9

Danger in the Night Sky

Loud voices jolted Kamila from her sleep. In a fog she pulled herself upright and found herself sitting on the worn vinyl seat of an old Pakistani-made bus. “We are on the way to Peshawar,” she remembered, now almost fully awake and realizing the bus was no longer moving. Something must be wrong. . . .

It had been nearly four years since another bus ride had taken Kamila, with her new diploma in hand, from Sayed Jamaluddin back to her home in Khair Khana on the day the Taliban arrived. Kamila thought about it often—how much had happened since then. She and her sisters had lived through so much, and she was no longer a nervous teenager preparing to teach school. Now she was an entrepreneur and a community leader with the Women’s Community Forum program, and she was on her way to a training session in Peshawar hosted by her international bosses: Samantha, the unrelenting head of UN Habitat who had battled both her own superiors as well as the Taliban to keep the Community Forums running; and Anne, who headed Habitat’s programs in Kabul. There would be other foreigners there, too, teaching the Community Forum workers such as herself classes in leadership, management, and business skills. It was an extraordinary opportunity to meet and exchange ideas with talented Habitat women who worked all around Afghanistan. Gathering everyone together in Kabul was impossible given the Taliban’s rules, so the women were traveling to Pakistan, where the UN had moved much of its Afghan staff.

Shouts again interrupted Kamila’s thoughts.

Through the window of her chadri, Kamila watched as a young Talib yelled questions at Hafiza, her traveling companion and Habitat colleague. Sitting next to Hafiza was Seema, another Community Forum organizer on their team. The soldier, Kamila assumed, must have boarded the bus at the government checkpoint on the edge of Jalalabad while she was dozing.

“Where are you coming from?” the Talib shouted. “Who is your mahram? Where is he? Show him to me.”

Not only were the women riding to Pakistan without a mahram but they were headed to a meeting hosted by foreigners who worked for the United Nations. Relations between the Taliban and international agencies in Afghanistan had worsened steadily during the past few months, and the Amr bil-Maroof was again warning that Afghan women were not to be employed by foreign aid organizations. If the angry Talib now questioning Seema found out about their jobs, there would be big problems for them all.

Kamila sat quietly, thinking through every possible scenario that might help them escape the trouble they were in. Her years of visiting the shops at Lycée Myriam and Mandawi Bazaar with Rahim had taught her there was usually a way out of such situations if she could find the right words. A few weeks earlier a member of the Vice & Virtue forces bounded into Ali’s store just as Kamila was unwrapping the dresses the shopkeeper had ordered. Thinking fast on her feet she explained to the soldier that she was here visiting Ali, a member of her family. “Thank you very much for checking on us; my relatives and I appreciate all the hard work that you and your brothers are doing to keep our city safe. We have great respect for the Amr bil-Maroof,” Kamila had told the soldier. “I’ve just come to see my cousin here to try to sell a few dresses to support my brothers and sisters at home.” The soldier looked almost persuaded but not quite. “Now surely you have more important work to do to find real lawbreakers and keep this neighborhood free of danger and dishonor for all of us, no?” In the end, that seemed to satisfy him and he left her with a warning to “be careful” to speak only with men in her family and to get back home right away, as quickly as possible. “Women should not be out on the streets.” Ali remained silent and terrified throughout the exchange, and he asked Kamila afterward how she had dared to speak like that to a Talib. Her answer showed how much she had learned during the years of visits to Lycée Myriam with Rahim: “If I didn’t speak to him like a brother,” Kamila replied, “he would have been sure we were guilty of doing something wrong, which we were not. You are like my family and we are only trying to work on our family’s behalf. If I did not explain myself, there could have been problems for you and me and Rahim.” Experiences like this had taught her that many of the men who now worked for the government could be reasoned with as long as one was polite, firm, and respectful.

So far, she now observed, the soldier on the bus was still talking to them, and that was a good sign. If things got quiet, then they were in real danger.

Just then Seema pointed toward a middle-aged man who was sitting a few rows behind her.

“He is our mahram,” she said, leaning her covered head toward a bearded gentleman who had a kindly, open face that suddenly went tense with fear.

The soldier turned his black-rimmed eyes toward the middle-aged man and stepped toward his seat, towering over him.

“Is this true?” he demanded.

