Kids of Kabul (12 page)

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 play 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.

My mother is still alive. She is very poor. She has no job and her life is very bad. She cannot afford to have her children with her. My sister and I are in this orphanage. My brother is in another place. I get to see my mother once a month. She is staying in the home of my uncle. There is no room for us there.

There are thirty girls in this orphanage. Some have lost both parents, some have lost one parent. The youngest is a little baby who has no parents. Then there are some little girls in kindergarten, some older, and some even older. I’m not the oldest, but I’m close to being the oldest.

People in Canada send us presents, like books and toys and stuffed animals. We live in a big house. There are bedrooms upstairs with several bunk beds in each room. We each have a metal box where we can keep our things. There is a room with big tables where we eat and do our homework, and a room we call the winter room because it is the only room that’s warm in the winter. It has a rug on the floor, toshaks along the walls and a woodstove. That’s where we spend most of our time. The little ones roll around on the floor, the older ones like me read and talk and play games and try different ways to do our hair.

The winter room has a television set but our housemother doesn’t let us watch it very much. She says our time is better spent studying. When we get to watch, I like Bollywood movies. We also have a shelf full of books, both for little kids and for older girls. Most of the books are in English. We are all learning English. I’m reading an English book now by Judy Blume. I have to go slow because my English is still not good.