Dancing in the Mosque Page 6

  I remember days when we were frightened, as you must have been. We lived in constant fear, scattering suddenly, like a flock of frightened birds. But at least in those days, I had Nanah-jan or Madar who would tell me stories to distract me from tasting the bitterness of war.

  My son, I worry that if the Taliban have taken a position outside your kindergarten, and I am not there for you, who will be telling you stories to distract you?

  6

  Dancing in the Mosque

  During the civil war, when I was searching in the silting waters of those ruined houses for the last of the living fish, Agha became addicted to the BBC. Hour after hour, he listened to the reports of the death tolls as the warring sides tore apart the fabric of our society. Baba-jan hung on every word of the news as well. Lying down in the heat of the day, he placed his old wooden radio on his stomach, always searching for a better frequency and clearer voice. But soon he would get frustrated hearing nothing but the horrible news of war; he would finally get up, cursing the radio as a wooden box filled with lies.

  Madar showed no interest in the BBC. She said that the war and the killings reported by the BBC were disasters we experienced firsthand. What was the point in struggling with the war itself the whole day and then listening to it again at night? Madar believed the BBC only reported on the deaths of Afghan men. She said the station would never investigate the number of women whose lives were taken inside their own homes by stray bullets or bombs. And it was in November 1994, when I was just a teenager, that the BBC first introduced me to the word “Taliban.”

  That night I thought that the Taliban must be soldiers with high boots like the Russians, or with wide-bottom pants like the youth of the communist Khalq and Parcham factions, or maybe they are like the mujahideen. But the Taliban were like none of them. They were young men with beards and long hair and kohl eyeliner. They were tall and thin as if they had been starved for years. They didn’t have boots but walked in ripped and torn sandals and slip-on shoes as if they had walked the entire distance from Kandahar to Herat on foot.

  I had heard their name first on the BBC, but this was the first time I saw them. I saw them through the cracks from behind the front door when they were blaring their warnings that photos, televisions, or books from the lands of the infidels should not be kept in our houses. Soon I realized that they were very different from all the other fighters we had seen. They were not only dusty and depressing looking but ruthless and angry, too.

  It wasn’t long before the Taliban implemented sharia law in Kandahar. They closed all the girls’ schools. Women and girls were forbidden to leave their houses. The Taliban ordered that no woman’s face or form should be seen anywhere in public. Burqas became mandatory, and a woman who had a good reason to be on the street had to be accompanied by a mahram. Slightest infractions subjected women to public whipping with cables. Women accused of adultery were to be stoned or shot.

  I listened to the radio and thought to myself, Kandahar is very far from here. The Taliban will never set foot in Herat. I pitied the girls of Kandahar, whose hopes for education vanished. I was so removed that I even wished for Kandahar to be in a different country.

  Every day, on my way to school, I would recite Al-Fâteha, the opening chapter of the Qur’an, three times, praying that God would mislead the Taliban so they would never find their way to our city.

  But one September morning in 1995, as I was ironing my white hijab, preparing to leave for school, everything changed. Agha had gone out to buy fresh-baked bread for our breakfast. He returned without any bread, pale and frightened. He leaned his bicycle against the tree in our courtyard and called out, Ansari! Ansari!

  I watched Agha as he ran from room to room, searching for Madar. She appeared in front of us, broom in hand. Agha said, “Amir Ismail Khan, the governor, fled Herat last night. The Taliban have taken over the entire city.”

  Madar turned pale and leaned against the wall as if her legs would not support her. Mushtaq jumped up and down. “See, Homeira, your prayers were not answered! No rain will fall when a black cat prays. God never answers the prayers of girls.”

  I burned my hand on the charcoal-heated iron I was using to press the laundry.

  My sister, Zahra, who was then in second grade, hugged me and cried while Madar held us in her arms, weeping silently.

  Mushtaq looked at me, perplexed. “Why are you crying? I wish the boys’ school were closed. I am the unlucky one. I wish I were a girl.”

  The Herat-Kandahar highway had fallen, one checkpoint at a time, like beads dropping from a broken necklace. Those white flags now fluttered above our city.

  Almost immediately, you could feel the change. Suddenly, the streets were barren of women. Only men were allowed in the bazaars and markets. Female doctors were dismissed from the hospitals and sent home, except for a few in the maternity wards. Most women chose to have their babies at home because of the danger of being out on the street, even with a mahram. The Taliban beat women on the street on any pretext. In our neighborhood, a baby or a mother died in delivery almost every month.

  During all those days, I was like a bird in a cage, my wings fluttering against the bars, still trying to escape. Herat’s only functioning radio station was controlled by the Taliban, which broadcast nothing but religious chanting and Qur’anic recitations. So every night I listened to the BBC, expecting the radio to announce news of the Taliban’s departure and the reopening of the girls’ schools. I wouldn’t go to bed until the newscast ended. Then, under my blanket, I would cry myself to sleep.

