I walked into to the arrivals hall and spotted a BBC colleague waiting for me. It was such a reassuring sight. I got into the car without speaking, as my eyes searched for the Kabul I had left behind. I recognised the roads but so much had changed. The huge green trees had gone, the roads were choked with traffic, everything was chaotic and dirty. I could see only men and boys on the streets, staring through the car window at me as we passed. Everyone appeared to be angry and shouting at each other.
I couldn’t stop the tears from falling. My colleague asked me if I was all right but I just carried on crying. He and the driver said nothing as I wept and memories of my childhood flooded back. The city of my childhood had lost its colour and freshness; now it was covered with the grey dust of a decade of war.
I also saw how war had changed the people. I had spent ten years living in a country that wasn’t shaken by the sounds of rockets or shooting. Returning to Kabul, I realised that I had changed too – I had softened. Now every unexpected noise sounded like a bomb exploding; when someone’s mobile phone rang I would jump in fear. I was only in Kabul for a week but I thought I would die there.
A colleague had suggested I meet a young woman called Wazma for Afghan Woman’s Hour because she had an extraordinary life story. One of the aims of that trip to Kabul was to meet some Afghan women face to face. Wazma was one of my interviewees. ‘War and fighting turns some hearts to stone,’ she told me.
As a child, war and fighting had certainly turned my heart to stone. Before I left Kabul I hadn’t been frightened of the sounds of war. Back then I had witnessed some horrific scenes – people dying and being mutilated – now I was spooked by the sound of a ringtone. The young women I was working with probably thought I was a total coward.
Progress was being made in some parts of Kabul. Building and renovation work were under way, and some houses had electricity from the city power supply. The security situation was also relatively calm at the time. The BBC guesthouse that I was staying in stood at the foot of some mountains. On my way back from work I loved looking up at all the houses perched on the hillside; it was a comforting sight at night to see the lights in people’s homes. These houses now had electricity and would shine over the city below like glistening stars. This was the scene that made me fall in love with Kabul again. I was too frightened to return to the neighbourhood I’d grown up in and visit my school. I just couldn’t face it. Instead, I would stare up the mountain, counting the lights and imagining the lives of people who lived there.
Wazma had once lived up in the mountain. When I interviewed her, I discovered that life up there was the same as in the valley but just a bit harder. She no longer lived there and now she missed it. Her observation that war and fighting turns some hearts to stone made a big impression on me, and during the interview with her I discovered how she came to believe this.
In the early hours of the morning the sound of the Azan – the mullah’s call to prayer – echoed throughout the Deh Afghanan area of Kabul. His singing in Arabic was relayed through a tinny loudspeaker. It was still dark but people were starting to get up. There was a stiff breeze in the air. The lights of the houses on the hillside appeared like tiny stars to those in the valley below. One of those stars belonged to the small house of Wazma and her family.
The Azan could be heard from the top of the mountain. It woke Wazma up. She stretched, yawned, and sat up on her mattress. By her side lay her husband, Waheed. She turned to see her baby daughter still fast asleep, oblivious to the sound of the Azan. The sight gave Wazma a strong maternal feeling. She leaned over and gently stroked her baby’s hair. Wazma got up quietly. The room was small. It provided just enough space for them all to lie down in. You had to squeeze through a narrow door to enter it. It was sparsely furnished but Wazma counted herself fortunate. She had a loving husband and a beautiful daughter. She plugged in the old Russian water boiler and put it in the bucket she had filled from the communal well the night before. She then sat beside it on a large stone which was used as a chair. The mullah was coming to the last sentences of the Azan.
Allah u Akbar.
God is great.
La Ilaha Ilala.
There is no God but Allah.
Mohammad Al Rasool Allah.
Mohammad is his prophet.
Wazma waited for the water to warm; the weak electric current wasn’t helping. She dipped her hand into the water to make sure it was neither too hot nor too cold. Satisfied it was the right temperature, she stood up and went over to her husband and whispered, ‘Darling, wake up. It’s time for prayer.’
