A life of joy and work |
Listen to this essay
Recently, I visited a part of my neighbourhood where there’s a park. The green space was hived off by concrete walls, iron railings and barbed wire. From inside came the sound of laughter and the happy voices of men and boys. Outside, I saw women of all ages walking on the dusty road, banned from entering the park. I spotted some school-age girls carrying books and pens, talking together and walking the same path I once walked. Something about their seriousness threw me back to my own youth. I was fortunate enough to attend school, study in the faculty of my choice and eventually build a career in a field that I loved – despite my path being filled with challenges. But I felt such sorrow for these girls, unable to pursue higher education or the jobs that they’d be passionate about. Afghanistan is facing a dark time, identical to the one I faced at the beginning of my own career. Once more, Afghan women and girls are being forced to pay the price of their freedom for the country’s uncertain future. I know exactly how they must feel. I faced the same struggle more than 30 years ago.
June 1992. Until that moment, I would not have left my job if it cost me my life. Despite the constant bombings and the daily hailstorm of bullets and rockets, I always showed up at work. But I had little choice. It started like this: it was the early days of the mujahideen government. I was preparing to record a show at the studios of the National Radio and Television of Afghanistan (RTA), papers spread in my hands, when the new head of television, who had links to the mujahideen, walked in, saw me, and quickly looked away, muttering under his breath in disgust. He had a quiet word with the producer before leaving the studio. When I asked why the TV director had reacted that way, the producer told me that the director opposed women working and that, by refusing to look at me, he’d shielded himself from sin.
That day I carried a strange feeling home. How could I continue to work with people who looked upon women with such loathing? There’s a Persian proverb: The pride of the poor is the death of the poor. Although I desperately needed my job, I was so furious I could think of nothing except resigning. I had no idea who I would become without work and the freedom it gave me, a freedom I wanted all women to enjoy. But it hardly mattered, since very soon after I quit, most of the female employees at the television station were fired. I would never have imagined then that, 30 years later, the situation for women in Afghanistan would be far worse. Now, as I approach the end of my working life, amid the most extreme and far-reaching oppression of women I have yet witnessed in this country, I am overwhelmed by a sense of déjà vu, as if the past is doomed to repeat itself.
Back in 1992, the mujahideen also announced that women were not allowed to leave their homes without wearing headscarves and completely covering their bodies. Until then, many educated and working women dressed in European clothing – skirts, blazers, stockings, blouses, and trousers. Now they had to cover themselves from head to toe. The regime also opposed women working or, indeed, undertaking any kind of activity outside of the house. Many of my colleagues left their jobs and fled to other countries in search of a peaceful life. They wanted to keep their freedom and continue to work. But I lacked money to leave.
As well as my job in television, I lost my other work to the civil war and was left entirely without an income. I laboured under the crushing burden of poverty for two years, barely sensible of the changes it wrought on me. Until one day, as I was walking down the street covered up in a black dress and large shawl, I ran into a former colleague who greeted me with a hug and kissed my cheek. But when she put her hand on my arm, she suddenly screamed.
‘How skinny you’ve become! You’re nothing but a skeleton! Thank goodness you’re wearing these clothes; they’ve covered up how thin you’ve become.’
The war stole away our security, our peace of mind and our jobs, and it destroyed much of the city’s infrastructure, affecting water and electricity supplies. From where I lived with my family in an apartment in Kabul, we had to walk a long distance every day to get water. Eventually, together with our neighbours, we decided to build a well in front of our building. We collected money from each household to pay for the drilling and solve a critical problem. And our small community achieved it ourselves: the government did nothing to help. I was reminded of a quote I’d once read, attributed to the American author Zig Ziglar: ‘You don’t have to be great to start, but you have to start to be great.’
I was not just teaching but trying to instil the spirit of hope in my students
A decade earlier, not long after the Soviet invasion of 1979, I’d graduated with top grades from the Faculty of Languages and Literature and completed an intensive teacher-training course. When I secured my first government job as a primary school teacher, I was thrilled to serve my people and draw a monthly salary that would alleviate some of my family’s financial difficulties; at the time, my son was just a year old. The boys’ school was in the heart of Kabul, on the side of the road leading to the city’s airport. A single-storey building, it had a large outdoor area surrounded by classrooms. Most of the teachers there were women. I taught literature; both poetry and prose. A few days into the job, a student called me over and, pointing to his desk partner, said: ‘Teacher, Gul Afghan is not studying.’ Gul Afghan, a fourth-grader, had his hands tucked under the table. His desk partner pulled them out, saying: ‘Look, he has a picture in his hands. He always looks at it and pays no attention to the lesson.’ The photograph showed a young man in an officer’s uniform, Gul Afghan’s father, a pilot who’d lost his life when his plane was shot down by an insurgent rocket. At that moment, a helicopter flew over the school, releasing flares. Gul Afghan looked up mournfully. ‘If my father hadn’t run out of flares,’ he said, ‘the enemy wouldn’t have been able to shoot down his plane.’ I felt so sorry for him and gently stroked his head.
I realised that these were not normal students, but children of war: every one of them had a story about its horrors. My job was difficult because I was not just teaching but trying to instil the spirit of hope in my students, even as I sometimes struggled to hold on to my own. The intensity of the war, the killing, and the destruction of homes by Soviet bombs and mujahideen rockets made survival itself uncertain. On my way to school, I’d see Soviet tanks driving along the streets and passing by the school. I worried about my students crossing that street, fearing a tank would run them over. There had been several such incidents in Kabul. I would hold the hands of several students at a time and walk them to the other side of the road.
The Russian soldiers wore steel helmets and strange gloves made from thick wool. They had fair skin and their cheeks would turn red in the summer heat and the winter cold. Each had a Kalashnikov slung over his shoulder and a belt of bullets around his chest and waist. The soldiers didn’t talk to anyone. Sometimes, my boys would hurl a small stone at them from a distance because their families had told them the Soviets were invaders.
It was a brutal and merciless war.........