Kamila and her colleagues were too frightened to look at each other across the aisle of the bus. School examinations had prevented both Rahim and Seema’s son, their usual mahrams and travel companions, from accompanying them on this trip. Eager to get to their training, the women had decided to go ahead on their own, despite the risks. Rahim had done all he could to help, including purchasing the women’s tickets in his own name, though they all knew this would be of little help if they were caught without a male chaperone. The three colleagues had agreed to say, if they were stopped and questioned, that they were family traveling to Peshawar to visit relatives. A few minutes into their journey they had decided on one more precaution and asked their fellow passenger, the man who now sat terrified behind them, to say he was their uncle if the Taliban appeared. This had become standard practice in Kabul, since widows and women without sons or male family members still had to do their shopping, visit their relatives, and take their children to the doctor. The man reassured them with a smile. “No problem, I am here,” he had promised.

Now, however, the danger was real and not just theoretical, and this man wanted nothing to do with them. Staring at the Kalashnikov, he deserted them.

“No, it is not true,” the man said quietly. “I am not their mahram. They are not with me.”

The Talib seethed.

“What kind of women are you?” he shouted at Hafiza and Seema. Then he turned and shouted to the driver, “I am taking these women to prison. Now. Call another bus to take the rest of your passengers to the border.”

Kamila knew she had to step in.

“My brother, with much respect, I must tell you we are meeting our mahram at the border,” Kamila began. “My name is Kamila, and my brother Rahim is our mahram. He was with us, but I have forgotten my luggage at home and he has gone back to get it for me. He will meet us at the border.”

The young soldier was unmoved.

“How can you call yourself a Muslim? What kind of family are you from? This is a disgrace.” The barrel of his AK-47 now hovered just inches from Kamila’s forehead.

Remembering the paper ticket, Kamila pulled it from her bag, hands shaking.

“Look, you see, here is our proof.” She pointed at the slip of paper with Rahim’s name written on it. “This ticket is under my brother’s name for all of us. He is our mahram. He will meet us at the border.”

Hafiza and Seema looked on from their seats, motionless.

“We do not wish to violate the law,” Kamila went on. “It is difficult for my aunties and me; we would not choose to travel without our mahram. We know the rules, and we respect them. But we cannot go to Pakistan without all our bags and the presents we have in them for the children. How can we go to see our family with nothing? My brother will meet us very soon with our luggage.”

The standoff wore on. The soldier asked for her father’s name and her family’s residence. Then he asked once more about her brother. Twenty minutes passed. Kamila imagined being taken to prison, wondering what she would tell her mother and Malika if she were arrested. This is exactly what her older sister had warned her about when they finally reconciled a few months back, and why she had begged her not to accept the Habitat offer in the first place. Kamila thought of her own harsh words from several months earlier.

“If something does happen to me, I promise I will not come to you to get me out of it. It will be my responsibility.”

Now she only hoped her sister would forgive her if she was hauled off to jail here in Jalalabad. Malika was right; it took only a moment for everything to go horribly wrong.

Ignoring her fear and relying on her faith and her experience, she kept on talking, calmly and deferentially. Eventually Kamila realized that she was wearing the soldier down and he was beginning to tire of the situation. He was still angry but she sensed he was growing restless and was ready to move on to more docile offenders.

The Talib peered at her through the rectangular screen of her burqa. His words came out in a deep growl.

“If you didn’t have this ticket I would never allow you to go to Pakistan. Do not travel again without your mahram. Next time it will be prison.”

He turned around and stepped off the minibus, returning to his post at the checkpoint. Kamila tried not to look in his direction as the driver pulled away and returned to the road once more. The driver, she noticed, looked as pale and shaken as she felt.

For the next hour the women sat stunned and silent, drained of words and energy. The adrenaline that had fueled Kamila’s courage was long gone, and she slumped against the window, saying her prayers and thanking Allah for keeping her safe. In a few hours they would be in Peshawar; their training would begin the next day.

