The Favored Daughter (30 page)

It was a hard time, but I learned so much, not least about my own ability to lead and to implement. As I gained the trust of both local people and my international colleagues, more trust and responsibility came my way. I knew I really had found my calling.

In the weeks and months that followed Afghanistan was a country transformed. The air of optimism in Kabul was so potent it was almost as if you could put out your tongue and taste it.

Overnight hundreds of refugees started returning home. Those who had fled Afghanistan at various points during the last few years, be that during the Soviet era, the civil war, or Taliban rule, felt safe enough to return. Afghan investors who had made money overseas came home and started planning new businesses, hotels, banks, even golf courses and ski resorts.

The country was still on its knees economically, of course, and most people were living in truly abject poverty. In all the major cities basic power supplies like electricity had been destroyed and few people still had access to clean water. Many people returning found their homes had been destroyed or taken over by other people. Unemployment was rampant and food shortages massive as the country struggled to return to a semblance of normalcy. It was chaos but it was a chaos that for the first time in a long time was forward looking.

The UN office expanded massively. Funds were coming in thick and fast from all over the world, and the race was on to distribute them where they were needed most.

I needed to spend time with Hamid so I took a month's leave and came to Kabul.

I tried to re-admit myself to Kabul University so I could continue the medical studies I had been forced to abandon when the Taliban banned women from higher education. But I was told too much time had passed for me to pick up where I left off. But in reality I think I was denied the chance because I made the mistake of taking Shuhra with me to the interview. The admission officer made it clear to me he did not approve of mothers going out to work. I was upset they wouldn't admit me, but I had bigger concerns. Hamid was coughing up blood almost every hour.

I took him to Pakistan again, to the same doctor who had prescribed the $500-a-month medicine. The doctor gave us the devastating news that because Hamid hadn't been taking the medication continuously his tuberculosis had developed a resistance to it. The condition was now so serious that doctor said he could do nothing. He advised we try a hospital in Iran that was experimenting with a new technique. I gave Hamid the money and he went alone. I returned to Faizabad. Hamid stayed in the Iranian hospital for four months. Our contact was limited to a few phone calls, but he sounded upbeat and said he was feeling better.

Back in Faizabad things were changing at the government level. A democratic constitution had been debated and agreed upon at a national
loya jirga
(tribal council). For women the future was looking brighter than it had in years. Hamid Karzai had been declared interim president of the country until formal elections could be held.

Human rights activists who had been persecuted under the Taliban were now working openly to create civil society and women's movements. But of course Badakhshan was no longer the seat of government, and the central power base had moved back to Kabul. Suddenly I felt isolated and provincial. I wanted to be part of the action. So I applied for and got a job as a UNICEF women and children protection officer based in the capital. Fortunately UNICEF provided at-work daycare so I was able to take the girls with me. It was busy work and I thrived on it. I became deputy chairperson of the staff association and was expected to travel the country overseeing projects. I recall one trip to Kandahar, a city that had been the spiritual heartland of the Taliban. When I arrived, the community leaders I was working with barely spoke to me. These were conservative men who had been Taliban supporters. In a few short months they'd gone from Taliban rule to the indignity of a woman turning up and telling them what to do. Gradually I won them over and after a few days we were all cooperating as if we'd always worked together. Even today I stay in touch with some of them and they visit me when they come to Kabul. I truly believe that people change their opinions only from first-hand experience. And opinions on gender can and do change, even among the most conservative men.

Hamid came back from Iran and initially I was thrilled by how much he seemed to have improved. But within a few weeks he was back to square one: He couldn't walk more than a few yards without coughing up thick globules of blood again. It was heartbreaking to see. The disease is transmittable and whenever he started to cough he would put his handkerchief over his mouth and order the girls to leave the room. He was terrified they might catch it. We were living back in our old apartment, on the fifth floor of the Makrorian buildings. He was essentially housebound because walking up and down the stairs was too difficult for him. We had long since ceased being able to have any physical intimacy, but he was still a good husband as much as his health allowed him to be. The illness had not destroyed his mind and he had great problem-solving capacities. Whenever I had a bad day at work or couldn't figure out how we were going to implement a new project he would always be on hand with advice or a sympathetic ear. Even now he was my rock.

After a few weeks he needed a check-up so we flew to Aga Khan University Hospital in Karachi, one of Pakistan's most modern hospitals. He was too weak to walk and I had to push him through the ward in a wheelchair. He was so thin and gray by now that one of the nurses assumed he was my father.

We stayed overnight in the hospital. I slept by his side just as I had done with my mother in the days before she died. The following morning the doctor gave us the news. It was too late. His lungs were now like leathery shoe soles, not essential organs. His medicine was so strong the side effects made his whole body sick and he felt very nauseous. He said he wanted to stop taking it. It was summer 2003 and the sun seemed to perk him up. Now that the medicine wasn't killing his appetite by making him vomit, his hunger returned. He started to eat proper meals again and the color returned to his cheeks. I had a week's leave from UNICEF and wanted to spend every moment of it with him. It was Wednesday and I had decided to prepare a chicken broth for him. He hadn't slept well the night before and was tired. I was trying to force him to eat the soup but he barely had strength to lift the spoon. That evening both my sister and his sister, my sister-in-law, came to visit.