Waheed woke up and smiled at his wife. He asked Wazma if the water was ready for him to wash. She brushed his hair with her fingers and replied that it was. Waheed left to wash, in readiness for his early-morning prayer.
When she had finished her prayer, Wazma began her daily routine of making fresh green tea. She boiled the water in an old pot, then she put a teaspoon of green tea and added a pinch of crushed cardamom into the little white china teapot with the small purple flowers on it. She poured the boiled water into the teapot and left it for a few minutes so that the green leaves could infuse in the water. Then she filled two china cups and placed them on a tin tray. She sat and waited for her husband to finish praying. He bowed to the ground, which signalled the end of his prayer and came and sat next to Wazma.
It was getting lighter outside. Wazma and Waheed sipped their tea and talked quietly so as not to wake the baby.
‘You know, Wazma, I really hope one day to be able to buy a house further down the mountain so you don’t have to do all this tiring work, carrying water up and down every day. I will work hard so our family can live more comfortably.’
Wazma smiled at her husband. ‘Waheed, I’m happy to live anywhere with you. I don’t need a big house and things are not important to me. When I’ve finished studying I’ll earn money from my teaching salary and then we’ll both be earning money. Then maybe we can afford a house further down the mountain, if that’s what you want. For me, your love, my baby and being healthy are the most important things. Inshallah, everything will be fine. I have faith in God that it will.’
Waheed leaned forward and kissed her on her forehead. He had one last sip of his tea and left for the local government office where he worked as a clerk.
Wazma began to tidy the room. She had to be quick so she wasn’t late for school. She put on her green uniform and looked at herself in the mirror on the wall next to the door. Her reflection didn’t look so clear in the dusty scratched mirror but she knew this wasn’t the reality; she realised she was much prettier than her image in the glass. She dabbed some moisturising cream on her face and traced kohl around her eyes. Wazma looked over at the baby who had just woken up and started to cry. She picked her up and held her in her arms. Wazma explained to her daughter that she was going to school soon. ‘You’ll be spending time with Granny until I come back, and when I return I’ll bring you some sweets.’
Farah was only thirteen months old and far too young to understand what her mother was saying, but she smiled, contented to hear her mother’s voice and to be in her arms. Wazma washed her daughter’s face, kissed her and held her tightly. It was as if Wazma didn’t want to leave her baby; she had a strange feeling it was the last time she would be doing this. She continued wiping her daughter’s face and kissed her on her cheeks again. She fed the baby with a bottle of milk and dressed her in a red spotty dress she had made for her. Farah was playing with the gold chain that hung from her mother’s neck. It was the only present given to her by her husband. She held the baby in her arms, picked up the bottle and her handbag and headed for the door.
It was now eight o’clock in the morning. Wazma went to the next house where Waheed’s family lived. She gave Farah to her mother-in-law and handed over the bottle of milk with instructions that it should be given again at ten o’clock. Wazma said goodbye, kissed her daughter and left.
Hurrying down the mountain track, Wazma pondere
d on what to make her family for dinner. The path was dusty and steep. It took her fifteen minutes to reach the bottom and the busy roads of Deh Afghanan. On her way to the bus stop she had to pass the fruit and vegetable market.
The sellers jostled with one another to make sure their stall was on the corner where it could be seen from two sides. It was 8.45 a.m. by the time Wazma arrived at the bus stop and the sun was fully up. Wazma took out some change from her purse in readiness for the bus. The roar of the traffic and the shouts from the market sellers could be heard streets away; the sounds even carried up the mountain. People were fresh with enthusiasm for the start of a new day.