When she returned to Kabul, Kamila told her family nothing of what she had encountered on the way to Pakistan. She did not want to worry Malika—or to prove her worst fears right. And she wanted to spare her younger sisters and the students the reminder of what they already knew: the world outside their green gate remained full of danger. Poverty, food shortages, and the merciless drought had drained the life out of everyone in the city, including the Taliban’s own soldiers, who patrolled the barren capital in their shalwar kameez with little to protect them against the freezing winter. They were struggling to survive almost as much as the citizens they ruled. No one, it seemed, had the energy to fight anymore. Even the Kabul Zoo’s lone lion, Marjan, a gift from the Germans in far better times, looked exhausted.

Kamila continued to keep quiet months later when she heard that Wazhma, a friend and Community Forum colleague, had been arrested. It seemed that a neighborhood woman had turned her in to the Amr bil-Maroof for teaching girls in one of the nearby districts; two Taliban had waited for her early in the morning and took her away as soon as she arrived to open the Community Forum school. Though Samantha and Anne, with help from the UN system, were fighting hard to get her out of jail, the Taliban had not yet released her, and rumors of her mistreatment—though unproven—were spreading quickly. Several days into her detention, Wazhma sent word to Kamila through Habitat coworkers who had come to see her in prison that she should stop her work immediately. “Please tell Kamila she should not go to Community Forum anymore,” she had said. “Tell her she is too young and has a long life ahead of her; she should not take such risks. I know the forum work is important, but nothing is worth her life.” Kamila listened to her friend’s warning, but she would not be swayed. She went on working, now even more aware—as if she needed another reminder—of the very real threats she was facing every day. “God will keep me safe,” she told herself. “I trust in my faith.”

And then all at once a new epidemic hit the city. Thankfully it had nothing whatsoever to do with the Taliban: it was Titanic fever.

The epic Hollwood romance had made it to Afghanistan, and like their brethren around the world, young people all over Kabul were swept up in their obsession for the movie. Bootleg VHS tapes of the film were now flying across the city, passed in secret from friend to cousin to neighbor. One acquaintance of Kamila’s hid her copy in the bottom of a soup pot that she transported across the Pakistani border; a classmate of Rahim’s buried his among tunics rolled up in the bottom of suitcases he carried from Iran. The film could now be found in underground video stores across the capital, and though the pirated cassettes had often been dubbed so many times that entire passages were garbled and had to be skipped over, most people didn’t care: they just wanted to hear a few bars of “My Heart Will Go On” and to follow yet again the ill-fated struggle of the star-crossed lovers whose happiness was impossible.

The Taliban’s standard arsenal of weapons proved useless against Titanic. They scrambled to fight the film’s wicked influence, beginning with the “Titanic haircut,” which they outlawed. They dragged boys they found wearing the floppy-in-the-front style to the barbershop for a full buzz cut. When that strategy proved futile the soldiers went after the barbers themselves, arresting nearly two dozen for giving aspiring Jack Dawsons “the Leo look.” Wedding cakes in the form of the famous ocean liner grew popular and were also banned; the Taliban branded them “a violation of Afghanistan’s national and Islamic culture.”

Still, the craze continued unabated. Entrepreneurs rushed to turn the film’s tidal wave of popularity into profit and helped rename the market in the dried bed of the Kabul River, which was now brown and parched from the drought, “Titanic Bazaar.” Businessmen plastered the name and image of Titanic to anything they could find—storefronts, taxis, shoes, hand lotion, even vegetables and lipsticks. Kamila had seen the movie herself with a group of friends at the home of a girl whose father was close with the local Taliban commander. Afterward she commented to Rahim that it seemed there was nothing in Kabul that remained untouched by the saga of Rose and Jack. “Now that,” she said, “is marketing.”

Aside from the Titanic interlude, life continued on much as it had, interrupted occasionally by the excitement of a letter from Mr. Sidiqi, who wrote from Iran to thank Kamila and the girls for sending money to him and Najeeb through friends and relatives. Mrs. Sidiqi was now living with the girls most of the time, and they watched in sadness as she struggled against her worsening heart condition. They worried continually for her health but Mrs. Sidiqi would have none of it; she refused to stay still and instead busied herself around the house with cooking and cleaning. Her greatest joy now seemed to come from being surrounded by her girls and the young women who arrived at her house each day to work. If Taliban rules and her own fragile constitution conspired to prevent her from being out in the world, at least she could still hear what was happening in her community through the stories of these young ladies.

Meanwhile, orders for the tailoring business continued to come in, and the living room/workroom remained a hive of activity.

