He was too ill to work, and the medication the doctor had prescribed didn't seem to be making much difference to his condition. Despite the sun's increasingly warm rays, Kabul felt very oppressive. Taliban rule in the capital was absolute. We lived in constant fear that they would show up at our front door and drag Hamid back to prison. It was not a question of if they would do so but when.
But his time in prison had taken such a toll on Hamid's health that a fourth detention would most certainly constitute a death sentence. We knew we had to flee Taliban control, and Pakistan wasn't really an option. Hamid had become a target for the Taliban after Pakistani spies reported his visit to President Rabbani's compound, and we feared he would be followed if we went back there.
Despite having promised the Taliban we would stay in Kabul, we decided to escape to Badakhshan. Our kindly neighbours who had signed Hamid's guarantee told us they supported our decision and we should flee while we still could.
Ahmad Shah Massoud and President Rabbani's forces were still holding out against the Taliban in this northern provincial stronghold. Even the mighty Soviet war machine had been unable to defeat the Mujahideen in Badakhshan, so we felt hopeful that we would find genuine refuge from the Taliban there. Our journey was to be fraught with danger, however.
Hamid was prescribed six months' worth of medication from his doctor and we set off. It was a difficult journey under any circumstances, across rough tracks and winding mountain passes, without taking into account the risk from the Taliban. Hamid's poor health and my pregnancy made us even more vulnerable. It was a measure of our desperation to get away from Kabul that we even considered travelling at this time. The city that had once been my safe haven now felt like a prison overrun by sadistic guards.
I packed a few belongings for the journeyâmostly wedding gifts and things that reminded me of my family. I wanted to hide the few precious photographs I had of my mother and my murdered brother Muqim beneath clothing in the bottom of a suitcase, away from prying Taliban eyes. But I knew that if the Taliban found the photos they would be destroyed, and I dared not take the risk.
My sister-in-law Khadija was determined to stay with her children in Kabul. I argued and pleaded with her, but she could not be budged. I think she felt she owed it to her dead husband, Hamid's brother, to stay in Kabul and raise her children. She had become such a close friend that it was hard for me to leave her there alone in the house, but I respected her decision to stay.
Had I felt there was even a chance the Taliban would leave us alone, I might have stayed too. But Hamid and I were living on borrowed time. Sooner or later, some Taliban administrator would review the list of all the people they had detained and released and decide to send more fanatical young men to rearrest Hamid out of mere suspicion. Their attitude seemed to be “He's bound to be doing something wrong. Let's arrest him and torture him and then he will tell us.” Of course, if you torture people for long enough they will tell you anything. And if they don't, then by Taliban logic they die guarding some terrible secret.
Ordinary people were being imprisoned for the most trivial of so-called offences. When Hamid was in jail, he spoke to taxi drivers who had been arrested for taking unaccompanied female passengers. Ironically, although the driver would be thrown in jail, the woman in question often got far worse for having “tempted” the driver. Taliban rules and their enforcement were often as arbitrary as the man holding the gun. This created an environment of paranoia in which it was safer to stay home than to leave and risk breaking some new law.
The situation was both terrifying and infuriatingâthese men thought they were ruling my country, but they were ruining it. And all their actions were cloaked in the name of Islam, which they used as a political catch-all to silence their critics. You don't like the way we treat women? You're un-Islamic. You want to listen to music? You're un-Islamic. You disagree with our justice system? You're un-Islamic. You say we are misinterpreting the Koran for our own ends? You're un-Islamic. These uneducated men had a two-dimensional view of the world that seemed firmly anchored in the Dark Ages, and that's exactly where they were determined to take my country. So as much as it pained us, we felt we had no choice but to leave Kabul.
We left the city early one morning, creeping through the city streets as dawn broke over the mountains, the springs in the taxi creaking over every bump in the road. Our plan was to drive east, following the path of the Kabul River until we reached Surobi. Taliban influence extended only a few hundred kilometres to the north of Kabul; beyond that, Ahmad Shah Massoud's forces had so far managed to keep them at bay. But to get to them, we had to find a way through the battle lines, one that wouldn't get us killed or draw too much attention from the Taliban, who suspected people going north of being spies.
