Kids of Kabul

by Deborah Ellis

  The divorce will give me some protection, I hope. It is a legal paper that says I do not belong to my husband anymore. I can show them this paper if they come after me and it will protect me.

  I have never been to school. It was not possible when we were refugees, and my family was too poor. It was just not possible. In the shelter, I have been able to attend literacy classes and now I am able to read a bit. And I have helped out in the shelter’s kindergarten class. We have a lot of small children staying there. It’s good that they get an education while they are young.

  In the future I would like to continue to study. The literacy classes have opened a window in my brain, but it is only open a little bit. I want it open all the way because I think I could have a good brain that can do smart things.

  When I first came to the shelter I was very weak. My husband’s family would punish me by locking me in the back room and not letting me have food. I would not talk to anyone here above a whisper.

  And look at me now! I am sitting up straight, looking you in the eye and telling my story in a loud, clear voice. And you are a stranger. It is my story but it is not the only story. In the shelter I have heard too many stories like mine. We all need to talk about what has happened to us because bad things happen in secret.

  I don’t know why I left on the day that I did and not on some other day. It was a day like many others. I was throwing away the garbage like I had done before. I had not planned it out. Nothing was packed or prepared. I just threw away the garbage and started walking. I don’t think I was brave. I just wasn’t ready to die.

  Will my father have to pay his debt now? I don’t know. It is my father’s debt, not mine. I spent years married when I did not want to be. If any of his debt belongs to me, I have paid my portion back.

  When the divorce is final and I have the paper, I will go back to my parents’ house. I know my mother will be happy to see me and have her with me again.

  I don’t know how my father will feel.

  Shazad, 10

  During the 1980s and 1990s, Afghan refugees made up the largest single refugee population on the planet. More than one-fifth of the country fled the war, looking for safety in Pakistan, Iran and any other country that would accept them. Most lived in camps made of mud, tattered tents and rags with few services and little hope.

  The United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) says that since 2002, more than five million Afghan refugees have returned to their country. In some areas, as many as one out of every three people is a returned refugee. They return to a country still reeling from war and, in many places, still engaged in one.

  Returning families need jobs, land, shelter, food and opportunities. Some assistance has been provided by international agencies, but it does not stretch to meet all the needs. In situations like this, children are especially vulnerable. Families in desperate need sell children to traffickers who smuggle them into other countries to act as domestic, sexual or industrial slaves.

  There are still 1.7 million Afghan refugees in Pakistan and almost one million still in Iran. Many of the Afghans in Pakistan are in areas badly affected by recent flooding, adding to their misery.

  IDP stands for Internally Displaced Person, or internal refugee — a person forced to leave their home area who flees to another part of their country, hoping it will be safer for them there.

  The Afghan Ministry of Refugees and Returnees estimates that there are now over 450,000 IDPs in Afghanistan — people who have fled areas where the war is still raging. Many have ended up in makeshift camps on the edge of cities, where they think they will be safe.

  These IDP camps have few services like proper latrines or clean water. People freeze in the winter and swelter in the summer heat and dust. People living there try to find work doing anything they can, but it is very difficult. There have been unconfirmed reports of families trying to sell one or more of their children in order to keep the rest of the family alive.

  Shazad and his family are living in an IDP camp on the edge of Kabul.

  We came from Sangin in Helmand Province. A lot of us in this camp are from that place. Some of the people came here from Iran. They are Afghans but they lived in Iran but then Iran told them they had to leave, but they had no homes to go back to. So they live here.

  We left Sangin because of all the fighting. There was shooting, planes, bombs, lots of soldiers. I didn’t like all the noise. There was a lot of fighting, and no rain, so nothing would grow and we couldn’t eat.

  A yard in Shazad’s IDP camp.

  I think we came here a year ago, maybe a little more. I never went to school in Helmand and I don’t go to school here. There is no school in this place.

  I’m here with my uncle. He brought me here. I don’t know where my parents are. I think they are dead.

  I would like to go to school, I think. I don’t really know what that would mean, but I think I’d like to do it. It would be something to do.

  There’s not a lot to do here. There are a lot of children and we play football when we have a ball. When we don’t have a ball we use something from the garbage for a ball. Anything that rolls works okay.

  The things I don’t like about this place? I don’t like that it is right by the highway, so there is a lot of noise and smell from the cars and trucks. The air is hard to breathe. We can’t play without coughing a lot. Everybody coughs at night, too. It’s hard to sleep with all the coughing.

  I get cold at night. I sleep in my coat but it is still cold. There are not enough blankets and there is no covering on the floor. Just hard dirt and some paper and things we found in the garbage. It is hard to sleep on. But at least I have shoes. Some kids have no shoes and they can’t play very well in winter because their legs and feet hurt.

