The Favored Daughter (23 page)

I got home at lunchtime in a foul mood. One of Hamid's elderly relatives had died recently, and my sister-in-law and I were expected to attend to pay our condolences. I really didn't want to go, but family duty and honor dictated that I must. I don't remember much of the afternoon. My mind was wrapped up with worry about Hamid. As I sat quietly on a carpet lost in my own thoughts, an elderly man approached me. News of Hamid's arrest had spread quickly, even though it was only a few hours since his detention. The old man's dark eyes conveyed sympathy, and his long gray beard danced as he whispered to me that he had news of Hamid's whereabouts. According to one of his relatives—he didn't offer who or how this person came by the information—my husband was being held by the Intelligence Service Number 3. They were the most dangerous of all the intelligence wings. Their job was to root out dissenting political voices and make them go away. I was terrified for Hamid, but at least I knew now where he was.

Every day for a week I went to the intelligence offices and every day was turned away by sneering guards. On the seventh day I was allowed inside to see my husband. His naturally slim frame was gaunt and hunched. He had been repeatedly beaten and was in too much pain to strand up straight. His dark features were silhouetted against his unnaturally white skin, his eyes sunken and cheekbones protruding.

We sat at a rough wooden table and whispered to each other. I tried to hug him, but a Taliban prison is no place for affection, even between a husband and wife. He told me they had forced him to stand outside all night in the snow, while by day he endured endless interrogations and beatings. They asked him: “Why did you go and see Rabbani? What was the purpose of the meeting? What is your connection with Rabbani?”

President Rabbani was guarded by Pakistani security agents from the ISI—Inter-Services Intelligence. It was long suspected many of the agents had sympathies with the Taliban, but here was elegant proof. The Pakistani agents had clearly been feeding the Taliban the names of Rabbani's visitors, including Hamid, and presumably my brother as well.

As I was leaving the prison a senior Talib came to me and asked: “How much is your husband's release worth? $2,500? $5,000?”

They obviously knew by now Hamid was not political. They could beat him all day and all night and he wouldn't tell them anything. He couldn't because he didn't know anything. But his detention still created an opportunity for them to profit. I would have given them whatever I had but I didn't have any money. We weren't that rich, not cash rich anyway. And even if we could arrange finances from Pakistan via my brother, the Taliban had effectively ruined the banking system, so transferring money or borrowing large amounts of cash was now impossible. I just could not pay it. Something I will forever feel guilty about.

Hamid was now getting very sick from all the abuse he was suffering. He was half starved and frozen to death. What started as a cold entered his lungs and became more and more serious. The lethal combination of his failing immunity and being in close proximity to a lot of other very sick prisoners without anywhere to wash meant he developed tuberculosis.

I prepared a letter pleading for his release and planned to give it to the executive board of the Intelligence Service. In it I told them about Hamid's innocence, and the fact he now carried a communicable disease that threatened the health of the other prisoners. I delivered it myself to the office of a career bureaucrat. He wasn't a Talib—but rather just an ordinary bespectacled man seemingly a little bemused and baffled by his latest masters. Given his age I imagine he'd served the Russians, the mujahideen, and now the Taliban. Different bosses for the different ages of Afghanistan.

He held out his hand and took the letter from me and I burst out the story of Hamid, his illness, and our recent marriage. I wanted to gain his sympathy so that he might present the letter to the board with greater urgency.

He peered through his glasses as I stood on the other side of the partition in my burqa. He looked down at the letter, saying: “Sister, who wrote this letter for you?”

“I did,” I said. “I am a medical student and just want to get my sick husband out of prison.”

“Your husband is lucky,” he said. “He has a wife who cares for him and is educated. But sister, what if they put me in prison? Who will take care of me? My wife is not educated; who would write the letters for me?”

He let out a long dramatic sigh and put the letter underneath a pile of other letters, probably written by other desperate relatives. “Go now sister, I cannot promise. But I will do my best to take your letters to the executive.”

