Dear Zari: Hidden Stories from Women of Afghanistan Read Online Free PDF Page A

split amongst the different Jihadi groups.
    There was certainly no unity in Kabul, as different ethnic Jihadi groups controlled different parts of the city. While our neighbourhood, for example, was under the control of General Rashid Dostam, just across the road, the area was led by the Northern Alliance and Ahmad Shah Masood. Eastern Kabul, meanwhile, was controlled by Hezbi Islami – led by Gulbudeen Hekmatyar – and yet another district was under the influence of Hezbi Wahdat and controlled by Hazaras.
    Once again my father’s life was seriously in danger because he’d served under the now discredited Communist regime, and was therefore not liked by any of the rebel groups. Most of his friends had already fled Kabul; he no longer had a job and he was now father to four girls who were fast becoming teenagers. In 1993 my youngest sister had been born at the height of the civil war; although my parents had been hoping for another boy, this time round gender seemed less important. Nonetheless, at the time the security situation in Afghanistan forfamilies with girls was far from good. When my youngest sister was only a couple of months old I used to look after her, and my mother would tell me to keep her warm so that she didn’t catch a cold, but really she was far more worried about us older girls. We’d all heard about women being raped and kidnapped, so my parents were increasingly concerned for our safety, even though I was only ten years old. All the while the war became steadily worse, and we became steadily poorer. Then when my father could wait no longer to escape to Pakistan – fleeing the country ahead of the rest of us – winter came, and as it grew colder and the snow came, so the fighting intensified.
    In peacetime our fifth-floor apartment had wonderful views, and enjoyed the coolest breezes during the summer, but in wartime it was considered dangerously exposed to be at the top of the building. And now we were always at home. The war meant that once again there was no more school because the school buildings had been taken over by refugees who’d fled the outskirts of Kabul. War may bring people together, but that doesn’t always mean they empathise with each other. The building we lived in housed ten different families, and as there would be intensive rocket firing every day we would go down to the third floor each morning and join our other neighbours. We children would sit together in the corridor, and all the surrounding doors would be closed so that if a shell hit the building, the blast of broken glass and displaced furniture wouldn’t injure anyone. We were taught this survival tactic by the men who bravely ventured out and heard about the experiences of other people in the city, discovering that many of the worst injuries were caused by shattering glass.
    Our neighbours also had teenage girls and my sisters and I would often sit with them and swap stories. Muzgan, who lived on the third floor, was both the bravest and the best storyteller among us. She frightened us all with her creepy ghost stories, though I realise now that her storytelling was her way of coping with the fear of being killed in a rocket attack. Like Sheherazade, Muzgan would always tell stories that had no ending. We would hang on her every word and beg her to tell us what happened nextbut Muzgan would refuse to utter another word, relishing the attention.
    While we children listened to Muzgan’s stories, every evening the men would huddle around the radio and listen intently to the BBC World Service. Since there was no electricity and we had only one small battery-run radio between us, everyone had to keep quiet during the news. The men listened solemnly as the BBC informed them how many rockets had been fired that day, where they had landed and which group of the Mujahedeen was now in control of which area. We would often recognise the names of the roads and blocks of houses where the rockets had landed, because they were