KIDS OF KABUL
LIVING BRAVELY THROUGH
A NEVER-ENDING WAR
DEBORAH ELLIS
GROUNDWOOD BOOKS / HOUSE OF ANANSI PRESS
TORONTO BERKELEY
Text copyright ©2012 by Deborah Ellis
Published in Canada and the USA in 2012 by Groundwood Books
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LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION
Ellis, Deborah
Kids of Kabul : living bravely through a never-ending war / Deborah Ellis.
eISBN 978-1-55498-203-5
1. Children—Afghanistan—Juvenile literature. 2. Children and war—
Afghanistan—Juvenile literature. 3. Afghan War, 2001- —Children—Juvenile literature. I. Title.
HQ792.A3E55 2012 j305.235092’2581 C2011-906638-6
Front cover photo: Gilles Bassignac / Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images
Back cover photo: Paula Bronstein / Getty Images
All other photos are courtesy of the author.
Design by Michael Solomon
We acknowledge for their financial support of our publishing program the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, and the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund (CBF).
To the next generation of survivors
Introduction
I am a feminist, which means I believe that women are of equal value to men. I am from Canada, a country not without its struggles but where women and girls are not limited — in theory — by the fact that they are female. When I heard about the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan in 1996, and the crimes they perpetrated against women and girls, I decided to get involved.
This started me on a journey that has taken me from Afghan refugee communities in Canada to the muddy tent camps in Pakistan and the decrepit Soviet workers’ holiday hotels outside Moscow that, ten years ago, served as encampments for Afghan and other refugees. It is a journey that has spawned four books: an adult book (Women of the Afghan War) and three novels about children under the Taliban, the last one published in 2003.
And now I’ve gone back.
Afghanistan has been at war for decades. It has been used by the world’s great powers in their struggles against each other. One such struggle produced the Taliban government, which, at an earlier stage of the war, had been supported by the United States. Among other things, the Taliban regime was brutally repressive toward women. The Taliban also harbored al-Qaeda, the terrorists who were responsible for the September 11th attacks on the United States in 2001. The war that followed initially overthrew the Taliban government but has continued for the past eleven years.
The real losers are the Afghan people, especially the women and children. Their daily lives are still threatened by suicide bombings, armed conflict and other forms of violence, and even Kabul, the capital city, is not secure. Tens of thousands of Afghans have died since 9/11 — many, many more than died in the twin towers. People have been injured, maimed, displaced and terrorized. People are hungry, people are fleeing, and families are separated from their homes and from each other. Refugees who left their homes as long as twenty years ago live in informal camps where they have no services other than those offered by one or two NGOs. This means there are still millions of internally and externally displaced Afghans living in miserable conditions without water, plumbing or electricity. The billions and billions of dollars spent on the war, which might have been spent on education, health care, housing and rebuilding a civil society, have been spent on weapons.
So has anything been gained?
For some young people life has improved, and they are grabbing hold of every opportunity with both hands. Though more than half the children in Afghanistan still have no access to schooling, those who do study hard. When they are allowed to play sports, they play hard. The lucky ones who have money and who live in Kabul and a few other cities are reaching out to each other and to the world, using social media and new technologies. Some institutions are bringing them into contact with music and art. And they are finding ways to take their considerable energies and talents into public life to move their country forward.
The interviews in this book were conducted over the weeks I was in Kabul early in 2011. Many of the young people spoke only Afghan languages, so their words were translated into English for me by an interpreter — the same interpreter for many of the interviews.
Children’s playground in a park just north of Kabul.
Although I usually travel alone, this time I traveled with Janice Eisenhauer and Lauryn Oates from Canadian Women for Women in Afghanistan. Many of the places I visited were involved with projects funded by Women for Women. Due to the security situation, I did not travel beyond Kabul.
It is possible to read the interviews in this book and come away feeling hopeful about the future of these kids and the future of their country. It is good to be hopeful, and if the future could be in the hands of this generation of young people, with their eagerness, openness and determination, then Afghanistan could indeed be a garden again.
Sadly, the old way of doing things — the way of corruption and killing and suspicion and venal international interests — seems to be gaining the upper hand. But there is no question that we must reach out and support these young people and the Afghan organizations that work with them. Only through work at the grassroots level can the patient day-to-day of rebuilding take place.
We have to stand together to move forward. Anything we can do to connect with Afghan people, to appreciate what they have been through and what they are capable of, and to assist them in getting the education they need to rebuild their own country will be a step away from madness and pain, and a step toward the sunshine.
