The Favored Daughter (10 page)

THE ASSASSIN HAD EMPTIED his gun at Muqim as he lay sleeping in bed. A Kalashnikov's magazine holds 30 bullets. The gunman held the trigger down until the gun was empty. Then he fled.

My sister-in-law woke to the gunfire. She and my brother Mirshakay were asleep upstairs on the other side of the house. My brother tried to calm his wife, assuring her the firing was probably just someone shooting in the air in celebration of the victory over the Russians or a wedding party. That was when a neighbor started shouting from outside the yard that Muqim had been shot.

He was only 23 when he died. Tall, handsome, and clever, he was one of my favorite brothers. We had grown up playing and fighting and loving and falling out. A kind word from him would make me smile for hours; a harsh word would bring tears to my eyes in an instant.

He, Ennayat (the son of my father's last wife), and I had been playmates our entire lives. Muqim had narrowly survived being murdered as a little boy in the dangerous days following my father's death. He had lived only because a quick-thinking neighbor hid him from the would-be assassins under her skirts. This time there was no one to hide him.

He had been a law student with a black belt in karate, which was very exotic for that time, even in Kabul.

It was such a devastating blow when I learned of his murder. I felt like it was a part of me that had been killed. After my father's death all my brothers had taken on a much greater role in my life. Muqim relished his new patriarchal powers and would order me about, telling me to wash my socks or brush my clothes. I was the adoring little sister and I didn't mind his bossiness. I just wanted his approval and attention.

Normally he encouraged my education, and he would tell me “Fawzia, I want you to become a doctor.” That would always make me feel very special, knowing that he believed in me so much. But sometimes if he was upset and frustrated, he would forbid me from going to school the next day, wagging his finger at me sternly and stating: “You are not allowed to go to school. Tomorrow you stay at home. You are a girl. For girls home is enough.”

So even though we loved each other dearly, he could still be very traditional in his outlook, although it seemed to be his way of dealing with stress. He was a bit like my father in that way. Usually the day after he'd banned me from going to school he would come home with a gift—perhaps a new schoolbag or pencil case. Then he would ask me to go back to school and remind me of how smart he thought I was and what great things I was going to do. He was different from my other brothers—if one of them said I couldn't go to school, they really meant it. But with Muqim I knew it was just talk and it would pass.

From the clothes he wore to the food he ate, Muqim was always very specific about what he wanted in life. So when he told me he was in love with a girl he met at university, I knew he was serious. He was in his first year of law school and she was starting her medical training. When he told me she was very beautiful, I didn't doubt that, either. He used to point to my prettiest doll and say, “She is beautiful like that doll. Except she has blue eyes.”

He had loved her for four years, but in that time he had never been able to tell her how he felt. He used to spend hours hanging around the front of her house, hoping for the merest glimpse of her. Muqim had sent her letters to tell her of his love, but she sent them back unopened. She was a very traditional girl, and a traditional girl doesn't open letters from unsanctioned suitors. But he was hoping to change his status and get the approval of her family. He was looking forward to my mother's return to Kabul because she was going to visit the girl's family and propose the match. If my father had been alive he would have done it, but instead it fell to my mother in her role as matriarch. But he was killed before he could make the proper approaches. Some people have asked me if the girl's family had arranged his murder. I do not believe this was the case.

Coming to terms with the death of a loved one is always hard. The sense of loss is enormous, and the hole their absence leaves in your life feels like it will never be filled. The ache of knowing you will never see that person again throbs like a bad tooth. Except there's no painkiller you can take to relieve the pain.

The fighting between the mujahideen forces and the government meant the police were unable to mount much of an investigation. Even my elder brother's status as a senior police commander could do little to bring Muqim's killer to justice. The only evidence the killer left was a sandal abandoned by the wall as he fled. But it was the type of sandal worn by men all over Afghanistan and this was long before the days of DNA testing and forensic evidence. Afghanistan was in a state of war, and people die during war. The fact that Muqim's death was murder meant little under the circumstances. Hundreds of people were being murdered every day, women were being raped, and homes were being looted and destroyed. Food and water were scarce. Justice was in even shorter supply.

Mirshakay blamed himself for Muqim's death. Not only had he failed him as a policeman, by not capturing his killers, but he felt personally responsible for his murder. As a police general he had a team of bodyguards. They would travel with him everywhere, and at night their job was to guard the house as he and his family slept inside. But because it was Friday, a day of prayer, observance, and family, and also such a horrible wet night, my brother had felt sorry for his bodyguards and dismissed them early, telling them to go home and be with their families. Muqim got home about 10 p.m., having been to the gym. He was soaked to the skin in the rain and was complaining about an eye infection. My sister-in-law fetched her kohl from her makeup bag. In my home province of Badakhshan women often use a type of kohl eyeliner made from herbs found in the mountains, and one of the benefits of the herbs is that they are very good for treating eye infections. So she put some on his eye, and then he went to bed. That was the last time anyone saw Muqim alive. If the bodyguards had been on duty, there's no way the gunman could have entered the house, and he'd still be alive. Mirshakay's rage ate at him, and he felt it was his fault his brother had been killed.

One of the great questions we ask ourselves in life is “Why?” Why does anything happen? As a Muslim I have my beliefs. I believe them to be true, and they are a large part of me. I believe God alone decides our fate. He chooses when we live and when we die. But even that certainty doesn't make the painful events and losses of my life easier to bear.

With Muqim's death we simply didn't have any answers.

