[»Resentment«, Ladan Maalizadeh (2021)]
I want to sing like the birds sing, not worrying about who hears or what they think.
[Rumi]
لا تجزع من جرحك، وإلا فكيف للنور أن يتسلل إلى باطنك؟
[جلال الدین محمد بن شيخ بهاء الدين محمد بن حسين بلخى رومی]
کابل
Memories of Kabul
My name is Tamana and I was born in Kabul, Afghanistan. I can‘t remember too many details about my childhood but there are some events that I can remember as if they had happened yesterday. Unfortunately, those are unpleasant memories.
For instance, I remember exactly how my brother hurt my eye and my mother couldn’t take me to a doctor or to a hospital. My brother and I loved to play with whatever was around. Therefore, in winter for example, we used to play with the matches which were always lying near the fireplace. One day my brother lit one of the matches by the fireplace and hurt my eye. I thought I’d gone blind because I wasn’t able to open my eyes. To this day, I vividly remember the pain and how I was crying all day long. My mother was helpless and just couldn’t take me to a doctor, because she feared the local Taliban, who were still active in the area. There was no ambulance or emergency doctor for us to call. We had to wait for my father to come home and take me to the doctor.
Women didn’t dare to go outside alone. But my dad came home from work very late. It was already dark outside, and the streets were not safe anymore. My dad took me into his arms and got me to open my eyes. I opened my eyes and, luckily, I was able to see everything normally. He covered my eyelids with an ointment, and I felt better immediately. My memories of this event are so vivid because it makes me realize how helpless we were.
I keep asking myself what happened to those families who had lost all their male members due to the war, because the women were locked inside of their own houses. As time went on, the influence of the Taliban decreased, so that also girls could attend school. However, the Taliban were still active in the hidden making sure that the population continued to live in fear. Most of them didn‘t dare to oppress the population in plain sight anymore but they had new methods like suicide attacks or spontaneous assaults. I remember sitting in class at school when we suddenly heard a loud bang. It was during art class, which was my favorite subject back then. Everyone was busy painting pictures when we heard this terribly loud bang. We all looked at our teacher but at that time she didn‘t know either what had happened and how to best behave. She said we had to leave the classroom and we did. In the hallway, everyone was running around, across the entire school building. Some students were crying, others were screaming because the bang had been so loud, and you could hear gunshots. Many of us thought that now our school was being attacked as well. I, on the other hand, was just mad that on account of this we had to end art class early because, as always, I had been impatiently waiting all week for my favorite lesson. I just wanted to continue and finish my painting. Eventually, I realized that our teacher wasn‘t there anymore. She had run away trying to get to her family who lived nearby. A student came and sat down next to me. Her face was very pale, and I asked her if she was alright. She said no because her father had promised to call her but hadn’t called. She was worried because her father owned a shop nearby and he and her brother were always there. I tried to comfort her for a while but the call just never came.
Our art teacher returned and told us to go back into the classroom. We followed her but the shots were still to be heard. We had to stay at school a bit longer than usual. When school was over, and we could go home, I saw a lot of blood and broken glass on the road. There were policemen and soldiers everywhere. It was obvious that the Taliban had, once again, attacked a military convoy. The area around my school was blocked so that no one could get in from outside. Hence, we all had to walk home alone. When I finally arrived at our house, I saw my mother crying on the steps waiting for me. We went inside and all that mattered was that I was okay. After that, for a long time, I didn’t see the pale-looking student who had been sitting next to me. When I finally met her gain, she told me that both her father and her eldest brother had died in the attack that day. The Taliban had launched a missile and had then attacked the military convoy with firearms. Due to the missile strike, many civilians, including the father and the brother of the student, had lost their lives. I cannot put into words how sad I was but that was how things were over there.
My family often had a lot of luck, thank God. At one point, there even was an attack right above our heads. We were all sleeping when, suddenly, there was a very loud noise. All windows shattered and there was broken glass all over the floor, even on our blankets. We all went hiding in the basement and my sister and I hugged my father very tightly because we sought his protection. The Taliban ran right across our roofs and led their attack. The attack lasted very long because the police and the soldiers wanted to avoid civil victims. We couldn‘t sleep for the rest of the night. The next day came and eventually it all stopped. An announcement from the local police said that they had defeated and arrested the terrorists. At the end of the day, the only thing that mattered to us was that we were still alive. That was our life. Every day, we had to pray and make sure that we survived the next day, and nothing bad happened to us.