With tears stinging my eyes I left his office. Hamid's life and liberty was just another letter underneath a hundred other letters. I knew it had little chance of being delivered by the bespectacled bureaucrat.

I walked home in the snow. As I climbed up the stairs to our apartment, I felt that my home without my husband was as empty as my stomach. As I entered the apartment, Hamid's sister Khadija ran to greet me, asking if I had any news about his release. I had no answer for her. I went straight to my bedroom and lay down trying to hold back the tears. I dozed off to sleep. Hours later, the sound of a mullah calling
iftar
(the evening meal that breaks the fast) woke me up. I lay back and listened:
Hai Alal falah, Hai Alal falah!
Feeling hungry, I got up and went to the other room, expecting to see Khadija and her children about to eat. But she was feeling as low as me and she had also slept the day away. No one had prepared any food. I felt a pang of guilt. This was Hamid's home, and I was his wife. In his absence, it fell to me to keep the home running and look after his family. After all, it was the fault of my family that he was in prison at all. I went out to buy some rice and a little meat and came back to cook it. Khadija came into the kitchen fussing over me, telling me I was pregnant and should rest. She took the knife from my hand and took over the job of cutting the onions. We continued to cook together in companionable silence. It was a cold winter night in Kabul, snow was falling thickly and the city was silent with both fear and boredom.

I turned to Khadija with tears in my eyes. “I'm so sorry, jan [dear]. I feel all I have done is bring trouble to your family. I wish poor Hamid had never wanted to marry me. I have brought all this pain on him.”

She put down the knife, wiped away an onion tear and took my hand. “Well, Fawzia, he is a strong man. And prison will only make his character stronger. You should not be sorry, you should be proud of him. He is a political prisoner, not a criminal.” This was the first time we had discussed the reasons why Hamid was in jail, and I was amazed she could be so calm and balanced about the situation. She had every right to be resentful of me and my family. Khadija has always been a woman I admire; she was strong, intelligent, and reasonable. I was so touched by her tone, I couldn't reply because the tears choked my throat. I carried on stirring the rice pot and tried to convey my thanks with a silent look.

She hugged me and then ordered me into the dining room to find a date or a piece of fruit to break my fast with, telling me I needed to put my baby's health first.

I went and sat alone in the dining room, memories of my childhood starting to flicker across my mind. Long forgotten and half hidden until now, they came to the surface because of my melancholy mood. I recalled
iftar
at the
hooli
back in the days when my father was alive. A traditional napkin, like a large tablecloth but for the floor, would be laid out in the center of the room. Local village women made the napkin by hand with delicately woven threads. It had the most beautiful vibrant colors, stripes of red and orange created by natural dyes made from mountain plants and flowers. Mattresses and cushions would be placed around the edge of the napkin, and everyone would sit cross-legged on them to eat.

The napkin would be piled high with nutritious and delicious fast-breaking foods such as
bolani
(a tasty flatbread filled with vegetables),
manto
(parcels of steamed mincemeat with onions and yogurt) and
qabuli pilau
(rice mixed with raisins, lentils, and carrots).

My elder sisters would all rush to prepare the meal, usually finishing minutes before the fast ended and the hungry hordes of family members descended. All the family would sit together (apart from my father who was either away or sitting with his guests)—all the wives and their children, my half brothers and sisters. We would sit and eat, talk, and laugh. I was only a very small girl then, but I used to love those moments. It was a time when everyone relaxed and shared stories of the day. My heart ached to think of those pre-war days when we were a whole family untouched by grief and loss. I missed my mother and my brothers and sisters so much. I yearned to be back there again, an innocent village child whose only preoccupation was stealing chocolates or dressing up in a pair of wooden shoes.

My thoughts were broken by Khadija entering the room with a plate of steaming
pilau.
I smiled gratefully at her. Her presence was a reminder that I wasn't alone: Hamid's family was also my family now. Khadija's children ran in to join us, and my heart gladdened as we all tucked in.

