Letters to My Daughters (25 page)

Hamid was his usual dignified self. He gently ordered me to stay in the bedroom. I was dressed in my nightgown and not properly attired to be pleading with strange men, even on the doorstep of my own home at 5 o'clock in the morning. It wasn't clear what they wanted with Hamid. There were no charges. They just told him his presence was required and he was to go with them. I heard the door bang closed and lay back on the pillows sobbing, clutching my pregnant belly and once again wondering what would become of us.

I knew of a man from Badakhshan who now worked with the Taliban. I found his address in an old notebook. He had a job in Puli Charkhi prison. Built in the 1970s, it was notorious for the brutal torture of inmates during the Soviet occupation. I didn't know where the Taliban had taken Hamid, but we were running out of people who might help us. You can really only ask someone to intervene once on your behalf—more and it becomes too dangerous for them—so it was impossible to go back to any of the people who had helped us previously.

I didn't know this man very well, but I hoped that the fact we were from the same region and that he knew who my father was might make him more sensitive to my pleas. The following day, I woke early and, donning my burka, I slipped into the cold morning air and went in search of him.

Puli Charkhi prison is about ten kilometres outside Kabul. I walked out of the suburbs as they faded away first into small villages, then into nothing but a few scattered mud houses and finally into dusty desert tracks. It is not a place a woman should be walking alone, especially not in those days. The tracks appear to lead nowhere—then suddenly the prison rises out of the earth. The guards' bayonets and the razor wire ringing the walls glinted in the sunlight. The rough, mud-plastered walls have a medieval feel with their imposing stone watchtowers. It is a terrifying place, known as the Alcatraz of Afghanistan because escape is impossible. I entered the guardhouse and explained my situation, asking for an audience with the man from Badakhshan. A guard went away to ask. He returned with a one-word answer: “No.”

“What kind of Badakhshani are you?” was the message I sent back. Didn't he have any
gharor
, pride, that he would not even allow a wife to ask about her missing husband?

I hoped the accusation might sting the man into action. I was a newly married Muslim woman, and it is considered culturally inappropriate that I should be left alone without any support. The guards looked ashamed and promised to relay the message to their boss. But he still refused to see me. I could see why. I had chastised him in front of his men, and he probably felt humiliated. I was told to go home and come back a few days later.

I walked all the way home again on an empty, thirsty belly with a kicking baby, and with still no idea about where they had taken my husband.

I got home at lunchtime in a foul mood. One of Hamid's elderly relatives had recently died, and my sister-in-law and I were expected to attend the funeral to pay our condolences. I really didn't want to go, but family duty and honour dictated that I must. I don't remember much of the afternoon. My mind was overwhelmed with worry about Hamid. As I sat quietly on a carpet, lost in my own thoughts, an elderly man approached me. News of Hamid's arrest had spread quickly, even though it had been only a couple of days since his detention. The old man's dark eyes conveyed sympathy, and his long grey beard danced as he whispered to me that he had news of Hamid's whereabouts. According to one of his relatives—the old man didn't explain who, or how this person came to the information—my husband was being held by Intelligence Service Number 3. This was the most dangerous of all the intelligence wings. Their job was to root out dissenting political voices and make them go away. I was terrified for Hamid, but at least I knew now where he was.

Every day for a week, I went to the intelligence office and every day I was turned away by sneering guards. On the seventh day, I was allowed inside to see my husband. His naturally slim frame was gaunt and hunched. He had been repeatedly beaten and was in too much pain to stand up straight. His dark features were silhouetted against his unnaturally white skin, his eyes sunken and his cheekbones protruding.

We sat at a rough wooden table and whispered to each other. I tried to hug him, but a Taliban prison is no place for affection, even between a husband and wife. He told me they had forced him to stand outside all night in the snow, while by day he endured endless interrogations and beatings. They asked him, “Why did you go and see Rabbani? What was the purpose of the meeting? What is your connection with Rabbani?”

President Rabbani was guarded by Pakistani security agents from the ISI, the Inter-Services Intelligence. It had long been suspected that many of the agents had sympathies with the Taliban, and here was proof. The Pakistani agents had clearly been feeding the Taliban the names of Rabbani's visitors, including Hamid, and presumably my brother as well.

As I was leaving the prison, a senior Talib came to me and asked, “How much is your husband's release worth? $2,500? $5,000?”

They obviously knew by now that Hamid was not political. They could beat him all day and all night and he wouldn't tell them anything. He couldn't because he didn't know anything. But his detention still created an opportunity for them to profit. I would have given them all I had but I didn't have any money. We weren't that rich, not cash rich anyway. And even if we could arrange financing from Pakistan via my brother, the Taliban had effectively ruined the banking system, so transferring money or borrowing large amounts of cash was now impossible. I just could not pay it. Something I will forever feel guilty about.

Hamid was now getting very sick from all the abuse he was suffering. He was half starved and frozen to death. A cold entered his lungs and became more and more serious. The lethal combination of his failing immunity, close proximity to many very sick prisoners and lack of a place to wash led to him contracting tuberculosis.

I prepared a letter pleading for his release and planned to give it to the executive board of the intelligence service. In it, I talked of Hamid's innocence and the fact that he now carried a communicable disease that threatened the health of the other prisoners. I delivered it myself to the office of a career bureaucrat. He wasn't a Talib but rather an ordinary, bespectacled man seemingly a little bemused and baffled by his latest masters. Given his age, I imagine he had served the Russians, the Mujahideen and now the Taliban. Different bosses for the different ages of Afghanistan.

He took the letter from me, and I burst out with the story of Hamid, his illness and our recent marriage. I wanted to gain his sympathy so that he might present the letter to the board with greater urgency. He peered through his glasses as I stood on the other side of the partition in my burka. Then he looked down at the letter and said, “Sister, who wrote this letter for you?”

