Whenever I travel back home to Kabul for a break, I expect to be surprised. The trips have never failed me so far. Every time, a misconception that has been shaped by my distance from home is shattered, there is a surprising new development in some area and/or there are several new faces in the circles of young active women and men I know. This time, the surprise came to me when I was drinking tea with my father one particularly cold night. He referred me to my mother’s dairy as we were talking about old Kabul. Further investigation clarified that she has started writing her memories and her life-story. She told me that she wants to continue writing her life-story and she wants to call it “lost wishes”. The following reflection was inspired by reading parts of her “dairy” and the conversations that followed.
“I went to school and I tried hard to do well. My father always told me: you must become a midwife. I tried a lot. My father said doctors in our district always come from other provinces or from Kabul. But there are very few doctors and midwives and it is really hard to become one. We have to have our own doctors and midwives in future”
Students at a midwifery school in Nili, Afghanistan.
“I had completed sixth grade. It was beginning of seventh grade. Slowly, Mujahideen came to villages. In some villages, people joined them too. Some people were forced out of their houses to join them. One night a group came and burned down the girls’ school”.
“Misfortune started from there…. There was a widow woman in a village. She had two sons. One of them was with the government, the other was a mujahid. When there were attacks at night in the district, they said the mother couldn’t fall asleep. She said Ahmad has gone to kill Mahmud. A brother is killing another brother. Is this being a Muslim?”
“From grade 7th to grade 12th we went to school with burqas and with fear and escape. I was scared at nights. I wouldn’t keep books, notebooks or pen at home. When our relatives came from village, we hide it from them. We didn’t say that we go to school. My father was very brave. He said we must go. He said don’t distance yourself from education. It will be good one day”
-Excerpts from “Lost Wishes”, a diary by Azima Nabi
My mother then married my father when she was 19 and he was 37. I was born a year later. She moved to Kabul from northern Afghanistan when I was one year old to live with my father who was then jobless. She gave up her job as a teacher to start a new life in Kabul and in a few years, once again, she had to leave everything behind and escape for our life back to north from the war in Kabul.
My mother is 42 now. She has given birth to six children, has lived as a refugee in Pakistan and in several provinces in Afghanistan, has built and lost homes several times, has been a primary school teacher for almost 20 years, her work disrupted several times due to wars and Taliban, has managed to attend and complete two years of higher training for teachers, wants to learn English and computer, is anxious about war, is hopeful about future and teaches us to love a country that has given her nothing but war, fear, hunger, humiliation and what she calls “lost wishes”. She says that she wants us to find her lost wishes through our education and our success.
She is the proudest person I know. In our hardest days and moments, she never bent her head, she never stretched her hand. Since I was six, she told me that I must always have self respect. She told us to get an education so that we would never have to depend on our husbands for money. She is also one of the most graceful people I know. In all these years, she was patient and calm. It took her 22 years to start retelling the hardship she had lived. She told me how childbearing helped her cope with the loneliness of being a young woman away from her community. She tells me that when my father was a distant man, involved in politics and always in company of his friends, her duties as a mother distracted her from feelings of isolation and loneliness.
My mother’s story is long, complicated, painful and inspiring. She hasn’t finished writing it. I haven’t finished reading it. For her, it seems, it will be a work in progress for a long time. Now that she has discovered the power of writing, she is enriching her first simple narrative with more detailed memories.
But from what little I have read/heard, my mother’s story angers me. It angers me against war that has stolen the lives of several generations of this land. It angers me against the injustice inherent in this society that requires women to sacrifice everything. It even angers me against my father for standing so close to “traditional” Afghan norms as a husband in the early years of his marriage.
Mothers carrying children gather in the corridor of their apartment building in Bagram, Afghanistan
But her story also inspires me. It inspires me to do more, to be more useful. It inspires me for a better future. It tells me that we have lived/survived the worst times. It inspires me because it is about one of the most inspiring women I know.
Learning about my mother’s story has been a humbling experience. Our stories have some common features. I had the blessing of a supportive father as she had. I, like her, have lived through war and migration and poverty. But she was a mother of two children when she was 23, I am pursing a Masters in Philosophy in development studies. My parents will never arrange a marriage for me, even if I begged them. I am hopeful, that life for my generation will be less turbulent and less inflicted with poverty and pain. As a woman, I had the choices she never had. I went to English classes when I was 11. I travelled abroad alone when I was 16. I earned more than her when I was 18. I can continue my education further. I can choose whom I marry with and even decide not to marry. I can decide where I want to live.
Despite all the choices/privileges I have had, I know I can never be as energetic and persistent as my mother. I can never be as selfless as she has been. I could probably never survive what she has survived with the same grace, integrity and optimism. It is humbling to know how far I have to go before I can be as capable and strong as her 18- year-old self.
Comparing my mother’s life with mine, it would seem like a lot has changed in Afghanistan in a few decades. And it has. Girls’ education has never been so common before. We have never had so many young women and men from different ethnic groups pursing education abroad before. We certainly did not have so many women parliamentarians before, or midwives, or journalists.
But this story of positive change can also be deceptive for at least two reasons. One side of the story is that my mother, when she was my age and living in Kabul, did not have to worry about security as much as I do. She did not experience blatant sexual harassment on the streets. She had more choice in her daily life as a woman: in her outfit, her hobbies, her mobility. More importantly, she never imagined/feared a regime like Taliban taking over. She lived in a different Afghanistan, one that still hadn’t experienced extensive war, massive massacres and group rapes, one that was socially more coherent, one that still hadn’t lost all its infrastructure, its educated elite and its respect of social norms. When she was a teenager, killing/stoning a woman was still unimaginable and completely unacceptable.
The comparison between my mother’s life and mine can be a deceptive indicator of change also if we do not understand that change has not been uniform and universal in Afghanistan. Still, in the city that I live, Kabul, girls of many families have less choice than my mother had at nineteen. ‘Child-bride’ is a prevalent reality in Afghanistan. Sexual harassment is a daily experience. I could lose all the “freedom”s I have almost overnight. My “success” is more of an exception than a common story for Afghan women. It has been possible because of my parents’ support, courage and sacrifice. They accepted poverty and migration to enable us to pursue our education. They accepted social stigma by sending us abroad and accepting the changed, ‘modern’ women we had become. They are still giving sacrifices on a daily basis to enable us to be who we are.
Thousands of Afghan women my age haven’t been that lucky.
My mother wished to be the first doctor or midwife in her community. She hoped she could help her people, have our own clinic, be a role model in her community and fulfill her father’s dreams as well as her own. She imagined a peaceful life and a bright future in front of her. A madness took over our country, her school was burnt down, her education disrupted, her dreams postponed. She became a mother at a very young age. Her earlier wishes were lost, they were replaced by wishes for security, food and shelter for her family. Now, she wishes that her wishes come true for younger women. Nothing angers her more than hearing about a young woman being forced into a marriage, or a young girl leaving her education incomplete.
Reading about my mother’s “lost wishes” and listening to her, I think about Afghan women of my generation and our future. Will we also be a generation of “lost wishes”? Or will we be the ones who turn the tide? So far, the latter seems true for many women I know and respect, from the outspoken and dedicated women rights’ activists to thousands of bright and motivated school and university students who are the first generation to be educated in their family, to young women who challenge their “destiny” in local courts. But I know that the path is difficult and long and it is still very early to judge. And I am fearful for us, for how easily we could lose everything, but I am also hopeful.
[1] The quotes used here are translated from Dari