The Favored Daughter (24 page)

That evening, Khadija and I reached the awful decision that it was safer not to try to visit Hamid for a while. We feared it would only make things harder for him and lead to more beatings. The guards had decided his wife was an insolent whore for trying to protest his imprisonment and for wearing nail polish. I was furious with the Badakhshani from Puli Charkhi. I suspected that not only had he chosen not to help us, but he had deliberately caused trouble for us.

The fact was, I hadn't even complained to him of prison conditions. I had spoken only of Hamid's illness and his innocence.

That night, my last hopes for Hamid's release died.

For two weeks I didn't attempt to see him. I didn't want to be insulted or humiliated by those guards, and I feared that even if they did let me see him I'd break down and cry in front of him. The last thing he needed was to worry about my being upset. But by the following Friday, I could bear it no longer. I needed to see my husband.

I also needed to ask him something important. As a married woman, I needed his permission to travel and I had decided that I wanted to go to my brother's in Pakistan to give birth. I couldn't bear the thought of delivering my first baby in Kabul, where the Taliban had banned all female doctors from working and male doctors from treating women.

Khadija insisted on coming with me for safety, and as we approached the prison gates I was a bag of nerves. I wasn't very optimistic that they would let me see him. I stayed a few paces back, while Khadija approached the guard and asked for Hamid. He disappeared, then came back accompanied by the same young guard who had thrown stones at me. I kept quiet, and so did Khadija, expecting a rock to come flying at my head at any moment. He looked straight at me and ordered, “Come close, woman.”

Slowly I inched forward, promising myself that if he threw another stone at me, I would throw it right back at him.

“Show me your left hand,” he ordered. I said nothing and I didn't show him my hand, instead hiding them both under my
niqab.
The man was coarse and rude and, in my eyes, totally unfamiliar with the Afghan custom of showing politeness and manners at all times.

He laughed as I hid my hands and said, “I am telling you. Don't put nail polish on your fingers anymore. If you do, you are not a Muslim.”

I glared at him through the safety of my covered face. He dared to tell me I wasn't a Muslim, but then permitted himself to comment on the makeup worn by another man's wife! “Why do you wear it? Tell me,” he ordered.

I replied as calmly as I could. “We have been married for only four months. It is customary and cultural for a new bride to wear makeup and nice clothes for the first year of marriage. Surely as an Afghan man you know this?”

He laughed a mocking and guttural laugh, showing a hint of his yellow teeth as he did so. “I see. So do you want me to release your husband?”

I didn't know what to say. I assumed he was just mocking me. I answered, “What is his crime? He has committed no crime.”

The guard shrugged his shoulders and said, “Go, and come back with a male relative. Bring a man who is prepared to show me evidence of property. If the man will use his property as a guarantee that your husband will not attempt to leave Kabul, then I will release him.”

I didn't say a word but turned and ran out the gate as fast as my legs could carry me. Khadija ran after me. We didn't know if he meant it, but we knew we had to try. We stood looking at each other, two women standing on the streets of a male-dominated world gone mad. We didn't know who we could ask or what to do next. My brothers had all left Kabul, and Hamid's family were mostly living in Badakhshan.

Then I remembered a cousin who owned a shop. We ran across the streets to get there. We reached it, both panting and out of breath, only to find it closed. In our excitement, we had forgotten it was Friday, the day of prayer and rest.

I didn't want to give the prison guard the chance of changing his mind and losing this possibility of releasing Hamid. We ran back to the prison. The guard was sitting on a chair enjoying the sunshine. I was pleased to see he looked relaxed.

I didn't want to go close to him in case I made him angry again.

So Khadija went and explained the situation. He stood up, not saying a word to her, and went back inside the prison for what seemed like hours but was in reality only a few minutes. Then he reappeared with Hamid and another, even younger-looking guard. Then he spoke.

“Hamid can go with you and this man will go too. If you can bring a letter back from a neighbor or friend, then I will release him.”

He ordered a Taliban driver with a Hilux pickup truck to take us.

We all got in. I dared not look at Hamid for fear of the guard, but I sneaked a sideways glance at him and saw he looked white as a sheet and on the verge of collapse.

The young Taliban who was accompanying us told us he was from Wardak province. He seemed kind but very young, and I doubted he had any power or influence in the prison. I was terrified none of the neighbors would be able to help us and he'd drive Hamid straight back to prison. Dusk had fallen by the time we drove into Makrorian.

Khadija recalled that one family among our neighbors owned their apartment; she didn't know them very well but we had no choice but to approach them for the guarantee. She went to talk to the man while Hamid and I and the young Talib went upstairs to wait in our apartment. It was emotional agony. Hamid was sitting in his own living room, but I couldn't even talk to him and at any second he might be taken back to prison.

I was still wearing my
niqab
but I noticed the young Talib was looking at my face, trying to read my eyes. I was scared and looked down. I think he saw how sad and scared I was. He was a native Pashto speaker but he spoke to me kindly in broken Dari, the language he knew Hamid and I spoke. “Don't worry, sister. I too am newly married, only twenty days. So I understand your pain. Even if you don't find a guarantee, I will leave Hamid here tonight and will come again tomorrow to get the letter.”

He risked the wrath of his superiors by making that offer. It was another one of those surprising acts of random kindness when least expected. Hamid and I both thanked him.

We all sat and waited in silence for Khadija to return.

