Letters to My Daughters (6 page)

So it fell to a woman to show bravery. My aunt Gada gathered her long skirts and put on her burka, announcing to the shocked male gathering that she would go to retrieve the body of Wakil Abdul Rahman. As she strode out of the room and straight up the path to the mountains, her husband and one of my father's cousins had little choice but to follow her.

After walking for thirteen hours, they found him; his body had been dumped halfway between the village and the rebel camp.

I was three and a half years old. I remember clearly the sadness of the day he was shot, hearing both men and women weeping and feeling alarmed by the fear and confusion in the village. I lay awake that night listening, until at around 2 A.M. I heard my aunt's voice ringing out loud and clear as she approached the village. She was carrying my father's wooden staff and tapping it on the ground.

“Wakil Abdul Rahman is here. Get out of your beds. Come to greet him. He is here. We have brought him. Wakil Abdul Rahman is here.”

I leapt out of bed thinking, “He's alive, my father's alive.” Everything was going to be all right. Father was here. He would know what to do. He would restore order and stop everyone's tears.

I ran into the street barefoot and stopped dead in my tracks at the sight of my mother weeping and clutching at her clothes in horror. I darted past her and saw my father's dead body. The top part of his skull, where he had been shot, was missing.

I began to cry. I didn't yet fully understand the enormity of what had happened, but I understood enough to know that our life would never be the same.

The body was brought into the
hooli
and laid out in the Paris suite before burial. My mother went to see the body and prepare it for the funeral the next day. Of all the wives, only she went into that room to say her final farewell to him. In the room where I and her other children were conceived and where husband and wife had, in all too rare moments, lain and talked, creating their own private world together, she endured this task, as she had endured all the other tasks in her harsh life, with dignity and duty. She did not scream or wail but quietly washed and prepared the body in accordance with God's wishes. In his death, just as in his life, she did not fail my father.

In the morning, thousands of local people poured into Koof to say their last goodbyes to him. Their sadness and fear for their own futures created an atmosphere so heavy it felt like the very sky was falling down on our heads.

Grey-haired old men with beards, white turbans and green coats sat in the garden crying like babies. My father was buried on a peak behind the
hooli
, facing Mecca and the valley of Koof he so loved.

For the villagers, the loss of the man who had championed their causes and supported their needs was a turning point in their lives. It also marked the beginning of the political upheaval that was about to become a full-blown war in Afghanistan.

For my family, the loss of my father meant the loss of everything: our life, our wealth, our figurehead, our entire reason for being.

Dear Shuhra and Shaharzad,

When I was a little child, I didn't know the words “war,” “rocket,” “wounded,” “killing,” “rape.” Words that sadly all Afghan children are familiar with today.

Until the age of four, I knew only happy words.

I long for those summer nights when we would all sleep on the big flat roof of my uncle's house. His house was just next door to the hooli, and its roof had the best view of the valley so the whole family liked to gather there. My mother, my uncle's wives and the woman I called “my little mother”—my father's fourth wife and my mother's best friend—would sit and tell well-worn tales until late into the night.

We children would sit quietly enchanted under the blue sky or the bright yellow moon listening to these sweet stories. We never closed the door at night, and there were no security men with guns like there are today. There were no thieves or other dangers to worry about.

In those happy times and with everyone's love surrounding me, I little realized that my life had begun with my mother's degradation and sorrow at my birth and that I had been put out in the blazing sun to die.

I never felt that my birth had been a mistake. I felt only that I was loved.

But this happy life did not last for long. I had to grow up fast. My father's murder was just the first of many tragedies and deaths that would befall our family. My childhood ended when we were forced to leave those beautiful gardens of Koof, with their cold spring water and shady trees, to become homeless refugees in our own country.

The only thing that did not change was the constant smile of my mother, your grandmother.

With love,
Your mother

· · FOUR · ·
A New Start

{
1979–1990
}

ALTHOUGH SHE GRIEVED deeply for the man she loved, my father's death was in many ways the making of my mother.

In those first few months, her natural leadership ability came to the fore. It was she who took control of the family, organizing resources and deciding the fate of children. Her years as my father's right hand, her efficient home management and her ability to foster peace within our extended family enabled her to lead our family out of this dark period. Her priorities were keeping the children together and safe. She received many offers of marriage, but for the same reason she had once refused to divorce my father she rejected all suitors. She would not risk losing her children.

In our culture, a stepfather is not obliged to take on children from a previous marriage, as the tragic experience of Ennayat's mother demonstrated. Still young and somewhat flighty after my father's death, she married a handsome young man who had worked for my father as a shepherd guarding the family cattle. He had recently returned from Iran, where he had gone to find work, bringing back exciting consumer goods that could not be found in our remote village, such as a tape recorder. He wooed her with his tales of sophisticated life in Iran and with his newfangled machinery.

Aside from Ennayat, my father's seventh wife had borne him three other children: a girl, Nazi, and two boys, Hedayat and Safiullah. She insisted on taking the children with her to her new home, but the new husband refused to feed or clothe them. When my mother, who was sympathetic to her, visited a few weeks later, she found Ennayat, Nazi and Hedayat crying outside in the yard. They were not allowed into the warmth of the house and were hungry and dirty. She immediately took them home with her.

But the young woman refused to give up her baby, Safiullah, and my mother left without him, something she regretted forever because a few days later he became feverish and was left to die without food or comfort. We heard that he cried alone for hours, his little face covered with flies, while this man would not allow his mother to even pick him up. He died a lonely, horrible death. Ennayat has never gotten over it and named his first-born son Safiullah in his brother's memory.