Deborah Ellis
2012
Faranoz, 14
During the Taliban regime, schools for girls were closed, and women were forbidden from attending university. Extreme poverty coupled with decades of war and chaos have left the country with high rates of illiteracy. According to the United Nations Human Development Report of 2008, only 28 percent of Afghan adults can read and write. That number drops to 13 percent for women.
Since the fall of the Taliban, the international community has partnered with the people of Afghanistan to raise literacy levels and encourage education for all. It is an uphill struggle — one undertaken at times with enthusiasm and at times with suspicion. In addition to regular schools, literacy classes have been introduced into non-traditional spaces to make them as accessible and acceptable as possible.
A small house in a rundown area of Kabul is a gathering point for widows and their daughters. The women have all experienced trauma brought on by the war and related violence. After receiving counseling for a few months, they take part in liter
acy classes. Each step forward gives them more power over their own lives.
The women crowd into a low-ceilinged room with walls decorated with the handicrafts they have made. They sit on toshaks along the walls, and when those are filled, they move into any available space on the floor. A small woodstove takes the chill out of the winter air.
Faranoz comes here with her mother. She has seven sisters and three brothers.
Everyone says I have too much intelligence. They laugh when they say it, so it is a joke, but they are right. I am very smart.
A year ago, I could not read anything at all, but now I can read all sorts of things — books, poems, everything. I can write, too. This proves I am smart.
I live in a poor area of Kabul. My father died thirteen years ago. No one in this room has a father or husband. The men died in the war or from sickness or they were murdered. Husbands and fathers die for all sorts of reasons. Some get shot. Sometimes there are road accidents. Some fathers go to Iran or to Pakistan to look for work and don’t come back.
My mother has no job, so we are very poor. My oldest brother is in charge of us. He is the one who said I should not go to school, so that is why I spent so many years not knowing how to read. I don’t know why he said no school for me. Does he have to give a reason? Maybe he doesn’t think I am smart enough for school. Maybe he is afraid I would end up smarter than him, and then how would he be able to tell me what to do? The women in this class have all been through bad times in the war. I was very small when the war ended but I hear everyone talk about it.
Our lessons are supposed to last one and a half hours, but they often go longer because the women want to talk about their problems. But that was more in the beginning. As they become better at reading they want to talk more about reading and less about the things that make them sad.
This meeting room is really just a room in a woman’s house. The woman used to be married to a man who belonged to the Taliban. He was a very bad man. He beat her and made her be with other men, a very disrespectful thing. But she was very brave. She went to the Supreme Court and got a divorce. I don’t know when this was. Sometime after the war. This is her brother’s house. She lives here and he lets her have this room for us to meet.
Our teacher is a lawyer as well as a teacher. She has told us about how she defended women who were being beaten or treated badly. She says important people have offered her important jobs, but she prefers to be here in this room with us, because we are important, too.
The first day of classes, many women were crying because their lives are so hard and no one ever asks them about that. They don’t get to just come and sit and talk with other women. They are expected to just live their lives and be quiet. But the teacher here started to ask them and that’s when they started to cry. Some would not talk at all at first. Even I was too afraid to shake the teacher’s hand or even to look at her. I was afraid that she would see that I was not smart. But now I know I am smart, so I am not afraid anymore.
After a year of learning to read, we are all different people. We can stand up straight and read out the words we have written in loud clear voices. We laugh more than we cry.
Even though I am young, I know many things. Sometimes the older women forget I’m in the room, and they talk as if I’m not here. I hear all about their lives, about their children who died or their husbands who hit them.
I know that some women did not tell their families they were coming here. They said they were going to the market or to a clinic, or they only came to class when no one was at home to stop them. Only after many months had passed did they tell them, and by then they could read some things, so their families said, “You are using your time well, you are learning something, you are happier, okay, you can continue to go.”
The courtyard of a home where literacy classes are held.
The books we most like to read are about law, the constitution and about religion. Through these books we learn that we have rights. And if our families disagree, we can point to the book and say, “Here! It is written down! The law must be respected!” Religion does not give men the right to beat us, and now we can prove it.
Some of the stories are funny now, because we know better, but they weren’t funny when they happened. One woman says she got a prescription from the doctor and she got it mixed up with other papers, and what she took to the pharmacy was not the prescription, it was the electric bill! Women talk about how they used to be like blind, but reading has made them able to see.