I heard male voices in the corridor of our apartment. I went out and saw half a dozen male neighbors. They smiled and said how happy they were that Hamid was being released. All of them told me not to worry; they would collectively offer Hamid his guarantee.

I was so grateful to them that I could do nothing but cry. They went into the room and Hamid hugged them all. Two of the neighbors who owned property signed the letter of guarantee, which stated that Hamid, an engineer, would not leave Kabul and would attend appointments at the Interior Ministry whenever the Taliban required it. Failure to do so would result in the two men forfeiting their property. It was an awfully big risk for our neighbors to take, and once again I was amazed at the generosity some people show to others at such times of war and conflict.

I took a small lace handkerchief I had recently embroidered and gave it to the young Talib as a gift for his new bride. He thanked me sincerely. I wondered how this kind and sweet young man had come to join the Taliban's ranks. He was so unlike the rest. It seemed like years before the kindly neighbors left and I could finally be alone with my husband. He looked like a ghostly shadow of himself. Khadija and I tried to make him smile and told him jokes; he started to laugh and as he did so, his breath caught and he coughed. A terrifying, hacking cough that refused to stop. Khadija and I looked at each other, grimfaced. Hamid had tuberculosis. The cough was a sign of worse to come.

 

FIFTEEN

BACK TO WHERE I BEGAN

Three months after his incarceration began, Hamid was released. He had been beaten senseless, manacled, and left outside for days in the wind, rain, and snow as a punishment, and he contracted a fatal disease. And for what? Nothing. They had charged him with nothing.

It was the beginning of spring 1998 and the heavy snows of winter were thawing fast as each day got progressively warmer. It was a welcome relief to feel the sun again. It was good for Hamid, too. He was still very sick and coughed constantly.

By now I was almost seven months pregnant and my baby was very active, kicking and wriggling inside me. I was having trouble getting a good night's sleep with my unborn child testing her growing strength and Hamid exploding into coughing fits at regular intervals throughout the night. He was too ill to work and the medication the doctor had prescribed didn't seem to be making much of a difference for his condition.

Despite the sun's growing rays Kabul felt very oppressive. Taliban rule in the capital was absolute. We lived in constant fear that the Taliban would show up at our front door and drag Hamid back to prison. It was more a question of when, not if, they would come to detain him again.

But those times in prison had taken such a toll on Hamid's health that a fourth detention would most certainly be a death sentence. We knew we had to flee beyond the control of the Taliban. Pakistan wasn't really an option. Hamid became a target for the Taliban after Pakistani spies reported his visit baCK To where i began to President Rabbani's compound, so we feared he would also be followed there. We decided to return to our home province of Badakhshan. General Massoud and President Rabbani's forces still held out against the Taliban in this northern stronghold. Even the might of the Soviet war machine couldn't defeat the mujahideen there, so we felt hopeful we could find some genuine refuge. But getting there was fraught with danger.

Hamid was prescribed six months of medication and we set off. It was a difficult journey in any circumstance, across rough tracks and winding mountain passes, but now it was fraught with the danger of the Taliban, too. Hamid's health and my pregnancy made us even more vulnerable, and it was a measure of our desperation to get away from Kabul that we even considered traveling at this time. The city that had once been a safe-haven now felt like a prison overrun by sadistic guards.

I packed a few belongings for the journey—mostly wedding gifts and things that reminded me of my family. I wanted to take the few precious photographs of my mother and my murdered brother Muqim and hide them beneath clothing in the bottom of a suitcase, away from prying Taliban eyes. But I knew the risk would be too great. If the Taliban found them they would be destroyed, and as much as I wanted those pictures with me, I dared not take the risk.

My sister-in-law, Khadija, was determined to stay with her children in Kabul. I argued and pleaded with her, but she would not be budged. I think she felt she owed it to Hamid's brother to stay in Kabul and raise her children. She had become such a close friend it was hard for me to leave her in the house, but I respected her decision to stay. Perhaps if I had felt as though there was even a chance the Taliban would leave us alone I would have stayed, too. But there was no chance of that and Hamid and I were living on borrowed time. Sooner or later some Taliban administrator would review the list of all the people they had detained and released, and decide once again to send more fanatical young men to re-arrest Hamid out of mere suspicion. Their attitude seemed to be: “He's bound to doing something wrong. Let's arrest him, torture him, and then he will tell us.” Of course, if you torture someone for long enough they will tell you anything. And if they don't, then by Taliban logic they died guarding some terrible secret. Ordinary people were being imprisoned for the most trivial of so-called offenses. When Hamid was in jail he spoke to taxi drivers who had been arrested for taking unaccompanied female passengers. Ironically, although the driver would be thrown in jail the woman in question often got far worse for “tempting” the driver. The Taliban's rules were often as unique as the man holding the gun. Their arbitrary nature and enforcement created an environment of paranoia in which it was safer to stay at home rather than risk breaking some new law. It was terrifying and infuriating at the same time—these men thought they were ruling my country, when all they were doing was ruining it. And all their actions were done in the name of Islam, which they used as a political catchall to silence their critics. You don't like the way we treat women? You're un-Islamic. You want to listen to music? You're un-Islamic. You disagree with our justice system? You're unIslamic. What do you mean we are misinterpreting the Quran for our own purposes? That's un-Islamic. These uneducated men had a two-dimensional view of the world that seemed to be firmly anchored in the dark ages, and that's exactly where they were determined to take my country, too. So as much as it pained us, we felt we had no choice but to leave Kabul.