Wazma waited impatiently for the bus. At last she could see it coming in the distance. As it approached the stop, Wazma moved forwards together with the other women, men and children waiting to get on it. Suddenly there was a whistling sound that got louder and louder. Then there was a huge bang. Wazma turned round to see a ball of fire. The power of the blast was enough to throw her to the ground and shatter the windows of the bus. All that was left of it was a tangle of twisted metal and broken glass. The shouts of the fruit and vegetable sellers gave way to cries of pain and screams of panic. Acrid black smoke slowly filled the air until people could not see more than a few metres in front of them. Bodies and body parts were strewn across the ground. An old woman who had been standing in front of Wazma at the bus stop now lay face-down in the dust. Blood seeped out of her head. A rocket had landed between the bus stop and the market place of Deh Afghanan.
Wazma lay on the ground. The breath had been sucked out of her. She didn’t know what had happened and she felt nothing. The police began blocking off that part of the city and ambulances arrived to take the injured to hospital. In those few seconds Wazma’s life changed for ever. There was her life before the rocket attack and her life after it.
During the 1980s a large number of rockets were fired into Kabul on a daily basis and the city’s inhabitants lived in fear for their lives – just going to school or to work was risky. As children, we didn’t understand all the politics behind the attacks but one name we feared was Gulbudeen Hekmatyar, the leader of the main Mujahedeen group in Afghanistan.
The government would launch Russian rockets called ‘stingers’, sometimes twenty at a time. We got so used to the different sounds of the rockets that when we heard the ones being fired at the Mujahedeen we didn’t hide in the corridors. My friends and I might be playing outside and if we heard those bangs, we’d tell each other not to be scared. ‘Those are our rockets, not Gulbudeen’s.’
At that time my friends and I didn’t stop to think that those powerful rockets were being aimed at human beings. This is what the war did to us. We were just happy that our government was firing twenty rockets in a row at the Mujahedeen. We were frightened and hated whenever a rocket landed in our city but we didn’t consider what our side was doing in terms of killing and injuring others.
I do wonder about both sides now. The war brings suffering and grief to families on all fronts. Some of the scars of war run so deep that they last a lifetime and the change is devastating. It was like this for Wazma.
I got to know Wazma in the second part of her life. It was several years since the rocket attack on Deh Afghanan and Wazma was now in her late twenties. I went to interview her at a welfare centre in Kabul, which had been set up to help female amputees learn new skills and earn a living. The director led me into a room full of women who sat with their heads bent over various bits of cloth. He gestured towards a pale-faced woman, her eyes focused on a colourful Afghan dress. Although she was only in her twenties, Wazma might pass for a woman twice that age. She worked without much energy and, beside her, I noticed two crutches. I walked over and introduced myself to her. ‘Salamalikum (Peace be with you). I’m Zarghuna Kargar and I present Afghan Woman’s Hour on the BBC.’
Wazma looked up from her sewing. She said hello and gave a wan smile. I told her I had come to record her life story, which the BBCWorld Service would broadcast on the radio. She asked how I knew she had a story worth telling, and I said that one of my friends in Kabul had told me about a woman she’d heard about who was good at storytelling. She seemed pleased that someone she knew had contacted the BBC and now they wanted to interview her.
We moved to a quieter room. Wazma used her crutches to support her legs. She wore a black skirt and a large white scarf. When we got to the room and sat down, I set up the recording equipment and asked Wazma to tell me her story.
‘Dear Zari, I really want to explain my life to the listeners of Afghan Woman’s hour. I want my daughter to hear it and I want my husband to hear me. It’s the first time I have spoken openly about my feelings and I’m hoping that people will understand what I have gone through.
‘I’m a twenty-four-year-old woman. I got married when I was seventeen. I had a happy life with my husband Waheed. I think he loved me. He was kind to me. My marriage was arranged but I was contented with it. Sometimes I do wonder if my husband didn’t really love me but I’d rather believe that he did care about me. Sometimes we human beings prefer to live under the shade of pleasant memories, don’t we?’
She looked at me as if expecting a reply. I told her I didn’t understand exactly what she meant. At this her eyes filled with tears and she began again in a low voice.
‘I have lost so much that living with some happy memories, believing that my husband did once love me and that once I had a beautiful daughter gives me hope. But to be honest, there are many times when I wish I had died in that rocket attack. Living like this is not easy for a woman.’