Surobi is a small town in a lush valley surrounded by lakes, which have provided much of the capital's erratic supply of electricity from as far back as the 1950s. It's a relatively short drive of only seventy kilometres, but because the valley had seen some of the heaviest fighting during the civil war the road was (even by the standards of hardy Afghan travellers) in an appalling state, full of potholes and craters. This meant we had to drive at walking speed most of the way, nose to tail with all the other traffic. On either side of the gravel road, the earth was embroidered with a deadly latticework of landmines. During the past twenty years, over ten million landmines have been littered across Afghanistan. These evil weapons maim and kill our population to this day, the majority of their victims being children.
Frustrated or fatigued drivers would occasionally stray from the safe middle road, sometimes without consequence. Other times, their vehicles would erupt in a geyser of smoke and flaming metal. The largest landmines are designed to destroy sixty-ton armoured battle tanks, so driving a rusting nine-hundredâkilogram sedan over one is like holding a dandelion in front of a screaming jet engine. The most terrible scenes occurred when gung-ho bus drivers would try a shortcut. Sadly, drivers were the first to die in these blasts, which would usually rip the wheels and the entire front of the vehicle off. The terrified and shaken survivors faced an awful choice as the flames from the explosion grew in intensity: either perish in the blazing wreck of the bus or leap out of a broken window and take your chances in the minefield. There was really only one option, but it was a life-and-death gamble that not all of them won.
The road to Surobi passes over arid dusty plains outside the capital and passes Bagram Airbase. Today, Bagram is the main U.S. military base in Afghanistan but even then it was a huge installation, having served as the Soviets' centre of air force operations.
The expanse of valley soon gave way to steep and rocky mountains, and the road cut its way through the narrow gorge. Once we got to Surobi, our car turned north towards Tagab. The road from Surobi to Tagab was even worse. This area is not more than 150 kilometres northeast of Kabul and saw some of the heaviest fighting during the Soviet era. The road had been heavily bombed, parts of it blown up by the Mujahideen to prevent the Red Army advance. When we got to Tagab, I was shocked to see how many of the simple mud houses were in ruins. Many of the people there were living among the rubble, sheltering in whatever part of their house still stood.
Hamid and I were very anxious. So far, we had managed to get through the Taliban checkpoints without any problems. The next leg of our journey would be more difficult. Tagab marked the end of the Taliban front line in this part of the mountains. There was a lot of military equipment and large depots that appeared to be full of fuel for the tanks and trucks, and ammunition for rifles, artillery, mortars and rockets. Tired-faced, bearded young men stood on guard, and the traffic backed up as we neared the main checkpoint. Hamid and I stiffened. This would be where our escape succeeded or failed. We were worried that Hamid's name might be on a Taliban watch list and that his presence here might be enough to cause the Taliban to arrest him again.
As the line of cars and trucks crept forward, I could see nervous men and their wives in burkas being ordered out of their vehicles and made to present their luggage for inspection. Fervent young men with black turbans rifled through open bags and suitcases, tossing neatly packed clothing and treasured personal possessions on the ground. One stood up suddenly with a whoop of excitement, holding a videotape aloft like a trophy. This was contraband. A woman lurched at the cassette as the Talib dangled it out of her reach. She was wearing a burka, but I could tell she was young. I imagined she too was a new bride, torn between her anger and frustration at the injustice being dished out by her tormentor and the fear she felt knowing that by protesting she risked provoking more serious consequences. Her husband stayed a few paces behind, murmuring to his wife to stop. He would not let himself restrain his bride, knowing her actions were just, but neither could he challenge the Talib and be seen to condone her dissent.