  Madar said that Herat was full of lost sparrows. Sitting in the mulberry trees in our courtyard, I watched these tiny birds flitting from branch to branch. When they flew off into the blue sky, I wished that I could fly away with them. Once, I told Mushtaq that I wished I were a sparrow, too. He was kicking his soccer ball against the courtyard wall and catching it in his hand. He paused and thought for a second. “Madar’s burqa is large enough that you can put it on, grab the hem, flap your arms like a bird, and fly away.”

  I grabbed the soccer ball and hit him with it. He shouted and started chasing me. Madar stepped between us. “You should never fight with boys.”

  I sat on the terrace and cried my eyes out. “The Taliban are in Herat to stay. There is no likelihood of them leaving the city. There is no hope for the girls of Herat.”

  While gathering clothes from the clothesline in the courtyard, Madar said, “If anything could have been built from tears, I would have built an entire city. Instead of crying, Homeira, why don’t you get up and do something?”

  “Madar! What can I do? Shall I go out and fight the Taliban?”

  “No! Taliban or no Taliban, it makes no difference. We cannot fight these men. You must fight against your attitude.”

  “What about you? I hear you weeping every night.”

  “Because I didn’t learn to fight my attitude, to fight my despair.” Madar looked at me, reminding me of my responsibility. “Do you want to inherit only tears and weeping from me? You can do better than that, Homeira.”

  The very next day, as Madar was sweeping the courtyard, she suggested that I turn our kitchen into a classroom. “This will help you pass your days more easily and it will also benefit our neighborhood girls. Without our help, they will grow up illiterate. Many of them have already passed their eighth birthday. They should have entered school last year. Every girl should learn at least how to write her name.”

  I said, “I have never been a teacher.”

  Smiling, Madar ran her fingers through my hair. “You are not a teacher; you are just the girl from the neighborhood. But you can become a teacher.”

  When Agha heard about our plan, he said that we must be very careful because it was very dangerous to defy the Taliban. Baba-jan was totally against the idea. He paced around the courtyard with his cane. “If the Taliban find out, it will be bad for the entire neighborhood and especially for Homeira. They will lash her mercilessly. Is that what
you want? To see your daughter whipped in public? Believe me, if the Taliban see ten girls leaving this house, they won’t stand by quietly and do nothing.” He waved his cane in the air. “We survived the Russians. We survived the civil war. I won’t allow us to be dishonored by Taliban whips.”

  Madar explained that by homeschooling the neighborhood girls I would be able to lessen the burden of loneliness. I would be able to stay in touch with friends. Besides, girls should not grow up illiterate. I thought to myself that if the girls remain illiterate, the Taliban would have accomplished their wicked objectives.

  I was excited, even though I was afraid. I took my grandfather’s hand in my own. “I really want to do this, Baba-jan.”

  For the next week, Agha thought and schemed, trying to come up with a safe way to create a school in our home. I said we should gather the neighborhood girls on the pretense of teaching them the Qur’an. Baba-jan protested. “Anything can be mocked, but one cannot mock the name of God and the Qur’an.”

  “Baba-jan! You can teach them Qur’an after I teach them reading and writing.”

  Baba-jan scratched his beard. Finally, he pointed his finger at me. “You speak to me as if I am opposed to educating girls. I am not. I am being pragmatic.” Then he softened a bit. “We have to be very careful or these people will kill us.” Then he picked up his cane and left for the mosque. “May God help us.”

  News of the homeschool spread rapidly among the girls. Mushtaq warned me, “I will not have my house filled with girls. If you do this thing, I will turn you in to the Taliban myself. I will blow your school up with a rocket-propelled grenade!”

  I picked up a broom and chased after him. He ran out into the street. “I dare you to chase me!” he yelled, taunting me from across the dusty road. I could hear his laughter. I stopped in the shadow of our doorway.

  I was thirteen the day I began homeschooling the girls. Our yard was so crowded with eager students that Madar moved her kitchen to a smaller room so that I could use the biggest room in the house for teaching. Agha borrowed a blackboard from the boys’ school, where he was teaching.

  Every now and then, Mushtaq would climb over the wall into the courtyard, shouting, The Taliban are here! The Taliban are here! The terrified girls would hide their notebooks in their Qur’ans and fall trembling into one another’s arms. And my little brother would laugh and laugh and laugh. Even though we became used to his terrible and not very funny joke, we still shivered every time. Such naughtiness was expected of boys to tease and scare girls.

  Over time, the girls grew up before our eyes; the corners of their shawls kept rising higher from the ground as they grew taller. Madar guarded the classroom with a watchful eye, winter and summer, stitching colorful birds that would never fly away. While I learned to be a teacher, she sat patiently every day drawing flowers on cloth panels and embroidering them, stitch by stitch. She believed that one day, all those colorful birds would flap their wings and fly away, out of the stitches of the woven cloth into the clear blue sky.