He was chatting with them and as I watched I noticed how very handsome and fresh faced he looked. It was as if the illness had lifted from his face, and suddenly he was the old Hamid again. I joked with him: “Hamid my love, you are kidding me aren't you? I think you are teasing me, you are not sick. How can you look this good?”

He laughed too, but when he did so his breath caught and he started gasping for air.

We carried him to his room, and I had to turn my head away so he didn't see me cry. It was late and I lay down in the other room with the women for a while, but I couldn't settle. I went into Hamid's room and lay down next to him. I took his hand and we both started to cry. I was thinking back to the first week of our marriage when we were so happy, when we were planning our future together. We hadn't asked for much yet all we had been given was sadness and sickness.

The girls came in to the room. They'd dressed up like little Kuchi (gypsy) girls and started to sing a song for their father. It was their childish attempt to cheer us all up. It was beautiful and it was heartbreaking. They twirled and spun veils over their heads, singing: “I'm a little Kuchi girl, look at me dance.” After they sang they asked Hamid to kiss them, but he refused because he was scared of the risk of transmission. He wanted so much to kiss his little girls goodbye but he couldn't. I was still trying to force food into him, begging him: “Please have this mulberry, please just try a little more soup. Just swallow one spoonful.”

I was exhausted and started to nod off. My sister came into the room and told me to go rest. I didn't want to leave him but he insisted. He was still joking with me: “Fawzia, your other supervisor will look after me. She will make sure I keep eating my food and my fruit and keep breathing. Go rest for a little while please.”

I went and lay down with the girls on their bed, holding them tight, wondering how these little creatures would live without the love of their father. About an hour later I heard a scream. I will never forget it. It was my sister screaming his name. I ran into the room just in time to see him take his last breaths.

I shouted in terror: “Hamid, no. Please don't go yet.” When he heard me he opened his eyes to look at me. Just for a second our eyes met: Mine were full of fear, his were calm and resigned. Then he closed them again and he was gone.

 

EIGHTEEN

A NEW PURPOSE

Hamid died in 2003. My life felt empty, bereft, all love and laughter stolen from it. For two years I worked like an automaton in my UN role, but mentally I was lost. Aside from looking after my daughters, I felt purposeless. I didn't socialize. Weddings, parties, picnics—none of the things I used to love interested me anymore. My days followed the same routine: wake up, go to work, take the girls home for dinner, play with them, bathe them, put them to bed and then get back onto the computer and work until midnight.

I lived for my daughters, but as much as I loved them I needed more from life. I needed a sense of being. Remarrying was out of the question. Despite my family gently suggesting it to me, I had no desire to do it. Hamid was, and remains to this day, the only man I have ever wanted to marry. To remarry would be to betray his memory. I still feel this as strongly now as I felt it in the weeks after he died.

But politics became a husband of a different kind. Politics was in my blood and I believe it was my destiny. God wanted me to live for a purpose and what greater purpose can there be but to improve the lot of the poor and bring pride to a nation torn apart by war?

In 2004 Afghanistan held its first ever democratic elections. Back in the 1970s when my father was an MP, King Zahir Shah had promised to bring more democracy and there had been similar elections for local MPs, but that process was derailed by the Russian invasion and then the war. Now, 30 years later, it was happening and the country was elated.

Hamid Karzai had been interim president since the fall of the Taliban in 2001. He was still a popular figure and was elected in a resounding landslide victory. There had been fears that this election day would be marred by violence but it passed relatively peacefully.

It was a chilly autumn day with a thick fog swirling through the streets. Hundreds of thousands of people came out to vote. In some polling stations a sea of women in blue burqas lined up to vote beginning at four o'clock in the morning. It was an extraordinary moment for Afghanistan and despite my grief the significance of it was not lost on me. I think that was the first day I allowed myself to feel emotion since Hamid died.

President Karzai had initially promised women's rights, civil society, all the things I believed in. After his first victory his attitude changed and he has become much more focused on appeasing the hardliners, but back then he was like a breath of fresh air. Sadly the landslide victory he secured in 2005 was not repeated in 2009. He won that election, too, but amid allegations of widespread fraud. It was another reminder that in my country everything can change for the worst in four short years.

In 2005 it was announced that parliamentary elections would be held in order to select the members of parliament who would each represent the different districts and provinces of Afghanistan.

My family decided the Koofis should reaffirm their political history and be part of this new generation. One of us had to stand.

There were a lot of inside negotiations within the family about who should run.

My brother Nadir Shah, the son of Dawlat bibi, one of the two wives my father had divorced, also wanted to stand.

Nadir had been a respected mujahideen commander and was already a district leader in Badakhshan, so understandably he believed he was the person best placed to represent the family.

I disagreed. But I didn't know if any of my other brothers would even consider my case. I called my brother Mirshakay. As a child Mirshakay had been one of my father's favorite sons. My father used to lift him up on his horse with him and allow him to sit at the front of the saddle. He used to look down at me from the horse with a snooty, proud expression. I was torn up with jealousy. I so wanted to be allowed to ride my father's horse, too, but a daughter would never have been given that treat. As we grew older Mirshakay became one of my biggest supporters. He had moved to Denmark during the war, but he and I remained close and spoke at least once a week on the phone. He listened quietly as I made my case and told him why I was the best Koofi to be an MP. He hung up the phone, promising me he would talk to the others.