The Favored Daughter (31 page)

The family was split and the debate raged for a few weeks. It was almost like an internal election within the family. But to my surprise by the end of it most relatives supported me and Nadir was persuaded not to stand. The family decision was that only one person could stand for election; to have two siblings standing against each other would have created too much disharmony between us all.

I wanted it to be official so I asked all my brothers to sign a document affirming that I was the sole Koofi family political representative. I wished my mother had been there to see it. I suspect even she wouldn't have believed it was happening. In my childhood my father didn't even speak directly to his daughters and no one bothered to celebrate the girls' birthdays, that's how far down the scale we girls were. But here we were, only a generation later, electing a woman as the political leader of the clan.

I don't think my family is alone in accepting change this rapidly. I truly believe change in gender attitudes cannot be forced on a country by outside forces, however well meaning those forces are. Change can only come from within and it begins with individual families. I am living proof of this.

Several of my brothers and half-brothers didn't believe I stood a chance of winning. My father had married all but one of his wives for their political usefulness. In doing so he had created a local empire of allies, networks, and connections. But my brothers thought these old networks had been too badly destroyed during the war and Taliban years, and that no one would remember the Koofis anymore. But I had traveled to the villages in my work with the UN and knew that wasn't true. Many people I had met remembered my father and the respect for our family was most definitely still there.

Furthermore I was confident in my own networks. In the four years I had spent living in Faizabad with Hamid, I had volunteered for women's groups, taught over 400 students English, visited internally displaced peoples' camps, and set up sanitation and school projects. People knew me there. My friends were civil society leaders, teachers, doctors, and human rights activists. This was the new Afghanistan I was part of and felt I could represent. I was still only 29 but I had also lived through Soviet occupation, civil war, and the Taliban.

And for me the issue was much wider than only gender and women's issues. Men suffer just as much as women from poverty and illiteracy. I wanted to promote social justice for all, tackle poverty and the root causes of poverty, and in doing so move Afghanistan out of the Dark Ages and into its rightful role in the world. It didn't matter if those prepared to join me in that struggle were male or female. I am the child of my mother, the epitome of the suffering and endurance of so many Afghan women. But I am also the child of my father, the very model of a committed and dedicated politician. Both of my parents have been major influences on my life. And it is both of them who led me to this great calling.

I went to Badakhshan to start campaigning. Within a couple of days the news had spread that I was to run. I set up an office in the center of Faizabad and I was thrilled when I began receiving phone calls from hundreds of young people, both boys and girls, volunteering to campaign for me. The youth wanted change and they saw me as the candidate to bring it. My office was buzzing with vitality and optimism.

The days of campaigning were grueling. We didn't have much time, and had very limited funds and a massive geographical area to cover. My days began at 5:00 a.m., and more often than not I faced a five or six-hour journey across dirt roads to reach a remote village or town before nightfall. Then back again to Faizabad the following day and a different town the day after.

I was exhausted but determined. And I was elated by the reception I received. In one village women came out to greet me, singing and playing a
daira,
a small drum-type instrument made of goat skin. They sang and clapped and threw flowers and sweets at me. I already knew for sure I would win the women's vote because I spoke a lot about the issues that mattered to them—maternal mortality, lack of access to education, child health. In some areas of Badakhshan women work just as hard as men and are out in the fields from dawn to dusk. Yet they still don't have the right to own property. If their husband dies then the property is often passed to another male relative instead of to the wife. To me that's wrong.

And I understood these women and admired them. My life was radically different from theirs. I dressed in the latest fashions and used a computer; they came to greet me with filthy hands and had never read a book. But I had grown up in the same way as them. My mother's life was just like theirs. I understood their daily struggles and respected them without patronizing them. I know many people in the West will consider these women to be nameless, faceless victims, but I don't see it like that. They are proud, strong, intelligent, and resourceful females.

Convincing male voters, especially the older ones, was harder. In another village I was supposed to give a speech in a mosque, which was the largest building in the place and the only reasonable location. But the speech almost didn't happen because some of the elders didn't want me to go inside the mosque. I had to sit in the car while the local men and male members of my campaign team debated it. When they finally decreed I could go inside I was so nervous I forgot to say “In the name of Allah” when I started my speech, a very silly mistake on my part. I expected a hostile response after that. But as I talked I saw some of the old men at the back were crying. They were wrinkled gray-haired men in turbans and traditional long striped coats, and they had tears streaming down their cheeks. After I had finished they told me that they had known my father and that hearing me speak had been a reminder of the passion and sincerity he also used to put in his speeches. Hearing them say that made me cry, too.

I didn't wear the burqa when I was out campaigning because I needed to look people in the eye and communicate with them. But I did make sure to wear respectful and extremely modest local clothes, a long baggy dress over loose trousers. The same type of dress one of our neighbors had once used to hide my six-year-old brother from his would-be assassins.

As the campaign rolled on, so did my levels of support. In one extremely remote district called Jurm, I was thrilled to arrive and find a convoy of over 70 cars waiting for us. Both elders and young men sat waving Afghan flags and my campaign posters. This wasn't an area I knew particularly well and one that my father hadn't represented either. But they supported me because they really cared about the elections. They were interested in the democratic process and wanted to make their voice heard by selecting their own local leader. It is often said by critics of the United States that America has forced democracy on an unwilling Afghanistan and that it is pointless to have democratic processes in such a feudal country. I strongly disagree with that criticism. The United States has supported democracy in Afghanistan but has not forced it upon us. Afghanistan has had democratic traditions for centuries, whether that is selecting
arbabs
(local leaders) or the tradition of elders voting on local issues at
loya jirgas
(local councils). Voting for national government is only a step further on from that. And I had no doubt that the people I met, even the illiterate and poor, wanted this chance to vote for change. Who in the world would not want to vote if it was safe to do so and they were given the opportunity?