One autumn afternoon Saaman and Laila were hard at work on a large batch of wedding dresses, along with a made-to-measure order for a young woman who was marrying a Sidiqi neighbor. The groom was one of the only other people the girls knew who had ties to the international community; he served as a guard at a foreign agency charged with removing the millions of land mines left behind by the Soviets. The Sidiqi girls had heard that his position—and salary—had been invaluable when his brother was jailed for a week in nearby Taimani for the offense of having taught students to draw at a friend’s art school. He had only been substitute teaching, but the Taliban had caught him mid-lesson and hauled him off to jail the moment they found art magazines hidden in an office desk drawer.

As they sewed the green and white dresses, the girls listened on their cassette player to the low and lugubrious notes of Ahmad Zahir, still one of Afghanistan’s most famous singers though nearly twenty years had passed since his death. The former teacher and Kabul Times reporter had been assassinated in 1979 at the age of thirty-three, reportedly on the orders of a communist official who was angered by the popular singer’s politics.

Zahir’s voice filled the workspace:

On the one hand, I want to go, to go

On the other hand, I don’t want to go

I don’t have the strength

What can I do without you

Just after 5 P.M., Kamila rushed through the gate and the front door. She was now delivering clothes and food to needy Kabulis for another UN agency, the International Organization for Migration, and she was not expected home from her staff meeting for another half-hour. Her cheeks were red and she was out of breath.

“Have you heard the news?” she asked her sisters. “They’ve killed Massoud.”

Laila immediately reached for the radio, and a few tense minutes later the static of the medium wave gave way to the clear voice of the BBC Persian news service’s anchor, who was broadcasting live from London. Mrs. Sidiqi’s face grew even more wan as she listened to the foreign voice that was entering her living room from thousands of miles away. The girls gathered around the radio.

“There has been an attack against Ahmad Shah Massoud at his headquarters in Afghanistan’s Takhar province,” the BBC’s Daud Qarizadah said, citing a source close to the Northern Alliance leader. “Massoud has been killed along with several others present.” Apparently the men who led the attack had been posing as journalists; they had hidden a bomb in their camera and had been killed themselves in the blast. Mrs. Sidiqi and her daughters knew that Massoud’s forces represented the last holdout against the Taliban; for the last few years they were all that had prevented the movement from taking complete control of the country. If Massoud was killed, the Taliban would be rid of their most formidable foe, but the fighting was unlikely to end.

The girls sat stunned and silent. Kamila watched the shock, fear, and despair spread across her mother’s face. She refused to believe Massoud was gone; surely he, the Lion of Panjshir, could survive a bomb even if it exploded at close range. He was a veteran of many wars, was he not? He had fought for decades, first against the Russians, then against rival Mujahideen as defense minister, and now against the Taliban. Surely this could not be the end of him?

The next day’s reports brought only confusion and more questions. Burhanuddin Rabbani insisted that his former defense minister was still alive, as did Massoud’s spokesman, but journalists and officials contradicted them. No one knew what to believe, though everyone suspected the worst.

Sara came to the house at her usual hour and got to work, eager for the distraction from the news. “If the reports are true and he is dead,” she said, “things are likely to get worse. The fighting could be even more vicious than it was during the civil war. You girls may yet need to leave the country. I hope I am wrong, but it’s possible that things will descend to a level even we have not yet witnessed.”

Kamila thought for a moment of her father and how badly she missed his wisdom and reassurance. But she refused to give up hope.

The next twenty-four hours saw little work done in the Sidiqi household, and then came more disastrous news: two airliners had flown into the World Trade Center in New York City and thousands were believed dead, though the rescue effort was just beginning. Another plane had crashed into the Pentagon near the American capital of Washington, D.C., and a fourth had failed to reach its target, which many guessed was the White House. The world was off its hinge.

To his mother’s relief, Rahim came home early from school, saying that no one was paying any attention to classes; they were only talking about the news of the past two days and wondering what would happen next. Most everyone in the capital had immediately assumed that Osama bin Laden, the wealthy Saudi who had been living in the country as the Taliban’s guest, was involved in the attack against America. Years earlier the United States had bombed suspected bin Laden training camps in eastern Afghanistan in retaliation for attacks on two American embassies in Africa. Washington had demanded that the Taliban turn bin Laden over to U.S. authorities, but the regime refused to revoke its hospitality. Their guest should be tried in Afghanistan for whatever offenses the Americans were accusing him of. Hostilities between the United States and the Taliban had worsened ever since. Now the Americans claimed they had evidence that bin Laden was behind the bloody 9/11 plot and they again insisted that the Taliban turn him over. Once more, the Taliban leaders refused.