For me, all this was so unbelievable, because how, I wondered, could some people be willing to injure or even kill innocent people. Life in Afghanistan is not so easy. Not only were we afraid of explosions, but as girls we were harassed outside by strange men, even policemen. It didn't matter whether you went out wearing a headscarf or a burqa. Therefore, as girls, we had to stay at home all the time and we could only go out with our parents. Because of the harassment the girls experienced, it was not possible for us to play outside or simply go to the grocery store, for example. Sometimes I wished I had been born a boy, because as a boy I would have at least had the freedom to go outside to play without anyone harassing me. My sister and I were always at home, while my brothers were allowed to go out and play normally. I always wanted to play outside or go to the corner store to buy some candy like my brothers. However, I was always supposed to stay home because I had to be protected from harassment due to my gender. The way my childhood was, as a girl in Afghanistan, I don't wish it on any child in this world. I wish I had also had a beautiful childhood, a childhood with all the freedoms a child needs and should enjoy.
My mother once wanted to visit somebody, and she took me with her. I was six or seven years old, and I was happy every time I was taken somewhere, no matter where, as long as I could get out of the house. We had taken a cab and I was not wearing a headscarf because I was still a small child. The cab driver looked at me and asked me how old I was. I looked at my mother and my mother answered his question. The cab driver then asked me why I wasn't wearing a headscarf since I was now an adult and had to wear one. I was shocked that in his eyes I was already so old that I was expected to be wearing a headscarf. I thought he was one of the Taliban and was about to punish or kill me on the spot for not wearing a headscarf. My mother was also worried because my father was not with us. I wanted to tell the cab driver that I wasn’t even going to school yet and that as soon as I was, I would always wear a headscarf as part of my school uniform. In Afghanistan, students have to wear a school uniform. For the girls, the uniform consisted of a black coat and a white headscarf. But before I could say that, my mother told the cab driver that I had forgotten to put on my headscarf because we had been in a hurry, and besides, it was not so bad because I was still young and not even old enough to go to school.
As soon as we got out of the cab, my mother bought me a headscarf and said that from now on I would always have to wear a headscarf, which I did.
Since I had to wear a headscarf so early on, I didn't know for a very long time that I had such full, voluminous, and curly hair, because I had always tied my hair up so tightly that not even my mother had noticed my curls.
I don't want to suggest that I hated or hate the headscarf. I only hate the fact that we were not given the opportunity to wear the headscarf out of our own conviction. By wearing a headscarf, girls like me were supposed to be protected from bad men. The headscarf thus had neither a religious purpose nor did it have anything to do with a person’s own character or with the free expression of one's own personality. Because of this experience, there is one thing that I cannot understand to this day: Men behave immorally, violate good manners, and harass women, but as a reaction to this, we, the women, must hide, give up our freedoms and restrict our scope of action. Even as a child, I wondered why such men were not being punished instead of girls being forced to hide, give up their freedoms and massively restrict their scope of action. This approach only means that our gender is a problem, because, naturally, we are physically weaker than men due to our gender. It's not our fault that we were born as girls. It is the men who are misbehaving, so they should be punished rather than us, because we are not the cause of the problem! All these thoughts were constantly on my mind throughout my childhood. Moreover, we were not even safe at our own homes, because at home there was a constant fear that a bomb would explode and hit our house. I remember well how, on a holiday, a bomb detonated a bit further away from our house and we learned about it through the news. It was a normal day, and we were all sitting at the table eating together; the day had been peaceful until we turned on the TV. It was incomprehensible to me that in the same city, some people had to fight for their survival or were lying injured on the blood-covered street, while we were sitting at home and within our own four walls the world seemed all peaceful and normal, as if nothing bad had happened. I think we had just gotten used to it and therefore we were not afraid anymore.
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