  Sometimes I don’t do anything. I sit outside the camp with my back against the mud wall someone built. It’s warm there if the sun is shining. I have a friend and we sit there together and look at the cars going by and decide which ones we like. I want to have a car some day. Maybe a red one.

  We get water from a pump. We have to carry it a long way. That’s one of my jobs. It’s heavy to carry but it’s something to do.

  There are animals here and they smell, but at least it is a farm smell. It’s a smell like from my home.

  I want to go home if the war stops. It is nice there. They grow a lot of poppies and they are beautiful. I want to be back in my home. I want to breathe normal again.

  The things I like about this place are there is no war or shooting. We see helicopters but they don’t shoot at us, they just fly around. And most of the adults here are nice if we don’t make too much noise and they are not too worried. If someone gets some food they usually share it.

  A baby was born here yesterday. I’ve seen her. She’s very tiny. When she cries it is not very loud. She’ll get louder.

  We look through garbage piles to find things to burn to stay warm. Sometimes we find food like old bread, or something we can use, but not often. People usually throw away what they don’t want. Some of the food is bad and we feed it to the sheep. They eat anything.

  Some people have taken up the work of making birdcages and raising birds. It doesn’t take long to grow a bird, so that’s a good job. They make the cages from sticks tied together. People buy the birds for good luck or maybe to eat. I don’t know. I might do that job some day.

  That’s if I can’t go back to Helmand. How long does war last? I don’t want to still be here when I’m old.

  Sara, 17

  Economic power is vital for women everywhere to be able to control their destiny. Assisting women to start up small businesses, like handicrafts, beekeeping, poultry-raising and tailoring is a way that women can earn money and improve the lives of themselves and their children.

  Sara benefits from having both a grandmother and a mother who
are astute businesswomen.

  My grandmother is a businesswoman. My mother is a businesswoman. And I am going to be a businesswoman.

  My grandmother runs a project for widows to make jewelry out of the stones of Afghanistan, like lapis lazuli, a famous blue stone.

  My mother works with 350 farm women from all around Afghanistan. They produce grapes and raisins from the grapes, walnuts, almonds, things like that. My mother finds markets for what they produce so that they can earn money.

  We stayed in Afghanistan during part of the Taliban times. We stayed inside all the time, trying to study and pass the time. One day my grandmother got sick. There was only one burqa in the house. My mother gave it to my grandmother to wear and my mother wore a chador over her head. That wasn’t good enough for the Taliban and they beat her very badly. After that, we decided to get out and all go to Pakistan.

  Things were hard there. My mother worked as a cleaner in the home of a Pakistani couple. But my mother is always looking out for something better, and she got money from an aid organization to start a small school for refugee children who had to work making carpets during the day.

  My mother went back to Afghanistan a few years after the Taliban fell. She left us in Pakistan because she wanted to see for herself that we would be all right and could go to school. She likes to take charge and make things happen. She got a job with the Afghan Women’s Business Council, rented an apartment, and we came back to Afghanistan.

  I was afraid because I had bad memories of Afghanistan under the Taliban. One night we were in our home and we were talking, entertaining ourselves because there was nothing else to do. Someone said something funny and we all laughed. But then the Taliban started banging on the window.

  We knew it was the Taliban, even though the window was painted over, because they yelled at us and told us to stop laughing, that our laughter was bothering the men who were walking along the road. We could not even laugh in our own home!

  But it didn’t matter that I was afraid to come back. We came back and started our lives again in Kabul.

  Kabul is okay. It’s my home, but I don’t really like living here. I’d prefer to live in Germany.

  My uncle is in Germany. My mother’s brother. I don’t know which city. I’ve never been there but I have learned a lot about it. It seems like a clean place where things work and the trees are green. Here the trees are covered in dust all the time. Kabul is very dusty from all the cars and all the building that is going on. Plus, here there are a lot of soldiers and guns in the streets. Even if something bad isn’t happening, you can easily think that something bad is about to happen. And bombs go off and people blow themselves up and everyone panics. Things like that don’t happen in Germany.

  I don’t know what started my mother on this newest business. She sees things that aren’t being done and finds a way to do them. She travels all over Afghanistan to meet with farm women and collect the things they grow. She wants to start making almond butter to sell in foreign countries because Afghanistan grows good almonds.

  I am now in grade twelve, plus I take extra courses to improve my English. Even though I want to live in Germany where they speak German, knowing English will be good for my future. I am also going to take prep classes for university entrance exams so I can get a good score.

  I have no time for fun! It’s always work — school work or helping to take care of my younger brothers and sisters.

  When I do have a bit of time, my friends and I like to play sports. We can’t usually run around much — there is no space for that — so we jump rope a lot, which is good exercise and we can do it in a small space.

  My mother goes to many insecure parts of Afghanistan to meet with her farm women, and I worry about her a lot. Sometimes I go with her. I see how hard their lives are, even with my mother’s help. The government of Afghanistan has declared Thursday and Friday to be the weekend, when people can take a break from work and have a holiday. But there are no holidays for women!