The Sidiqis, like most Afghans, had only a vague sense of who the Taliban’s “Arabs” were. The men were widely thought to be fighters from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Chechnya, Yemen, Somalia, and elsewhere who had come to join the Taliban’s cause at the behest of bin Laden. When the Taliban movement first began, its leaders had presented themselves not as enemies of the West but as humble purifiers of their own country, committed to restoring a desperately needed peace. But as the years passed and international recognition eluded them, the leadership adopted increasingly angry rhetoric against the United States and moved ever closer to bin Laden and his organization, which went by the name Al Qaeda, or “the base” in Arabic. This relationship only deepened after the United Nations imposed military and economic sanctions on the Taliban, leaving the regime even more isolated than it had previously been when only three countries in the world had recognized its legitimacy.

Al Qaeda’s fighters were thought to be responsible for the attack on Massoud, according to news reports that at last confirmed irrefutably the Northern Alliance leader’s death. And now they were rumored to be behind the strikes against the United States.

Mrs. Sidiqi and her girls knew only what they had heard on the BBC and the classroom rumors that Rahim came home with. But that was enough to make it clear that Afghanistan was at the center of the past week’s horrors and would certainly be the target of whatever retaliation would follow. The U.S. government was already threatening to strike back if the Taliban did not hand over bin Laden. And no one in Kabul had any reason to think that they would. For years Afghanistan had lived as a pariah nation, utterly forgotten by the rest of world. Now no one on the radio talked of anyplace else.

And so the waiting game began. What little economic life had managed to survive in the capital came to a sudden halt as the citizens of Kabul held their collective breath. Everyone knew their destiny now lay in the hands of men in Kandahar, Washington, London, and other unknown and faraway capitals. Gossip spread like wildfire, as it always did in Kabul, passed along by families, neighbors, and shopkeepers. The city’s most seasoned observers believed a military attack by the Americans against the Taliban government was imminent—and unavoidable. The girls heard that the UN was evacuating its staff in anticipation of war; they wondered what the internationals knew that they didn’t.

Brace yourself.

Stay indoors.

And pray.

That was all that was left for most Kabulis.

Those who could, however, were determined to get out. The smattering of families still living on Kamila’s street were packing up their few belongings and evacuating the city. They would head for Pakistan if they could get that far, or the Afghan countryside if they couldn’t, and they urged Mrs. Sidiqi to do the same. This was no place for her and her children; surely the Americans’ bombs would soon rain down upon all of them. You had better get out of here as soon as you can, their neighbors warned. Khair Khana is teeming with targets: the airport, the fuel depot, Taliban artillery units. All of them were located within just two or three miles of Kamila’s house. Even Sara urged Mrs. Sidiqi and the girls to leave their home; she herself was taking her children to live in another part of Khair Khana, a few miles farther from the airport. The risk of staying put was just too high, she said. What happens if the Americans miss?

As the economy withered in the weeks following the attacks of September 11, the price for passage out of the capital skyrocketed. Trucks, buses, and taxis overflowed with families seeking safer places, with fares reaching as high as five hundred dollars. People rushed to money changers by the Kabul River to exchange savings they held in Pakistani and Iranian currencies into afghani so they could buy food and other supplies. But the rates moved against them by the day. The city’s savvy traders were betting American dollars would soon be entering the country once the Taliban government fell. After the war.

Mrs. Sidiqi heard the stories and watched her neighbor’s preparations. But she remained convinced that her family was best off staying exactly where it was. There would be no fleeing for them. If something happened to her or her girls while they were in their own home, that was one thing, and she would leave it to God’s will. But she would not have her precious daughters made vulnerable to the kidnappers, murderers, and bandits who awaited them once they left the security of their own courtyard. They were better off here, together, off the streets and far from the bedlam outside.

