I Am a Bacha Posh Page 4

  For the time being, I was admitted to Musturart, the hospital for women. My father refused to take me to the hospital for men. “They will figure it out very quickly, Ukmina!”

  The nurses took off my shalwar kameez and clothed me in patient attire—a long gown. They wanted me to remove my turban, but that was out of the question! It was the first time I was dressed as a woman, and I hated it. When they left, I stripped naked and threw the clothes out the window. After this incident, they put me on the top floor, in a special room for sick people from the tribal area—areas from the east and mostly Pashtun. I was with other women from my community. They didn’t want to undress; they were veiled from head to toe. They were perceived as fundamentalists, and in the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan, this is looked down upon. I find myself to be a paradox among them, the woman who refuses to cover herself.

  I spent three months at the hospital, healing from my lung infection. When I left, Afghanistan was not the same country anymore.

  Khost, this time, was not spared; fights raged on. Upon my return to the village, I found deserted streets: women, children, and elderly people had joined the cohorts of refugees fleeing toward neighboring Pakistan; the men had joined the jihad and were hiding in the mountains. My mother was waiting for me. My older brother lived in Khost, and my younger brother and my sister, still children, stayed with my parents. The decision was made to go to the mountains. If everyone in the country left for Pakistan, who would be left to defend it? I wondered.

  My father decided to go with my mother. My brother, my sister, and I would stay at the house until my father returned. “You will join them with the flock of sheep, my son,” my father said. It occurred to me that, had I been a “normal” girl, no one would have guarded the house.

  And so they left. They abandoned their farms, their whole lives. A few other villagers stayed, but I felt very much alone.

  One night, a group of Mujahideen arrived in the village and knocked on my door. They wanted to eat. I had some flour left, but I did not know how to make bread! I had been doing masonry and grazing the cattle; I had learned nothing in the kitchen. But I tried anyway: three of the four loaves were inedible, hard as a brick, and I burned my hands in the process.

  “Make it yourselves!” I said to them. “You are men, and so am I!” This made them laugh, and then they got busy cooking!

  A few days later, my father came back. He told me we could no longer stay here at the house and that we must leave. We loaded up a cart, pulled by a donkey, with kitchen utensils, warm clothing, and blankets; we also took ten sheep, a cow, and a camel. I looked at our farm one last time, not knowing I would not see it again for some years. The almond trees were in bloom again; there would be no one to harvest the wheat this year.

  The first night, we slept with two other families in a cave. It was wet and cold, and we heard the bombs falling in the distance. The mountains, refuge for the Mujahideen, were constantly the target for the Russian bombers.

  The next day, we went back on the goat trail. We were moving with much difficulty, and we had to abandon our cart. We carried the bags on our shoulders and continued walking until nightfall, when we came to our family’s camp. This was our new home: a few stone houses and caves occupied by villagers of the plains.

  I have no happy memories from this time. I left my childhood in Dragai, the village. Now I wanted to fight, to make myself useful. We brought with us an old Charyee, a Russian rifle, we used to kill predators and protect our herds. I was already at my brother’s side with the Mujahideen, defying the Red Army with the Charyee. I awaited the first opportunity to join the fighters. It came sooner than I expected.

  One night, the silent encampment woke to the noise of words whispered, not stifled. A group of thirty men, fighters, had arrived to rest for a day. I knew some of them, as they were from my village. Their leader, the commander Mohammed Noorjahan Akber, came from a neighboring village of ours. I did not close one eye that night, and, at dawn, I took my courage in both hands and said, “Commander, I want to fight with you!”

  Despite my great size and my shoulders, I didn’t have a beard, and my voice gave me away. In addition, the Mujahideen who originated in my village recognized me. “It’s not a good idea for you to accompany us. There are no women in the Mujahideen,” he told me, without arrogance. “You are without doubt very brave, but if we are taken down by the government troops, we will be filled with shame because we had enlisted a woman!”

  He paused, turned his head toward the valley, and added, “But you can help us in many other ways.”