At this she pointed to her right leg.
‘Who will want me like this? I’m a disabled woman with a false leg. I’m not strong enough to be a mother and wife any more. I knew there was a civil war going on and at any time a rocket could land and kill or injure me, but at the same time I didn’t believe it would happen.
‘My daughter, Farah, was only a year old at the time.’ I had one eye on the recording equipment and kept another on Wazma. I saw her wipe her tears away from her face. ‘I didn’t know what had happened at first, but when I woke up in the hospital I looked down and saw that I didn’t have my right leg. My leg had been blown off from above my knee by the impact of the rocket. All I can remember is that I felt a lot of pain. I forgot who I was and where I was.
‘When I was young my mother told me that when you cut your finger with a knife while cooking it hurts a lot, so you should be kind to people who lose their limbs in war because their pain will be much greater. Of course, then I had no idea what she really meant. It was all beyond my experience or imagination.’
Wazma then began to quietly weep. She bent her head down as if she didn’t want me to see her tears.
‘From the moment I accepted I was a disabled woman, I felt stronger. I realised I had to fight the pain and difficulty. I thought about my dear Farah and Waheed and this gave me hope. I became stronger just thinking about them. So what if I only have one leg? I was still young; I had my little family and my life ahead of me. Once I realised this, things became easier and I coped better.’
I found it hard to believe Wazma’s description of the caring relationship she had shared with Waheed. In my experience, that kind of love doesn’t exist in an Afghan marriage. I thought that a happy married life meant you weren’t beaten or forced to wear a hijab; a happy married life meant that my husband accepted me working outside the house, and that I was able to have a conversation with another man. It didn’t cross my mind that a happy marriage could simply come from two people loving each other. I guess it was the way I was brought up. I believed I should respect my husband however he behaved. It wasn’t that I didn’t feel unhappy when he refused to go with me to a close friend’s wedding, or when I made plans to go shopping on a weekend and he declined to come with me. I was told so many times that he was a perfect husband, so when I saw other Afghan women talking about their caring and loving husbands, I thought they were just showing
off.
It seemed normal to assume that a wife’s job was to keep the house clean, iron my husband’s clothes and prepare his meals, even though he always criticised my cooking. I was relieved he allowed me to carry on with my job, but I’m a talkative person, and I longed to have conversations with him, but he just wasn’t interested in the programmes I was making or the stories I was covering. My voice wasn’t good enough for radio, he would say, and he certainly never appreciated what I did for Afghan women. And it felt like I was supposed to just ignore this behaviour – it hurt that my husband cared so little about the things that were important to me, but what choice did I have?
On one occasion I tried to complain about these feelings to my family. ‘Look, Zarghuna! Does he beat you?’ When I said no, my relative went on, ‘Well then, accept this life. He is a good man; it is just his way.’
But as time passed, accepting his way became hard for me. For him an easy life was more important than ensuring my happiness. I was earning good money, paying for the mortgage and most of the bills. I never asked him to buy me clothes but I did my own shopping, so why would he prevent me from working?
I remember one day I had had a particularly hard time at work. I was very upset by the behaviour of a colleague – it was just office politics but it had hurt me a lot. When I came home, I told him that sometimes I felt like leaving my job and staying at home, that perhaps I would go back to my studies. As an Afghan wife I was expecting him to protect me and tell me not to worry, that he would work hard and find enough money to look after our financial needs. I was hoping for a hint that he would protect me, so that if I ever chose to leave my work, I would still have some security. At the time, I was just angry with people at work and I was unlikely to leave such a good job, but somehow I felt tired and fed up of all the responsibility I had shouldered from such a young age. But he lashed out: ‘No way are you leaving that job – who would pay the mortgage?’ I was very hurt by his attitude and the burden of economic responsibility became heavy on me. Just the thought of not having any money scared me and I felt terribly alone.
Dear Zari: Hidden Stories from Women of Afghanistan Page 16
