, my hand on my hip, and replied, “Cousin, I will make your tea, but you will never call me that name again.” Everyone in the room laughed uproariously.

I also heard it the only time my father ever spoke directly to me. He had organized a political rally in our garden and wanted to share some news reports with the gathering. He had placed large speakers in the trees, and he spoke into a microphone; it was the first time we small children had ever heard stereo sound. Curious, we sneaked up as close as we could without being seen so that we could listen. But I soon became bored and started to make noise. My father was talking when suddenly my squeals disturbed his flow. He stopped and turned directly towards us. He stared at me, and I froze for what felt like minutes. Then he shouted, “
dukhtarak
! Girls! Go away, you girls!”

We ran as fast as our legs could carry us. I was so terrified of him after that, I didn't ever want to see my father again, petrified even weeks later that if he saw me he would be so angry that he would kill me.

In my childhood fantasies, little could I have imagined that it was he who would soon be killed and that my golden existence was about to come to a brutal end.

Dear Shuhra and Shaharzad,

I grew up in the 1970s and '80s. I know that seems a very long time ago to you. It was a time of great political change around the world and a time when the people of Afghanistan suffered from the Soviets and from the lawless commanders of the Mujahideen.

Those years were the beginning of disaster for the people of Afghanistan and for my childhood. When the Communist revolution started, I was three years old, an age when a child needs love, security and the warm bosom of home. But at that time, most of my friends' parents were talking about immigration to Pakistan and Iran, preparing for lives as refugees. Children listened as their parents whispered about things people had never seen before, equipment called tanks and helicopters.

We overheard terms like “invasion,” “war” and “Mujahideen,” but they were meaningless to us. Yet although children did not understand, they sensed something was wrong from the way their mothers clutched them close at night.

I am happy you have never experienced the uncertainty and fear of a time like this. No child should ever have to.

With love,
Your mother

· · THREE · ·
A Terrible Loss

{
1978
}

THE YEAR WAS 1978, and both the Mujahideen and the Russians were beginning to make their presence felt in Afghanistan. We were still in the Cold War, and the Soviet Union was keen to show its strength. It had an expansionist agenda at that time; Afghanistan lay between Moscow and the warm-water ports of Pakistan, where the USSR wanted to place its naval fleet. It therefore needed control of Afghanistan and was beginning to exert its influence to achieve that end. Eventually, it would invade the country.

In later years, Afghan fighters known as the Mujahideen would defeat the Russians and become heroes of the people. But for now, the Afghan public knew of the Mujahideen only as anti-government rebels who first made their presence felt in northern Badakhshan.

The regime in Kabul changed again. President Dawoud, who had taken power from the king and forced him into exile, did not last long. He and his entire family were assassinated in his palace, and Communist sympathizers Nur Muhammad Taraki and Hafizullah Amin took control, Taraki becoming the first Communist-backed president. However, just a few months later, he was killed by Amin on the orders of the Moscow government.

Amin took over the presidency. He is remembered as one of the cruellest presidents Afghanistan ever had, heading a terrifying Soviet-backed regime in which torture and arrests were commonplace. He attempted to do away with anyone—intellectuals, teachers and religious leaders—who opposed the government or dared say a word against it; they would be dragged from the house at night and either taken to the Puli Charkhi, Kabul's largest jail, where they faced interrogation and torture, or simply thrown into the river. In those days, Afghanistan's rivers swelled with the corpses of thousands of people, all murdered without reason or trial.

During this time, my father continued his work, trying to remain focused on helping Badakhshan even through these days of terror. He was still outspoken, despite the risk of torture or imprisonment. Perhaps the regime knew he was more useful to them alive than dead, and he was eventually ordered by the government to return to his province with the instruction to settle and silence the Mujahideen. Government officials made it clear that the penalty for failure would be his death.

A man of peace, my father was certain he could reason with the Mujahideen—who after all were fellow Afghans. He understood the political uncertainties of the time and the calls for social justice. These were men from his own province, Badakhshan, and he was convinced that he could calm their fears, listen to their complaints and offer to help them in exchange for their co-operation with the government.

But the Afghanistan my father thought he knew, and the values of patriotism, Islamic tradition and natural justice that he believed in so strongly, had already begun to disappear.