  Therefore, I officially entered the jihad! The commander gave me a telescope and, every morning, I went to the top of the mountain to look for incoming Russian convoys. If I saw suspicious movement on the road, I had to let them know by using a mirror. By reflecting the sunlight, I could send signals: one flash of light, one vehicle; two, two vehicles, and so on. Soon I earned a promotion; I became a messenger. I left with my herd, and I went into the mountain. Under my shepherd coat, I hid supplies. The donkey came with me, holding pouches of water underneath its blankets. Two flashes of light from the mirror, one fast and the second longer: the signal that I was in place. Two Mujahideen came to me to retrieve the supplies. Why were there so many precautions when we were in the mountains with all the fighters? Because the mountains were crawling with spies. They were everywhere—among us, the villagers, and the Mujahideen, too. Needing to be suspicious of everyone instilled a permanent sense of mistrust and fear in me. What would happen if someone were to give me away?

  Then my missions brought me back to Khost. I would go there—just to the plains with my herd—once a month to look for medicines Then I would get on a bicycle left for me and ride into the bazaar.

  One day, the Mujahideen entrusted me with a cassette. I had to bring it to Khost and give it to their contact. On the box, the picture of an imam indicated that it was a religious discourse, but, in fact, it was a message of propaganda to encourage the Afghans to take their weapons and wage holy war against the Russian infidels. The tape had been recorded in Pakistan. So I proceeded with my flock, a dagger hidden beneath my clothes. Around a corner, I came across an escort of the Afghan army. We were on opposite sides of a stream.

  “Come here, halaka!”

  Boy, the word that I used to love hearing at the bazaar. But at this creek, it did nothing for me.

  “Zanast!” I respond. In Dari, this is the word for “woman.” It was one of the few words I had ever seen in this language, that of Kabul, because I speak Pashto.

  One of the soldiers was Pashtun; he knew me. He spoke to the other in Dari, and, in our language, he asked me to throw my jacket over the stream.

  “That is all I can give you.”

  They could not come near me or search me: I was a woman.

  “Tell us where you are going!” the soldier said to me in Pashto.

  “I am going to see my brother, in Khost.”

  “Why do you carry this dagger, then?”

  “To protect myself.”

  They spoke to each other and let me go. But what could they do to a woman? I enjoyed my victory and left without any problems to the cassette.

  I took this opportunity to visit my brother. He had been injured in a bombing in Khost. His wife, by his bedside, had lost weight. I remembered her at her wedding, beautiful and round.

  “There is nothing left to eat,” she said to me. “The bazaar is empty. And everything that I found, I have given to your brother.”

  My brother was suffering; he looked worn out, but he managed to make me smile and was talking.

  “Don’t worry, Ukmina.”

  He called me Ukmina, never Hukomkhan. For him, I was always his little sister.

  “My leg will heal, and soon I will go see you up there, and we will all leave for Pakistan. We must leave, Ukmina.”

  He provide me with some news of the situation. In the mountains, the bombings intensified from week to week, but not much
was known. The Russian helicopters flew over the anti-revolutionary villages, scattering bombs and death. The war was now going into its second year.

  “They want to end the Mujahideen. I heard they will send the special Russian forces to the border with Pakistan, and they will ‘clean’ the mountains—that is their word. You cannot stay up there any longer.”

  I agreed. It was not worth the worry. The conditions were still very bad. But we could not leave Afghanistan for Pakistan because we had nothing. We needed more money to pay for the trip.

  I went back to the mountains, where a new mission awaited me: to recover the bodies of the soldiers.

  The fight got worse. The Mujahideen launched missiles, deserters from the Afghan army joined them with their weapons, and foreign fighters arrived every day from Pakistan to help the jihad. I did not understand them. My father said that they spoke Arabic. We suffered heavy losses. I fought from behind my telescope, because I still did not have the right to participate, while my little brother was now up front with the Mujahideens.

