Letters to My Daughters (13 page)

When the girl's ordeal had ended, the commander had simply taken out his gun and shot her, as if disposing of something distasteful. Then he let the poor mother go.

After she had told us her story, there was little my mother could say. She just clutched the poor woman's hand, and taking mine in her other hand she started running. The three of us ran hand in hand through the battle-scarred streets, over the bodies, around the burned-out cars and through shattered buildings.

We just ran and ran, terrified of what we might run into, but more fearful of what we were trying to leave behind. When we rounded a corner, we saw the most wonderful sight we could have hoped for—a taxi.

My mother begged the Hazara woman to come and stay with us at the apartment, but the woman declined, saying she was going to try to find some relatives who lived farther out of the city. They argued some more over it, but the lady was very determined. Eventually, the taxi driver told us to hurry up. We got in and drove home to the apartment in Makrorian. My brother didn't know whether to shout or laugh with joy when he saw us. He was furious at my mother's refusal to come sooner in his messenger's car. When he found out that we'd walked alone and heard the story of the poor Hazara lady, he shot a filthy look at my mother for having risked the same thing happening to me. But he let it go. We were home and safe for now.

But something had changed for my mother. In the weeks and months that followed, she grew weaker and weaker. She began to have difficulty breathing. She had suffered allergies all her life, but they started to get worse; the slightest thing—cheap perfume, the smell of fried food or even a dusty wind—would now set them off and affect her breathing. She tried to convince us she was well and not to worry, but we could see her fading before our eyes. Yet still she fussed over me, cooking for me when I was studying, insisting I go to my English class and waiting for me when I got home.

As summer turned into winter that year, I felt as though the rest of the world was starting to lose interest in Afghanistan. The West seemed pleased that the Soviets had been defeated and gone home, and that was all they needed to know about Afghanistan. For Pakistan and Iran, neighbouring countries with keen interest in what happened across the border, the various Mujahideen commanders had become proxies, used to fight out their own battles on neutral soil. But even as the Mujahideen fought for power, settled old scores and struck deals with neighbouring governments, a new power was growing elsewhere in Afghanistan. A movement was growing in the
madrassas
—religious schools—in the south of the country. A movement by the name of Taliban, which would one day shake not only Afghanistan but the whole world.

Dear Shuhra and Shaharzad,

Life is a miracle given to us by God. At times, life can feel like both a blessing and a curse. Sometimes it gets almost too much to cope with, but we do cope because humans have a great capacity to endure suffering.

But we human beings aren't great. Only God is great. Humans are like tiny little insects in the wider universe. Our problems, which sometimes seem so big and insurmountable to us, are really not.

Even if we live a long time, our time on earth is still very short. What matters is how we spend our time here and the legacy we leave behind to those left on earth. Your grandmother left a far bigger legacy to all of us than she ever knew or could have understood when she was alive.

With love,
Your mother

· · EIGHT · ·
Losing Her

{
November 1993
}

THE FIRST TIME I saw the man I would marry, my mother was dying.

In the previous three months, she had gotten progressively worse and now she was barely able to breathe and too weak to move. She had been admitted to hospital, but everyone could see she didn't have long to live.

I had heard rumours that a man called Hamid from a district called Khawhan, which is near to our home village in Badakhshan, wanted to send a marriage proposal to me. I had never met him and knew little about him, except that he was an intellectual type and a teacher.

One night, I was sitting by my mother's bed when several Badakhshani men came to pay their respects to her. Hamid was among them. I was embarrassed, because it is not culturally allowed for a woman to meet a man who is interested in marrying her until an engagement has been agreed. And I was still only seventeen. I wasn't sure I even wanted to get married.

There was a group of ten men, and although I'd never seen him before I knew instantly which one was Hamid. He was young, with a lean body and a face that was both handsome and intelligent. Not bookish, but with an expression of curiosity and empathy. He was someone you instantly warmed to.

I was secretly pleased that my suitor was physically attractive. I tried very hard not to look at him directly; that would have been very bad. But in the close confines of the hospital, I couldn't avoid glancing at him.

My mother was sitting in a wheelchair, so weak she could barely speak. But she still tried to play the gracious hostess, the role that came so naturally to her, fussing over her guests and asking if they were comfortable. The sight of her broke my heart. At one point she asked me to remove the blanket covering her knees and to wheel her into the sunlight. Hamid leapt up and leaned over to help remove the blanket. He was so gentle with her, rearranging a pillow behind her head with such tenderness and care that I was taken aback. In a flash, I realized this was a rare Afghan man and a man who might treat me with tenderness too.

My mother must have had the same thought, because when the men left she took my hand in hers and looked into my eyes. “Fawzia jan. I want you to be happy in your marriage. I like this man. I think he is enough for us. When I recover we will both go to live with him.”

Her eyes searched mine for a reaction, and when I smiled and nodded she beamed, her spirit and strength still shining strong through her watery pale eyes. I turned away, biting back tears. I wanted so much for my mother to come and live with me and this kind man, and for me to be able to look after her as she had looked after me. But she was growing frailer by the minute.

I was sleeping at the hospital, refusing to leave my mother's side, and the next day I heard that Hamid had sent a proposal. In the traditional manner of asking for a lady's hand, male members of his family came to our house to speak with my brother. But my brother was also at the hospital with us that night. A proposal can be made only in person, so it wasn't to be.

The following morning, the hospital doctor, a warm lady with grey hair and green eyes, asked to speak to me in private. She wanted to impart the news she had already told my brother the night before. “Fawzia,” she said gently, “all trees blossom and all trees wither. It's the nature of life. It is time to take your mother home.”