  I plan to go into business and my friends have the same plan. We want to make a lot of money. It’s good for Afghan women to make a lot of money. With money we have power. We are going into business so that we can control our own lives.

  Shaharazad, 12

  Fawzia Koofi is a formidable woman — smart, energetic, strong and determined that Afghanistan’s future will be better than its past. She is raising her daughter, Shaharazad, to be the next generation of strong Afghan women.

  I met Shaharazad in the lobby of the Intercontinental Hotel in Kabul. This famous hotel, on the top of a hill, has a small army of security police checking and re-checking everyone who approaches and enters the hotel. In spite of the precautions, in the spring of 2011, the hotel was attacked by Taliban gunmen. Several people were killed.

  I am named after a famous storyteller. My mother is Fawzia Koofi, a member of the Afghan parliament. She was elected by the people of Badakhshan, the province near China. They had a choice of people to vote for and they thought she would do the best job so they voted for her.

  Her father — my grandfather — was also a member of parliament a long time ago, in the 1970s. I never met him. He was murdered when my mother was still small. He owned the only radio in the whole area, although that’s not why he was killed. Before he died he had seven wives and twenty-three children.

  My mother was the first girl in her family to go to school. She was in university when the Taliban came. She had to quit. All the girls had to quit.

  She always tells my sister and me, “You are so lucky to be young women now instead of being young women in those days! We could not go out, we could not study, we could not have fun.” I’m glad I didn’t live through that, but that doesn’t mean my life now is easy.

  My father died when I was small, just like my mother’s father did. He was arrested by the Taliban and got tuberculosis in prison and that’s how he died. He was an engineer and a science teacher.

  Having my mother be a member of parliament is very nice, but it also scares me. I get afraid for her safety. Maybe something will happen to her and then we won’t have her.

  I was with her one day when she was attacked. This was last year.

  It was on the road between Kabul and Jalalabad. Because she’s a member of parliament she always travels with bodyguards. They follow along in another car and sit with her in our car. I was in the back seat of our car eating a bag of chips. I used to like eating them but since the attack I don’t like them anymore. I was eating these chips when the cars were stopped and all this shooting started. Men were shooting at us! The bodyguards were shooting at them and were trying to protect my mother and us. I was so scared! I didn’t know what was happening and I didn’t want to get shot. There was so much confusion.

  Then a helicopter came and we got put into the helicopter and taken to a clinic, but we were all okay, just scared. But two policemen died that day.

  That’s the only bad part about my mother being a member of parliament. All the danger. Sometimes she travels in helicopters and the helicopters are really old, so that’s another thing I worry about.

  The best part about her being a member of parliament is we get to come here, to the Intercontinental Hotel. It’s a very fancy hotel high up on a hill. There is lots of security to get through to get in — lots of guards on the hill on the way up and guards to check your bags as you go inside. So it’s safe. That’s a good thing.

  All the members of parliament have rooms here because they need a place to stay when they’re working. Some of the MPs have children who come with them and so we play together all over the hotel. My mother knows we are safe here, so while she’s busy in meetings, my sister and I and our friends go all over the hotel. The staff know us and like us because we have fun but we don’t cause trouble. We sit in the lounges and ride the elevators and go exploring. We go to each other’s rooms and pl
ay games on our computers. Some of the MPs come from provinces where there are no good schools and their children don’t know about computers and things. We teach them what we know. And we watch television and run through the gardens.

  I don’t like shouting and loud noises and I don’t like seeing men with guns in the street. That’s hard because everywhere you look in Kabul there are men with guns. They’re supposed to be there to protect us but I never know if they’ll start shooting at us instead.

  My mother says my generation is the hope for Afghanistan. My sister and I wear jeans and go to school and we hear her stories about how hard it was but we don’t really understand it. My mother says we should know about the past but think more about the future.

  My message to other kids? Tell them I want to live with them in a peaceful world and a peaceful country and be happy with my mother and family.

  Miriam, 14

  UNICEF estimates that there are 1.6 million orphans now in Afghanistan. War, disease and poverty have taken the lives of many parents. Some of these children are taken in by family members who care deeply about them. Others are not so lucky. They end up on the street or in situations of danger and exploitation.

  Miriam lives in a girls’ orphanage that is supported by Canadian donors. There is uncertainty about her future. It is next to impossible for women to live alone in Afghanistan, and without families to arrange a marriage, it is difficult to find a partner in life. Education is the best hope that Miriam and the girls she lives with will have for a safe and happy life once they become too old to stay at the orphanage.

  I have been in this orphanage for six years. We were in another building up until two years ago, but the landlord sold the house and we had to move to this house. Before I came to Afghanistan I lived in an orphanage in Pakistan.