Khal bibi, who had been so dear to my mother, was luckier. She married a local leader, a kindly man who had no children of his own. Almost unheard of in our culture, he raised her two sons as though they were his, even leaving them his property when he died.

Niaz bibi, the wife who didn't get on with my mother, married a teacher and remained in Koof. Despite the disagreements between Niaz bibi and my mother, years later when I was campaigning for parliament this man helped me enormously, arranging my transport and accompanying me on the campaign trail. The extended family structure is hard for people in the western world to understand, but in my view it is a wonderful thing. Such ties transcend generations, petty arguments and geography. Family is family.

Zulmaishah, the Khalifa's child and my father's eldest son, inherited the
hooli
. He was later killed, and the second-eldest son, Nadir, the son of my fifth mother—one of the wives my father divorced—inherited it. He still lives in it to this day.

WE DID not have much time to grieve in the first days and weeks after my father was killed. The world beyond the mountains was looming ever closer, and the rapidly disintegrating political situation was about to come crashing down on us.

A few days after his death, the commanders who had killed my father came looking for us. We ran up to the fields where our cattle were kept and hid behind a large rock ledge, watching as they looted the house, stealing all they could carry: the radio, the furniture, the pots and pans.

A few weeks later, we were all sleeping on the roof of my uncle's house when they came back in the middle of the night. They woke us up with blows from their rifles, yelling and screaming, demanding to know where Abdul Rahman's sons were. My brother Muqim was just seven years old, but we knew that they would kill him if they found him. Somehow my mother managed to pass him to a cousin on the next roof, who hid him underneath her skirt. Unlike other women in some parts of Afghanistan where the shalwar kameez is the norm, village women in Badakhshan traditionally wear loose pantaloons covered by a long, full skirt. That skirt saved my brother's life that night.

The Mujahideen grabbed my elder sister Maryam and my sister-in-law, my elder brother's wife. Both girls had just turned sixteen. The rebels started to beat them. My uncle tried to stop them but was beaten back. They took the girls off the roof and down towards the
hooli
, my uncles and male cousins screaming at them that this was against Islam. It was
haram,
forbidden, for any Muslim to touch a woman who is not his blood relative or his wife.

We were forced to watch from the roof as they beat the girls all night long, pistol whipping them and hitting them with rifle butts, demanding again and again to be shown where the weapons were hidden. No one claimed to know. My mother was grim-faced and white as a sheet, but she said nothing. We all watched as they put the bayonet of the gun to my sister's chest and pressed it in until she began to bleed. We had a guard dog called Chamber who was chained near the gate of the
hooli
. Desperate to protect his family, he tugged at his chains until they broke and rushed towards the men, barking and snarling. They simply turned and shot the poor dog dead.

The men beat the two girls until dawn, when the call to prayer reverberated over the mountain. They left then—presumably to go and pray.

Two days later, they came again and threatened to kill us all. This time they forced Nadir, then a teenager, to show them where the guns were. My mother had known all along and had watched silently as her daughter and daughter-in-law were beaten without betraying the whereabouts of the weapons. She knew that with the guns gone, we would have no means to protect ourselves. They had taken everything we had, and the next time they came they would murder us.

The men of the village were so horrified by what had happened to our girls that they sent word to the Mujahideen that if they came back the villagers would take up shovels, pickaxes, sticks, whatever they had, to protect their women. The Mujahideen agreed not to terrorize the village, but they wanted the family of Abdul Rahman dead. Their commander gave permission for his men to execute us. For the second time in my short life, I would stare death in the face and win.

They came early the following morning. By now, the Khalifa and her children had moved to Khawhan, another village where my father owned a big house and more land that needed guarding, so my mother was the only wife left in the
hooli
. Fortunately, my brothers Ennayat and Muqim were out playing and were able to hide in neighbouring houses. My mother grabbed me, and the two of us ran into the cattle barn. Our neighbours frantically started to pile up pieces of dung on top of us to give us cover. I remember the smell and the choking, bitter taste of the dung. It felt like I was being buried alive. I clung tightly to my mother's hand, too afraid to cough for fear of being heard. We remained like that for hours, silent and terrified, the only comfort coming from the sensation of my mother's fingers wrapped around mine. We could hear them searching for us, and at one point they came right up to our hiding place. If they had prodded the dung pile, it would have tumbled down to reveal us. For reasons only God knows, they did not.

After they finally left, we came out of our hiding place to find the world had turned to terror. My mother didn't waste time collecting our clothes; she grabbed me, my two brothers and my elder sister, and we ran—through the garden, into the hay fields and onto the river banks. We were leaving all we had behind and we didn't dare even to glance back.

It was as though my mother's life was disintegrating with each step she took. All the beatings, all the pain, all the years of drudgery and work had been to build a home and a life. A life that ended as we ran for our very survival along the river bank.

As we expected, the men had returned to search again and saw us running away. They started to give chase. They were stronger and faster than we were. I was getting tired and began to stumble, slowing the others down. My sister started to scream at my mother to throw me into the river to save the others: “If you don't throw her they'll catch us and we'll all die. Just throw her in.”

She almost did. My mother picked me up and lifted me into the air as if to throw me but then looked into my eyes and recalled her promise at my birth that no more harm would ever come to me. From somewhere deep inside, she gathered reserves of strength, and instead of throwing me to my death she put me on her back, where I clung on as she ran with me. We were behind the others, and I could hear the men's footsteps getting closer. I thought that at any second they would be upon us, tear me from my mother's back and kill me. If I shut my eyes, I can still feel the clammy, cold, terrible fear of that moment.