  One day, a group from our hometown had just attacked a Russian convoy. I was two kilometers from the battle that followed the attack. When the shooting stopped, I went down to the group of villagers’ leader to retrieve the body. The bombings continued. I recognized Gulbatcha and Zarwalikhan. They were eighteen or nineteen years old, my age. I remembered them from when we played soccer together. Gulbatchal was a very good player. He wanted to go to Kabul to play professionally. Zarwalikhan, he was a magician. He could do anything with his hands. He made fun and complicated wooden toys for the children, with pulleys and wheels. He was very nice and generous; he would have been a good man.

  When the Russian helicopters disappeared from the sky, I loaded the two bodies on my camel and rode back to the encampment, where they would be laid to rest with all the respect that was due to them. Gulbatchal and Zarwalikhan were like my brothers. The image of Badgai laying the bodies of her brothers on her horse came to mind. Ah, Badgai, when will this war end? Will anything of my country remain after this massacre? Who will we be then? What will become of us?

  War does not bring any good. The Mujahideen now spread terror. In the beginning, they only had weapons from the villages—revolvers, shotguns. Little by little, they acquired automatic weapons—rocket and missile launchers. They could kill anyone by mistake or simply as a warning. Mohammed Saebkhan, a neighbor with whom I had played often as a child, remained in the village to protect his family home. The Mujahideen launched a missile against the Russians. The missile fell on his house, taking with it the brave Saebkhan. Elsewhere, an entire family was wiped out by a rocket. The Mujahideen had found that the village was not cooperative enough, and by this attack, they meant to say that they could destroy everything if they saw fit. They also sought the “communists,” the Afghans who collaborated with the Russians: military, police officers, public officials—no prisoners. They were to be killed. The Mujahideen spread land mines on the roads, our roads . . .

  Sometimes, I closed my eyes in a sort of meditation. I would think: This is not good. When you kill a communist, you kill five Muslims. I was relieved not to be involved in the death of innocent people.

  I also told myself that women were beautiful creatures of God. Men were cruel. I often asked Allah: “Give me the power of men and the kindness of women.”

  The Mujahideen finished by entrusting me with a weapon, a Kalashnikov, an old model. I was to defend our encampment, because the Russians had changed strategy: the paramilitary groups were trying to infiltrate and attack the Mujahideen in their mountain refuges.

  One night, I had to fire seven or eight bullets. But I didn’t hit anything. Obviously, I was not very gifted. I was asked to give back the AK47, but I refused.

  Today, I still have the weapons that were with me during this tragic period: a belt of stones (in the beginning, I threw stones at the convoys), a dagger, and the Kalashnikov rifle. With them, I feel like Hukomkhan, “the man who gives orders,” and I am respected. I like weapons. Without them, I feel naked, but I do not have blood on my hands.

  The Mujahideen took back every village, then the district, and finally Khost. Gorbachev wanted to negotiate with the rebels. The withdrawal of the Russians was announced, and we were able to return home, to find our homes . . . or what remained of them.

  5

  THE TIME OF HEROES

  In the six years following our evacuation of our village, we moved around several times to escape the firing of Russian and Afghan forces. During the winter, we suffered from the cold, but during the day, the sun warmed us a little; I liked to offer my back to its rays, which burned when I sat on a rock keeping lookout. I never got bored of the inspiring landscape that offered itself to me: from the rough stone, to the loss of horizon, it was both hostile and protective, immense, beautiful, sacrificial. It was my country, for which I was ready to die. I could not tell the difference between the noise of propeller blades in the distance and my own hunger. When the sun had set, and the sky turned purple, it was time to go back.

  The camp was supplied twice a week. The food parcels arrived on the back of a donkey from Pakistan. The only meal of the day was frugal: bread, lentils, goat milk, and sometimes a little bit of sheep meat. We always had a few cattle, but we kept them, protected them: they were our only wealth and testimony of our past, our other life—which had become more and more distant—the one where we had a farm, livestock, and a pasture. The sadness did not overwhelm me when I thought of it. I did not know what fate had in store for us at the end of the war, if it ever ended.