It was with a heavy heart that he arrived in Badakhshan on his mission. He had no love for the Amin regime and in truth did not know what was best for the people of Afghanistan. He gathered his provincial elders together in a
jirga
,
a meeting of tribal leaders and elders, and told them what he had seen in Kabul: a government that killed with impunity, that prevented young people from being educated for fear they would turn into dissidents and that had created a system in which teachers and intellectuals lived in fear. Political opponents were simply crushed. After the promise of the heady years of Zahir Shah's reign—when Afghanistan had been seen as one of the world's fastest-developing countries, a thriving tourist destination with bustling ski resorts, a modern electric bus system and a business-led burgeoning democracy—it was devastating to witness the reality of Communist rule.

Some of the Afghans who had gone to the mountains to support the Mujahideen truly believed they were fighting for the future of Afghanistan. My father might have been a government servant, but he understood and respected the Mujahideen for their efforts. He asked the elders for their advice.

The
jirga
debated for hours. Some wanted to join the rebels, whereas others wanted government rule, for better or worse. In the end, local imperatives won the day. A man stood up to address the assembly in a clear voice. “Sir,” he said, “we are already very poor and we cannot bear the burden of fighting. We should talk to the Mujahideen and bring them down from the mountains.”

The group eventually agreed to go and talk to the rebels. My father's determination to bring fundamental changes to the lives of those he represented and his refusal to accept no for an answer were qualities that had endeared him to his supporters. So on this day when he asked hundreds of local elders from all over the province to go with him to talk to the Mujahideen on behalf of a new government regime no one respected, not one of them refused. They all went gladly.

This large group of elders led by my father set off on horseback to go to the rebels' camp. The beautiful Pamir mountain range is as high as it is treacherous. Fertile, lush valleys soon give way to rocks of different colours—blues, greens and orange ochres that change with the light—then to towering snow-covered peaks and plateaus. Even today there are few roads in Badakhshan, but then there were only donkey and horse tracks, some so narrow and steep that the only way to pass was to get off and walk behind your mount, hold onto its tail, close your eyes and pray the sure-footed beast didn't slip. To fall was certain death—you would plunge down the mountainside into the icy river below and be swept away by the rapids.

After a day and a half of solid riding, the men reached the highest point of the Pamir, which gives way to a wonderful natural plain—almost as high as the heavens. In winter, men from all over the province gather here to play buzkashi, the original form of the western game of polo. It is a game that tests the skills of both rider and horse, in which the players race to pick up a heavy cow carcass and place it into a goal area marked with a circle at the end of the pitch. In ancient times, the carcass was a dead prisoner. Games are fast and exciting, sometimes involving hundreds of riders and lasting for several days. It is a game as wild, dangerous and clever as the men who play it and it expresses the true essence of the Afghan warrior.

As my father rode, however, thoughts of the pleasures of a
buzkashi
game were far from his mind. He remained calm and composed, wearing his lambskin hat as always, mounted on his white horse at the head of the group. And then, all of a sudden, three men appeared in the middle of the road, aiming rifles at them.

One of them shouted, “So it is you, Wakil Abdul Rahman. I have waited a long time for this chance to kill you.”

My father shouted back in a cool voice, “Please listen to me. The government of Afghanistan is strong. You cannot defeat it. I come here to ask you to work with it, to stand together and to co-operate with us. I will listen to your needs and I will take them to parliament.” The man simply laughed and fired a shot. Other shots rang out from behind the mountains. Pandemonium ensued. The village men, who were mostly unarmed, ran for their lives.

My father's horse was hit. As the animal reared up in pain, my father lost his stirrup footing and was dragged along as his mount galloped away. The wounded horse headed for a small river that ran along the edge of the buzkashi pitch. Some of the younger men tried to follow my father, but he shouted at them to flee and save themselves. “I'm an elder,” he yelled as he was pulled along the ground. “They will talk to me, but they will kill you. Just go.”

The Mujahideen gave chase and caught up with my father. They captured him and held him hostage for two days. I don't know if they gave him an opportunity to talk, listened to his reasoning and considered his offers or if they beat and humiliated him. All I know is that two days later they executed him with a bullet straight through the head.

News of his death reached the village quickly. Despite the remoteness of the region, news has always travelled fast in a well-developed system of urgent messages being relayed from hamlet to hamlet along the way. Some of the men who had accompanied my father had already arrived home and reported the shooting of his horse. In Islamic rite, a body must be buried within twenty-four hours, facing Mecca. My family could not bear the idea of my father's body being left alone on the mountainside without proper burial. He had to be brought back. But the Mujahideen sent word to warn us that they would kill anyone who attempted to retrieve the body. No man wanted to be shot and killed himself while bringing home a dead body.