I used to think, if only I could read, then I would be happy. But now I just want more! I want to read about poets and Afghan history and science and about places outside Afghanistan. Many of us write our own stories, and we decorate the borders of the pages with drawings of flowers and designs, because that is the Afghan tradition.
My brother lets me come here because it’s not really a school. More just a place where women get together to learn. My mother was the first to come, and when he saw that she felt better and seemed happier, he said, okay, it would not be bad if I came with her. There are only women here, so he thinks I won’t get into trouble and make him look bad.
I hope he lets me go to a proper school one day because I like to be around books and I would like to be a doctor one day. I think I would be a good doctor. What else can I do with so much intelligence!
Liza, 16
A tradition of Islamic art — or art created in the Islamic world, regardless of the religion of the creator — involves creating a sense of balance and harmony. One part of the tradition is to focus on patterns rather than representations of living creatures. The magnificent tile work on mosques and public spaces throughout the Middle East is a testament to the grandeur of this style of work.
Other traditions, such as the one led by the great Afghan miniaturist of the sixteenth century, Kamal al-Din Bihzad, created spectacular illuminated books of illustrated poetry and legends, with people and even the Prophet Muhammad represented in full-face drawings.
The first national Afghan school of fine arts was established in 1921, with other schools coming along as the decades passed and leaders changed. When the Taliban took power, art was one of the many forms of self-expression they crushed. They even destroyed many of Afghanistan’s artistic and cultural treasures, such as the giant Buddhas of Bamiyan (magnificent giant statues carved into the side of a cliff and deliberately dynamited by the Taliban in 2001). Most forms of art were against the law.
In one of the many attempts to rescue and rebuild the cultural life of Afghanistan, a women’s art center was established by the Centre for Contemporary Arts Afghanistan (CCAA). Since 2006 it has trained hundreds of young Afghan women in painting, photography and filmmaking. After living in a time when their voices were silenced, having ability in the arts allows women and girls like Liza to express themselves in new and daring ways.
I live with my mother and one sister. My father died from an untreated illness some time ago. When he got ill, there was no doctor and no medicine. We could see he was sick and suffering, and we did what we could to try to keep him warm and comfortable, but the pain was bad and we watched him die. We were all helpless.
To lose a father in Afghanistan is a dangerous thing because it is very hard for a woman to earn enough money on her own to support herself and her children. She has to rely on someone to help her — an uncle, a brother — and that makes her like a beggar.
For my family it has been very hard. I was seven when my father died. He used to work in a shop selling carpets. I remember visiting him there to take him some lunch. It was the time of the Taliban, so my mother could not go outside with any safety. The Taliban would beat her if they saw her. It was a little safer for me because I was a little child, and they usually ignored very little children. The shop was near to where we lived and I would run there and back. I ran because I was afraid of them. But I was glad to get out.
Except for taking the lunch, we just sat inside. No school, no playing. Nothing. The days were long and we would argue just for something to do. When you are locked up with someone, everything they do can quickly become annoying, because you can’t get away from it. Every day is the same.
Before the Taliban fell there was a lot of fighting and shooting. It was terrible. But then it stopped and things are better now. I am about to start grade ten. I study very hard in school. We are on school break now for the winter. Instead of going to regular school classes I come here every day to work on learning art.
After the Taliban, my family was really hopeful. People would come to visit and I’d hear them talk. “The dark period is over,” they’d say. “We can all breathe again.” But it’s not really like that. We can do some things, but we never know who is watching and who will try to stop us with violence or by saying bad things. I try not to think about it. I prefer to think about art.
A sculpture in the courtyard of the women’s art center.
I am just beginning to learn about it. I’ve been learning about colors and shapes and how to use light and shadow. When I look around at some of the work done by women who have studied for a while, I think, “How can they do that?” Then I think that one day a new student will ask the same thing about my work, because I will be so good at it.
Many girls paint their memories or their thoughts about their memories. How do they feel when they remember this thing? That’s what they paint. So when you see their painting, you get their feeling.
The older artists paint sadder, darker pictures than the younger artists like me. Of course, we are still learning technique and have a long way to go in our studies, but I think we are looking more to the future than to the past. I have heard many sad stories, and I know there are many more, too many more. I want to think about happier things and put my mind and my art to making work that will give people a good feeling instead of a dark feeling. We all have things inside us that need to come out. It can be dangerous to speak, or maybe you are too shy to speak. But you can draw your feelings, in private, and let them out.
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