Every day, I tried to visit Hamid and on the rare occasions I did get to see him he put on a very brave face and pretended he was being well treated. He didn't want me to worry. But I could see the signs, whether it was the uncontrollable trembling that had developed in his hands or the bruises on his increasingly thin face. I pretended to believe him and tried to be a dutiful wife, knowing that to confront him with the evidence of his abuse would only make life for him even harder to bear. I think the pretense that he was hiding his ordeal from his young pregnant wife helped give him the strength to endure it. Instead we would spend those few precious moments together talking about the ordinary events of family life, as if he had just come back from a conference, or a sales meeting, or some other mundane event that husbands and wives everywhere take for granted every day. It was easier to pretend that this was just our ordinary life—as if nothing was strange, or scary, or out of place. Some people will tell you denial is wrong—perhaps it is—but when you are being tossed in the stormy seas of helpless despair, denial can become the tiny raft that you cling to madly. Sometimes denial is the only thing that keeps you afloat.

I decided to make another attempt to persuade the Badakhshani man who worked at Puli Charkhi jail to help us. After the long and tiring walk to get there, I was relieved when this time he invited me into his office. I told him that Hamid was innocent of any political crime, and that he was being tortured and would soon die if he wasn't released. But again it was to no avail. He said there was nothing he could do for us. I started to cry. He let out a long sigh, then reluctantly promised me he would try to talk to the guard in charge of Hamid's section of the prison.

It was a Friday afternoon, a day I could usually gain access to meet Hamid. Khadija put on her blue shuttlecock burqa and I the black Arab-style
niqab,
and we walked to the prison together.

As we waited at the gate, the guard went inside to call Hamid.

As he did so, he left the door open and I was able to peek inside the main building. I watched as a second young guard, barely out of his teens, washed his hands and feet for the ablutions required before Islamic prayers. The first guard approached him and the man asked in Pashto, “
Sa khabara da?
What is up?”

The guard replied, “
Hamid khaza raghili da.
Hamid's wife is here.”

The young man put down his water pot and started to walk toward us. I turned away so they didn't see I had been watching.

Some other men walked past and I heard them speak in Urdu, the most widely spoken language in Pakistan. They weren't prisoners, and I can only assume they were Pakistani Taliban sympathizers working in our prisons. I took Khadija's hand, hoping the young man might have good news about Hamid's release. He walked straight up to us and asked, “
Hamid khaza chirta da?
Who is Hamid's wife?” I stepped forward, holding my
niqab
across my face with my left hand. “I am.”

Without saying another word, the man bent down, picked up a stone from the ground and threw it at my head. I recoiled in shock.

“You woman. You complain to your Badakhshanis about us? Who are you to do this? Go, get out of here, woman.” For a few seconds I was too shocked to move. I started to speak, to try to explain that I had only been trying to free my innocent husband. The man picked up a second stone and threw it again. It just missed my head, and as it did so I moved my hand protectively, giving the man a glimpse of my painted fingernails.

He sneered and spat at the ground. “Look at your nails! You are a Muslim yet you have the fingers of a whore.”

The blood rushed to my cheeks in anger. I wanted to tell him that he had no business judging or commenting on another man's wife. I was a Muslim woman unrelated to him, so he had no right to talk about me. He was the bad Muslim, not me.

Khadija could read my thoughts and stepped forward to stop me. The man grabbed another stone and threw it. “Get out of here, woman.” Khadija grabbed me and we half ran, half walked back to the gate. Once at a safe distance, I turned and said to her loudly, so they could hear me, “These men are not Muslims; they are not even human beings.” The man waved another stone at me menacingly and then turned to go back inside, cursing and swearing with words no decent Muslim I know would ever use.

Then, the awful reality of what had just happened hit me: I had been insulted and my attempts to speak to the Badakhshani in Puli Charkhi had backfired badly, which would now make things even worse for Hamid.

I started to shake and cry loudly under my
niqab.
Khadija also cried. Luckily we managed to find a taxi driver who was prepared to break the rule against driving female non-relatives. I don't think I trusted my legs to walk; I was shaking too much from a combination of anger, fear, and pure humiliation. Once home, I threw myself on my bed and howled.