  In the evening, we would wrap ourselves in blankets and animal fur. Unable to make a fire, we would find our way around. I witnessed the births and deaths of babies and the elderly fall asleep to the eternal night. Allah spoke to them—the suffering of the refugee: hunger, cold, the spectacle of their weakness and their helplessness.

  My father fell ill. He coughed and spat up blood. He became very weak and could no longer stand up from the straw mattress that served as his bed. We should have gone to Pakistan, to the hospital in Peshawar, which was only 150 kilometers away and closer than the hospital in Kabul. It was also safer because the Russians had not yet left the country: they had retreated to the cities and the strategic sites, leaving the Afghan army to fight against the rebels. But to take my father to the hospital, we would have had to pay a smuggler and travel by donkey, and we did not have the money; my father would not have survived.

  So we took the trail to return to Dragai, our village—my mother, my father, my sister, and me. My younger brother stayed with the Mujahideen, my elder brother was still in Khost. I was the man of the family; there was no longer a shadow of doubt. My body continued its metamorphosis. I measured five feet seven inches tall—larger than my father. Life in the mountains caused me to lose weight, but my arms were powerful, and I had strong shoulders. I do not know if it was from wearing men’s clothing that little by little any trace of femininity was erased, or if I would have been just as well off regardless of the clothing. Once a month, the blood that escaped my body reminded me of who I was.

  One morning, I woke up in the freezing cold, and an unusual agitation was rocking the camp. The rumors were confirmed: Soviet troops were retreating, and the hour of our victory was approaching; it was now possible to think about the future. I entered the war in my adolescence, and I left it at the age when I would have had to be married and have children. This life was getting further than ever from me: to build a family had never been my purpose in life, and the war offered me another destiny. I acquired the decoration of Mujahideen—“who has done the jihad”—a stature that would gain me the respect of others for the rest of my life.

  The return was painful. We had to overcome the challenge before us. Everything, absolutely everything, had been destroyed. The Russians had applied the scorched-earth strategy. The villages we passed through had nothing left. The fire had ravaged the buildings, the barns, and the fields. The tanks had crush
ed the fences and trees and had broken down the roads. The men had completed the work started by armed attack: with shovels, they had blocked the wells.

  Our farm was no exception. The roof had burned down; all that remained were the walls. Inside, it had been looted and ransacked. The well was filled with stones, just like the pond where I would swim as a child. But what broke my heart was the sight of the almond trees. There were two hundred of them around our farm before the war; they had chopped down every single one of them. I was wandering around this vegetation cemetery, cursing the war and its lackey soldiers who behaved like rabid dogs, when I saw a thin branch with some fine green leaves. I brought myself to the bedside of this convalescent tree. Life was slipping away from it as a hot and sticky sap, and hope gave me courage. I soon found another survivor, then two, then three . . . nine. Nine almond trees had withstood the onslaught! They would be our rafts to distribute the seeds to sow for the rebirth. Even today, I still have a passion for almonds. Not one day passes that I do not nibble on some of them with a cup of tea. (If you want to get on my good side, give me a nice box filled with almonds!)

  We had to rebuild everything, but we had nothing. The first night, we made a shelter from what remained of the house, with the dead wood as a roof. My mother cooked our usual meal: a little bit of bread soaked in goat milk. We snuggled against each other to shield us from the cold so that we could sleep. Sleep did not come—it came to me and then escaped—washed away by the polar air currents. As I did not close an eye that night, I continued to think about this mess. Before the war, we were united and happy in our family. Now we were scattered, sick, and poor. Miserable even. And why? What had we done to the Russians? What had we done to the leaders of our country? I wondered if we would ever learn to live in peace one day, if I would fulfill my dream: to learn how to read and write.

  In the morning, I saw the first glimmers of light, blue and fragile. Pale rays trying to impose their light on a dark landscape, without hope. We did not have clean water to drink or to irrigate the fields. At the end of the third day, a tanker truck came to the village, but the water it brought was not free and too expensive for us. We had to swallow brackish and foul water that came from the dirtied wells. We had returned to the eighteenth century.