I understood what she meant. My mother was dying; there was no hope. I screamed and pleaded and begged for her to stay in the hospital. They could try new medicine, there must be hope, something they could do . . . The doctor hugged me and shook her head silently. It was over.

We took her home and tried to make her as comfortable as possible. Typically, she refused to rest or sit still and insisted on attempting to carry out chores. Once, my brother told her, with tongue in cheek, that if she didn't rest, he would have to physically restrain her. For a while, I lay on the bed with her. I stroked her hair and told her stories about my life at school just as I had always done. She told me how proud she was of me, about her amazement that the daughter of an illiterate woman like her had become educated. And she jokingly reminded me that I might still one day be president.

Normally, I loved it when she talked like this, buoyed by her dreams and her belief in me. But on that day, I couldn't see anything but a gaping black hole, the emptiness of the inevitable fate that was about to come. I fell asleep. At about 2 A.M. I heard her calling for me. I found her outside the bathroom, where she'd collapsed. She hadn't wanted to wake anyone and had attempted to go to the bathroom herself. I half picked her up, half dragged her back to bed in the living room. She felt like a tiny bird in my arms. That sight of her is a memory seared in pain across my brain. It was terrible to see a woman like that, a woman of such strength and dignity, who had endured so much in her life—beatings, death, tragedy, the loss of her husband and son—too weak to even take herself to the bathroom.

As she lay back to sleep, her breath started to rattle a little. Then I took her to her bedroom and placed her on the mattress on the floor. Unlike in the days of her marriage when she was expected to either share her husband's bed or sleep on the kitchen floor, she now had a bed of her own. But she was too weak to climb in and out of it, so she slept on the mattress. I also think she secretly preferred the floor, having grown so accustomed to it over the years.

Usually when she slept there, she liked to have one of her grandchildren, my brother's children, with her. That night, she had my six-month-old niece, Katayoun, sleeping next to her. I smiled when I saw the baby's little fingers curled around my mother's hair. I had also done that as a child. I waited until I was sure she was asleep, then I crawled into her proper bed and went to sleep.

That night, I had a very unusual dream in which I saw nothing but fear and a blackness. I was trying to run away from it. I woke up with a start.

I looked over at my mother on the mattress and realized that her blanket was not shaking. There was no sign of breathing.

I lifted up the blanket and could see she was almost gone, her breathing so weak it was imperceptible. My screams woke up the rest of the family. My brother had been about to start his morning prayers. He ran into the room clutching his Koran so he could read her some verses as a last goodbye. I screamed at him to stop. I didn't want to believe my mother was taking her last breaths.

I shouted at my family to bring a doctor. Someone ran next door to a neighbouring house where we knew a doctor lived. They were back within minutes, but the doctor simply repeated what everyone knew. She was passing out of this life, and there was nothing we could do. I heard his words but I couldn't take them in. “I'm sorry,” he kept saying. “I'm sorry. She's almost gone.”

I felt like throwing myself out of the fifth-floor window. The lights had gone out. The stars had fallen out of the sky, and I wanted to follow them. I did not see how I could live without her.

For forty days after her death, I slipped in and out of consciousness. The shock and trauma had sent my body into almost total shutdown. I was really not in a fit mental state for at least six months after that. I didn't want to talk to anybody or go anywhere, and no one could get through to me. I am not even sure I wanted to live. My family was incredibly supportive. No one forced me to try to move faster; they let me take my grief at my own pace. They were grieving too, but they all knew my mother and I had had a special bond.

All my life, I had shared a bedroom with my mother. I couldn't sleep unless she was lying next to me, my fingers curled in her hair. I lay awake at night and tried to imagine her there. I cried and cried for her. I wailed for my mother as if I were a newborn baby.

After six months of watching me grieve like this, my family feared I'd never improve. They had a family conference and decided the only thing that might help me was a return to education. Mother had died in the autumn, and now it was spring again. A new term was beginning, and my brother suggested I go back to study English and also take a computer class. By now, even those brothers opposed to my education knew it was the only thing I might choose to live for.

At the time my mother had fallen sick, I had been due to take my high school leaving exams. I'd been too upset to take them, but the teachers arranged for me to take them now. If I didn't do so, I'd automatically fail. So I had to go. And of course it helped. Slowly, I entered the world again.

My nineteenth birthday was approaching. I admitted myself to the university exam preparation classes; I had decided I wanted to study medicine and become a doctor. Hamid knew that I was in this class. Sometimes, even though he wasn't supposed to, he would drive his car over and park it at the end of the street. He thought I couldn't see him, but I recognized the car and the man inside. I never approached him or waved. To do so would have been culturally indecent of me.

After a couple of weeks of this, he grew braver and would walk over to greet me as I left class. It was very formal, and we never discussed anything personal or our feelings for one another. He'd ask how my family was, I would reply politely and that was that. In Afghan culture, there can be no courtship or dating. We were not even allowed to speak on the telephone. There were no cellphones in those days, and the land lines were not working as all the power lines had been damaged by the fighting. We obeyed the cultural rules, which we both respected. But these little moments with him were enough for me: even if he spoke only three words to me, I would live off the memory all week and replay it over and over in my head. Hamid's smile eased some of the grief for my mother. I would remember her words: “This man is enough for us, Fawzia jan.”

By now, the fighting was beginning to calm down. The different Mujahideen factions had begun to broker agreements with each other. Kabul was still a divided city, with the various factions in control of different areas, but they had started negotiations with each other and begun drafting a new government constitution. Most people saw this as a sign that the war was behind us. Soldiers no longer patrolled the streets, and it was safe not to wear a burka. I always covered my head with a scarf, of course, but I also proudly wore jeans and fashionable long embroidered tunics in bright colours.