The gunman pushed the woman hard in the chest, his hand lingering on the outline of her bust, which showed vaguely beneath her burka. She recoiled in shock for a moment before rushing back towards the Talib, fuelled by anger at the sexual assault. He just laughed and groped her once more before ramming his shoulder under her chin and knocking her to the ground. For a moment, she lay there stunned, and as she got onto her hands and knees the young Talib dropped the black plastic videocassette onto the ground in front of her and brought his heel heavily down upon it, smashing the brittle case. The woman didn't utter a word, but she lifted her head so she could better see the cruelty etched on the man's face. He bowed, then grinned at her theatrically and scooped up the spilled entrails of tape. He let the coils of plastic drip between his fingers as he walked backwards, watching her for any reaction. Turning to face a tree, he hurled the tangled remains high into the branches, where the ribbon tumbled through the leaves. Her head fell forward, and she sobbed as her husband stooped to help her up. The Talib's dark eyes blazed triumphantly; he was clearly pleased by another apparent moral victory. The branches of the tree glistened in the midday light, filled with the innards of dozens of similar tapes. This was clearly a game that was played out on a regular basis.
My decision to leave the photos of my family at home had hurt at the time, but now I was thankful that I hadn't taken them. I hurriedly began unloading our luggage from the car, while Hamid quietly asked some other men where we could hire a horse and a guide. Our plan was to go through the narrow mountain passes and strike out northwest to Jabul Saraj, which was not under control of the Taliban. We aimed to loop west through the mountains and around the front lines of the fighting rather than go directly north, which was the most direct but also most dangerous route.
I was worried the Taliban would take our passports and tear them up, but when it was our turn to face the checkpoint, the armed men didn't actually pay us much attention. Their friend's game with the newlyweds had put them in a good mood, and after a cursory search of our luggage, they let us pass. A woman a little farther back in the queue was not so lucky. It was obvious she was from a northern province because she was wearing the white burka that is traditional in that part of the country. The Taliban turned on her for daring to wear such a garment, beating her with sticks and lengths of wire cable.
I wasn't looking forward to the horse ride, but after what we had witnessed I couldn't wait to get away from these terrible, inhuman men into the comparative safety of the hills beyond. At more than seven months pregnant, I struggled to mount the horse that Hamid had managed to hire. But with his help and my desire to escape, I managed to get on. Hamid walked beside the animal, and I felt very odd as we left the Taliban behind. It was as if my life had been diverted to some strange parallel universe. As a couple, Hamid and I were the image of what I felt the future Afghanistan should be: an educated, ambitious young woman, with her equally educated, urbane, intellectual and loving husband. Yet here I was dressed in a burka riding on horseback as my long-haired, bearded husband walked beside me through the mountains. This Taliban ideology threatened to shackle my country to the Dark Ages.
But beneath this fear, I also had a powerful sense of optimism. The Taliban didn't represent the true spirit of the Afghan people I knew and loved so well. They were an aberration, a disease that had taken hold after so many years' sickness brought about by war and suffering. As we climbed through the mountains, fording streams and negotiating narrow paths, I felt the weight of oppression begin to lift. With each cautious step, I seemed to get lighter, until finally, after several hours of hard trekking, we made it to Northern Alliance lines.
Not that there was any great fanfare when we got there. We simply arrived at a small town, where people were going about their business in a very ordinary way, at which point our guide turned to us as if to say, “Here we are.”
We arranged another car, which would take us to Jabul Saraj. It was just a few hours' drive, but it really was like entering another world. The markets were thriving and full of shoppers. Women were walking and talking to men without the strict supervision demanded by the Taliban, and the restaurants were busy with diners. Hamid and I checked into a hotel, something that would have been impossible in Kabul but that felt incredibly normal here.
As I stood in the foyer of the little hotel, I felt overwhelmed by the events of the past year. Life under the Taliban had changed me in ways I hadn't really understood until now. I wasn't the same person I had been; my confidence had evaporated and the daily fear had exhausted my reserves of strength. I stood there quietly, like a good Taliban wife, whereas once I would have been organizing our check-in, inspecting the room and making sure the porter brought in our bags. Now I was passive, just waiting for my husband to make all the arrangements. It saddened me to realize how much I had changed. Even as a little girl I was a great organizer, something my mother always commented on when telling stories of my childhood. The Taliban had taken that confident girl and determined teenager and turned her into a diminutive, cold, scared and exhausted woman living beneath the cloak of invisibility that was her burka.