As I drove around the province it was a strange feeling seeing my poster and picture staring down at me. It adorned cars, shop windows, and houses. I began to feel a sense of rising panic. What if I let these people down? What if I couldn't justify their belief in me? What if I couldn't deliver the services they badly wanted?

At night I would be wracked with self-doubt. I was afraid that I would win this time, but then lose all trust by the next elections. The thought of losing the trust of these nice old men with the honest faces or the women who grabbed me with calloused hands and told me my struggle was their struggle tormented me.

People liked me but only because they needed someone to help them.

But realistic delivery is one thing. Convincing people I wasn't able to make them rich or wave a magic wand was another. One woman asked me if I could make sure she was given a free house in Kabul. She really believed I could do that for her. But I had to explain that that is not an MP's job, at least not an MP who doesn't believe in corruption.

As the campaign wore on I got more and more excited. Dawn broke at 4:00 a.m. and with it my day began. Most days I didn't get to bed until after midnight. I got as many as 200 calls a day from people wanting to ask me questions or offering to volunteer. The whole thing just took on a momentum of its own.

I remember one man who rang me and told me none of the women in his family, his wife or his mother, had voting cards because he had not given them permission to vote. But that these women had all been urging him to use his own vote to vote for me. He had no idea who I was or what I represented so he called me up to ask. He was so traditional, a man who would not let his wife vote but who did respect her view enough to bother to find out about the candidate she liked. He reminded me a little of my father. At the end of the conversation he promised me his vote. I hope in later years he let his wife vote, too.

Some of the calls were hostile. I had several men, complete strangers, call me and tell me I was a whore for running for office. Some simply screamed down the phone at me, telling me to go back home and leave politics to the men. Others told me I was a bad Muslim and should be punished. I tried not to let these types of calls upset me, but of course they always do.

In one town we visited the house of some of my mother's sisters. As a child I used to love visiting these relatives because I remembered the women as super glamorous, particularly one aunt who always wore makeup. Their house then had been noisy and warm, and I remember being smothered in hugs and kisses and the scent of perfume. Now the house was silent. Only two old ladies survived and living with them were several children. The children were assorted relatives who had been orphaned. It was so sad, a house of widows and sad-eyed children. One boy, about nine years old, stood out to me. He had lovely deep brown eyes that reminded me of my brother Muqim, the brother who had been murdered. I asked who he was and learned he was the grandson of my mother's favorite brother. That was the brother who had once galloped his horse back to our house after learning of my father's beatings and offered to take her away if she wanted to leave. He and his children had all been killed in the war, leaving only this little boy named Najibullah. I couldn't leave him there in that house of sadness, so I offered to take him home with me. Today he's a lively teenager and he lives with Shaharzad, Shuhra, and me in our house in Kabul. He goes to school and is excelling at his studies. He's wonderful with the girls and is a great help to me in the house.

Thirty-six hours before the election I still had two districts to visit, both of them a five-hour drive away in opposite directions. The rules dictated that all campaigning must cease 24 hours before voting began. I don't how we managed it but we made it to both districts. In one of them I was touched to find that my local campaign had been led by my Uncle Riza, the father of Shannaz, my father's seventh and last wife (and my half-brother Ennayat's mother). All these years later and here he was supporting me and helping me. He was a very old man but he was still sprightly and insisted on walking everywhere with us. We ate dinner and spent the night at his house. It was another reminder of how powerful and strong the tendrils of the extended family system can be. The poor man had lost most of his children, including Shannaz, in the war.

But the district I had been both dreading and longing to visit the most was my ancestral home of Koof. I hadn't been there since I was four years old. That was the day my mother grabbed me and my siblings and we ran for our lives along the riverbank while being chased by gunmen. Going back had dredged up all those old feelings of fear and loss. As our car bumped along the precipitous tracks and over the plain where my father had been murdered by the mujahideen I felt an ocean of pain wash over me. This was where my family began and where it had been destroyed.

I could barely breathe by the time we reached the village. As we drove through the main track that wove its way through the houses, the same track my father had ridden down in procession each time he took a new wife, the reality of the war was all too devastatingly clear.

The spring where we had played as children was now almost dry. The once fresh clear water that had gushed and gurgled was now just a trickle of brown. My mother's gardens and orchards, which had been her pride and joy, were dust. In her day the gardens had shone with seasonal color—greens in the spring, pink berries and blossoms in summer, fat red and orange pumpkins and peppers in the autumn, and brown nuts and purple vegetables in the winter. Now there was nothing, just the branches of a few dead trees poking into the sky like twisted skeletons.

The hooli—our house—was still standing, but only just. The whole west wing including the guest house had been destroyed. The huge pear tree that stood in the center of the yard was just a stump. It had taken a direct hit from a rocket during the war. This tree had witnessed so much. It was where I hid from my mother when I'd been naughty, where my father had hidden his weapons and where my sister and sister-in-law had been whipped with rifle butts by mujahideen for trying to steal my father's guns.

My father's suite of rooms, the Paris Suite, was still there. The gaily painted murals on the wall were still visible. This was the room where my mother and father laid together as man and wife, where I had been conceived, where my mother had washed my father's dead body, with half his skull missing, to prepare him for his funeral. I touched the cold plastered walls with my hands, tracing what I could of the patterns. Those murals had been my father's pride and joy. In his eyes they were just like the ones from the palaces of Versailles, only better.