Four weeks after Massoud’s death and the attacks of September 11, the barrage began. Just after the girls finished dinner one evening, missiles whizzed across the night sky and the boom of explosions was heard around Kabul. Sitting in her bedroom, Kamila felt the windows shudder and the floors shake while Nasrin and Laila ran to look for their mother and their older sisters, crying out in terror as they ran down the long hall that connected the living room to the family’s sleeping chambers. The house turned black in an instant as the Taliban cut the city’s power supply in hopes of throwing off the enemy planes that roared overhead. They heard the sharp rat-tat-tat sound of the Taliban’s lumbering antiaircraft guns chasing the foreigners’ jets around the city in their black trucks, attempting in vain to hit the elusive American aircraft soaring unfazed up above.

And finally, silence.

Kamila sat with fourteen-year-old Nasrin for another hour, cuddling her in her lap. “It’s all over,” she whispered. “Everyone’s okay. See? We’re all here, just fine.” She patted her little sister on the back and hoped the girl wouldn’t notice how uncontrollably her own hands were trembling.

Dawn arrived and a new day began as if it were any other. Shops and offices opened and the clear autumn sun shone cheerily. But terror and uncertainty had settled over the capital. Panicked families were clamoring to leave, struggling to find a way out before dark, when the bombs were likely to start pummeling the city once more. Rahim, returning from the market, reported that Khair Khana’s streets looked like a graveyard. Finding food was no problem, he said; he had the shops to himself since everyone else was busy planning their escape.

The fighting ground on for one week and then another, with an occasional break on Friday, the Muslim holy day. The family grew accustomed to early dinners followed by a tense, candlelit evening in the windowless bedroom waiting for the night air to fill with the boom of jets and the thud of explosions. Like many Kabulis, Rahim and the girls came to know the distinct sounds that each warplane made. They were fluent in the differences among B-52s, B-2s, F-14s, and AC-130s. They learned about “cluster bombs” and “smart bombs.” And they were now sorrowfully familiar with the stench of sour smoke that steamed up from the ground in the wake of each night’s air raids.

Khair Khana reeled under the relentless pounding of the American air blitz, which sometimes began long before nightfall. Sara Jan was right, Kamila thought. No one is safe here. Bombs dropped from the sky sometimes landed so close that Kamila was shocked to open her eyes and see that her house was still standing. She now felt certain that she would not survive. American planes targeted neighborhood Taliban sites night after night, leaving behind deafening explosions and cratered streets. One afternoon a week after the aerial assault began, a bomb demolished two homes in another part of Khair Khana and killed seven people inside. The intended target appeared to be a military garrison a few miles away. Word of the deaths spread swiftly among the few families who were still living in Khair Khana, and with it came even more fear.

“Stay in your houses!” Taliban soldiers shouted on the nights they patrolled the streets of Khair Khana. The government had blocked all of Kabul’s main roads and instituted an even earlier curfew now that the Americans had attacked. They needn’t bother, Kamila thought, hearing the soldiers’ warnings pierce the silence on the street outside her gate. The whole city is under fire. Where are we going to go?

Each evening Kamila and Saaman tuned the battery-powered radio to the BBC’s broadcast to hear the latest on the fighting. The news anchors in London now regularly raised the possibility that the Taliban regime would be replaced; the men from Kandahar, they reported, would eventually be forced to retreat before the overwhelming air strikes of the Americans, who were deploying the twenty-first century’s most powerful technology against their cars, trucks, bunkers, barracks, radio stations, airports, weapons depots, and trenches. None of the girls dared to discuss out loud what would happen if or when the Taliban government gave up, though the voices on the medium-wave suggested that Zahir Shah, the former king, might possibly return to rule the country. Kamila and her sisters had no way of knowing how much longer the war would go on. Or whether they would live through it.

Kamila depended on her faith to help her endure the terrifying offensive and stay strong for her younger sisters. She prayed for her country, which had known nothing but war and bloodshed for her entire life. Despite the fighting that now engulfed her home and her city, she wanted to believe that whatever came next, the future would be brighter.

Peace and a chance to pursue our dreams, Kamila thought to herself one night when it seemed there would be no end to the blasts that rocked the earth beneath her. That’s all we can dare to hope for.

For now, she thought, it would have to be enough.

If you find an error or have any questions, please email us at admin@erenow.org. Thank you!