“I did,” I replied. “I am a medical student and just want to get my sick husband out of prison.”

“Your husband is lucky,” he said. “He has a wife who cares for him and is educated. But sister, what if they put me in prison? Who will take care of me? My wife is not educated; who would write the letters for me?”

He let out a long, dramatic sigh and put the letter underneath a pile of other letters, doubtless written by other desperate relatives. “Go now, sister, I cannot promise. But I will do my best to take your letters to the executive.”

With tears stinging my eyes, I left his office. Hamid's life and liberty was just another letter underneath a hundred others. I knew it had little chance of being delivered by the bespectacled bureaucrat.

I walked home in the snow. As I climbed up the stairs to our apartment, I felt that my home without my husband was as empty as my stomach. As I entered the apartment, Hamid's sister Khadija ran to greet me, asking if I had any news about his release. I had no answer for her. I went straight to my bedroom and lay down trying to hold back the tears. I dozed off to sleep. Hours later, the sound of a mullah calling
iftar
(the evening meal that breaks the fast) woke me up. I lay back and listened: Hai Alal falah,
Hai Alal falah!

Feeling hungry, I got up and went to the other room, expecting to see Khadija and her children about to eat. But she was feeling as low as me and she had also slept the day away. No one had prepared any food. I felt a pang of guilt. This was Hamid's home, and I was his wife. In his absence, it fell to me to keep the home running and look after his family. After all, it was the fault of my family that he was in prison at all. I went out to buy some rice and a little meat and came back to cook it. Khadija came into the kitchen fussing over me, telling me I was pregnant and should rest. She took the knife from my hand and took over the job of cutting the onions. We continued to cook together in companionable silence. It was a cold winter night in Kabul, snow was falling thickly and the city was silent with both fear and boredom.

I turned to Khadija with tears in my eyes. “I'm so sorry, jan [dear]. I feel all I have done is bring trouble to your family. I wish poor Hamid had never wanted to marry me. I have brought all this pain on him.”

She put down the knife, wiped away an onion tear and took my hand. “Well, Fawzia, he is a strong man. And prison will only make his character stronger. You should not be sorry, you should be proud of him. He is a political prisoner, not a criminal.”

This was the first time we had discussed the reasons why Hamid was in jail, and I was amazed she could be so calm and balanced about the situation. She had every right to be resentful of me and my family. Khadija has always been a woman I admire; she was strong, intelligent and reasonable. I was so touched by her tone, I couldn't reply because the tears choked my throat. I carried on stirring the rice pot and tried to convey my thanks with a silent look.

She hugged me and then ordered me into the dining room to find a date or a piece of fruit to break my fast with, telling me I needed to put my baby's health first.

I went and sat alone in the dining room, memories of my childhood starting to flicker across my mind. Long forgotten and half hidden until now, they came to the surface because of my melancholy mood. I recalled
iftar
at the
hooli
back in the days when my father was alive. A traditional napkin, like a large tablecloth but for the floor, would be laid out in the centre of the room.

Local village women made the napkin by hand with delicately woven threads. It had the most beautiful vibrant colours, stripes of red and orange created by natural dyes made from mountain plants and flowers. Mattresses and cushions would be placed around the edge of the napkin, and everyone would sit cross-legged on them to eat.

The napkin would be piled high with nutritious and delicious fast-breaking foods such as
bolani
(a tasty flatbread filled with vegetables),
manto
(parcels of steamed mincemeat with onions and yogurt) and
qabuli pilau
(rice mixed with raisins, lentils and carrots). My elder sisters would all rush to prepare the meal, usually finishing minutes before the fast ended and the hungry hordes of family members descended.

All the family would sit together, apart from my father who was either away or sitting with his guests: all the wives and their children, my half brothers and sisters. We would sit and eat, talk and laugh. I was only a very small girl then, but I used to love those moments. It was a time when everyone relaxed and shared stories of the day. My heart ached to think of those pre-war days when we were a whole family untouched by grief and loss. I missed my mother and my brothers and sisters so much. I yearned to be back there again, an innocent village child whose only preoccupation was stealing chocolates or dressing up in a pair of wooden shoes.

My thoughts were broken by Khadija entering the room with a plate of steaming
pilau
. I smiled gratefully at her. Her presence was a reminder that I wasn't alone: Hamid's family was also my family now. Khadija's children ran in to join us, and my heart gladdened as we all tucked in.

Every day, I tried to visit Hamid and on the few occasions I did get to see him he put on a very brave face and pretended he was being well treated. He didn't want me to worry. But I could see the uncontrollable trembling that had developed in his hands and the bruises on his increasingly thin face. I pretended to believe him and tried to be a dutiful wife, knowing that to confront him with the evidence of his abuse would only make life even harder for him to bear. I think that trying to hide his ordeal from his young pregnant wife helped give him the strength to endure it. So we spent those few precious moments together talking about ordinary events of family life, as if he had just come back from a business conference or the bazaar or some other mundane occasion that husbands and wives everywhere take for granted every day. It was easier to pretend that this was just our ordinary life—as if nothing was strange or scary or out of place. Some people will tell you denial is wrong—perhaps it is—but when you are being tossed in the stormy seas of helpless despair, denial can become the tiny raft to which you fervently cling. Sometimes denial is the only thing that keeps you afloat.

I decided to make another attempt to persuade the Badakhshani man who worked at Puli Charkhi jail to help us. After the long and tiring walk to get there, I was relieved when this time he invited me into his office. I told him how Hamid was innocent of any political crime, how he was being tortured and would soon die if he wasn't released. But again it was to no avail. He said there was nothing he could do for us. I started to cry. He let out a long sigh, then reluctantly promised me he would try to talk to the guard in charge of Hamid's section of the prison.