Why would somebody kill such a kind, intelligent, gentle young man as my brother? He was a brilliant young student trying to make a life for himself. He wanted a career and a wife and a family. He wasn't a threat to anybody. But his life was taken away in an instant. In Islam a dying person is supposed to recite the name of Allah three times before passing away. Poor Muqim didn't have time to do that.

And not having time to say a proper goodbye was something I was also becoming used to.

 

SEVEN

THE WAR WITHIN

I was glad to be back in Kabul and was eager to resume my old life, or what little of it remained under what was now becoming full-blown civil war.

We were still living in my brother's apartment in Makrorian. (The word
makrorian
roughly translates as “living space.”) The apartments had been built by the Russians using the latest technological advances, such as a communal hot water system serving over ten apartment blocks, each housing up to 50 apartments. Despite being shelled countless times, many of the Makrorian blocks have survived even today, and the hot water system even still works. Today it is still a sought-after neighborhood.

During this time, Kabul was divided into different sectors. The central parts, Khair Khana, Makrorian, and around the King's Palace, were controlled by the mujahideen government, which was then headed by President Burhanuddin Rabbani, a former general from Badakhshan and a man my family knew well—hence my brother's senior position at the Interior Ministry. The famous “lion of the Panjshir,” Ahmed Shah Massoud, was his minister of defense.

The west of Kabul was controlled by a man named Mazary, the leader of an ethnic group called the Hazaras. (Said to be the direct descendants of Genghis Khan, the Hazaras are identifiable by their classic Mongol looks, round faces and large almond-shaped eyes. They are unusual in being Shia Muslims; the majority of Muslim ethnic groups in the country are Sunni.) An area on the outskirts of Kabul, Paghman, was controlled by a man named Sayyaf and his people. Yet another area was controlled by the fearsome Abdul Rashid Dostum, the leader of the ethnic Uzbeks. Just outside the city walls, towards the south, was Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the leader of a group called Hizbi Islami; a second Hizbi Islami leader, Abdul Sabur Farid Kohistani, was the prime minister.

Essentially, despite having a shared government and having been allies when fighting the Russians (during which time they were given the name “Northern Alliance,” as most of them originated from the north of Afghanistan), these commanders were now fighting each other for power. As the civil war grew more brutal, short-term allegiances shifted and changed with the weather.

The fiercest opponent of the mujahideen government was Hekmatyar, who was unhappy with his role in the government and wanted more power and seniority. Every day, his men fired scores of rockets into Kabul from their base in the higher ground at the edge of the city. The rockets exploded in marketplaces, schools, hospitals, and gardens, and scores of people were killed or injured. Sometimes the situation changed overnight. A group that had previously supported the government might suddenly turn against it and start fighting. A few days later, with hundreds of civilians dead, the group might use the national TV station to announce it had all been a misunderstanding and it was now supporting the shared government again. The public had no idea what would happen from one day to the next. Probably our leaders didn't either.

Despite the turmoil happening around me, I insisted on resuming my English lessons. They were too important to me to give up, even though that meant regular journeys through the streets, which was now the battleground for the mujahideen commanders to play out their deadly power struggle.

It should have been a simple, short taxi ride to class, except the journey to my lessons took me through some of the areas of the fiercest fighting. Some neighborhoods and streets had to be avoided entirely, while others had to be crossed whatever the risk. I would take a convoluted route that changed depending on which side held the upper hand. Gathering intelligence from people on the street was as essential to successfully navigating the route as was the driver's ever-present search for the scarce supplies of petrol. Packs of gunmen would roam the streets and the danger of snipers was constant—their choice of target indiscriminate. A crack from a rifle accompanied by the dull thump of the bullet would often send some poor soul toppling to the ground, their desperate search for food, water, or medicine brought to a premature end. Machine gunners set up in the damaged homes around key intersections, their positions carefully chosen to both conceal themselves and give the maximum field of fire—all the better to catch your enemy in the open. They were often little more than the tops of heads among the gloom of their cover, but it was understood that from among the rubble they were peering over their steel gun sights for any sign of movement. Vehicles often drew the deadliest attention, but they were still the fastest and safest way to travel. On more than one occasion my car was targeted by rocket artillery. Some roads were pre-targeted by the artillery commanders. When their spotters signaled an approaching car, all they needed to do was open fire and chances were the car, or truck, or possibly even a tank would be blown off the road. I remember once the rockets came rushing down toward me. But over our heads, the boughs of trees struck upward like fingers waiting to catch the projectiles. The rockets hit the branches and exploded, filling the street with shrapnel and shards of splintered wood as we sped along the road and out of range. If it were not for the trees, the rockets would have ripped the flimsy car apart, and both me and the driver with it.

Few taxi drivers would risk going out in the fighting for the meager price of a fare. Those who were brave enough to do so were motivated by the threat of starvation. No fares meant no food, for them or their families, and that would spell a death even more certain than the bullets that hummed through the air. Often it was impossible to find a taxi to take me to class.

So on those days I would have to walk, darting from cover to cover, avoiding the areas where I knew the gunmen were and praying I didn't unknowingly stumble into others. And after class I would have to walk back, too, sneaking along alone in the dark. Sometimes it took me as long as two hours. It was very dangerous for anybody to be on the streets at night, but especially a young girl by herself. Aside from bullets, I ran the risk of being raped. When night fell the shooting became more unpredictable. Nervous in the dark, the gunmen's fingers would curl a little tighter around their triggers, and even a loud footstep or the tumble of rubble could attract a burst of bullets.