  The Taliban forbid any painting or needlework that portrayed people or any other living things. They claimed that drawing the images of living beings was a terrible sin. As she sewed, Madar would nod her head and say, “My life was full of obstacles.”

  Many nights, I dreamed that the sky was darkened with flocks of birds. They were coming in the thousands, flying into our courtyard, filling every room in our house. They picked up Madar in their beaks, lifting her into the air. I dreamed that shining stars were tangled in my mother’s beautiful hair, falling to the earth like fiery sparks as the birds carried her away. I saw Madar, pinioned by a thousand beaks, growing smaller, then disappearing amid the cloud of birds.

  Waking from my nightmare, I jumped up and ran to Madar, the vision of her beautiful star-filled hair lingering in my mind, only to find her tresses hidden beneath her scarf. I tenderly touched her sleeping face and returned to my bed.

  Opium commands a very high price in the developed world. Before the arrival of the Taliban, however, opium was very cheap in Afghanistan. Farmers could barely survive regardless of what they planted. But when the Taliban came to power, they manipulated the price of opium by monopolizing its cultivation, harvesting, and trade. Their enormous earnings then allowed them to purchase weapons, pay their troops, and implement sharia law. Adding to the war suffering, a severe drought spread across Afghanistan, causing many crops to fail, and people from the countryside and small villages fled to the larger cities looking for work.

  The drought laid to waste crops in the fields, and devastated the shrubs and trees, especially the apple orchards. One day I asked Baba-jan why God had punished the apple trees. It wasn’t the fault of those trees that men had planted opium. My grandfather threw me a stern look. “If the wrath of God comes to a forest in the form of fire, it will burn all the trees, whether dead or alive.”

  Terrible suffering was inflicted on Afghanistan in those years. In addition to the poverty, drought, and despair, gossip, fear, and superstition rampaged through the streets like a pack of starving dogs. The women as well as the men bombarded us with countless fables and legends implying that all these miseries that befell us were the wrath of God.

  The city of Herat was in the grip of a drought and economic collapse, but conditions were somewhat better than in the villages. Thousands of families from the surrounding region fled to Herat. The area across the small river in front of our house had been turned into an arid wasteland by years of Soviet bombing and tank treads and the subsequent destruction of the civil war. Ruined houses and shattered plots of land, once home to dozens of families, stood empty and abandoned. Little by little, this desolate landscape became filled with a legion of tents, each housing a family displaced by drought, famine, and war.

  The few international NGOs that dared to remain in Afghanistan had provided the displaced families with tents for shelter. Eventually, the neighborhood mosque became too small to accommodate the male refugee congregants. So a large old tent was erected across the river from our home to serve as their mosque.

  As time passed, more and more people from Ghor Province settled across the river from our house. We called them the “tent people.” Our neighbors began to greet the refugees with smiles and kind words.

  In those days, I lived the life of a bat. I could only appear at night, once darkness fell and when the city’s heart stopped beating. I would open the front door wide and try to discern the river through the blackness, the vague shadows of walls along our street, and the jagged field of black tents pitched in the rubble, lit only by frail lantern flames winking in the night. I knew there were so many children in those tents, who, just like me, loathed boiled potatoes and cried for a simple plate of rice.

  In the dark of night, I would hear the call for prayer. There was no other music on the streets, it was forbidden, just these adhan, chanted five times a day. In this utter silence, in this utter darkness, the city had become a ghost town.

  Sometimes, in that silent darkness, the crying of a baby reached me from the tents, a sorrowful sound that wounded my heart. But the most plaintive sound in that ghost town was the somber but beautiful voice of a mother singing lullabies. These sweet, sincere melodies rose from among the tents, and sometimes from the high-walled houses beyond. Clear, sad notes that floated on the air and took back the night from the muezzin.

  Several months after the arrival of the tent people, Agha told us he had noticed the youngest refugee girls gathering across from our house before and after classes. I told Agha that I had seen them as well, standing next to each other on the riverbank, staring at our house. I assumed that they also wanted to learn to read and write.

  The girls from the tents had befriended the girls in my classroom. They knew exactly what was going on in our house. One day three of the refugee girls knocked on our door and begged me to allow them in the classroom. They swore they would tell no one, not even their own families. I told them that we had so many girls from the
neighborhood, there was no more space in the classroom. The girls left our home with tears in their eyes, dragging away a piece of my heart.

  I said we should find a way to teach in the mosque tent. I asked Agha to meet with the refugee parents to see if they would agree to let me teach their girls. They also absolutely had to agree to keep our school a secret.

  After discussions with Agha, the tent people agreed to allow us to use the mosque tent for teaching their girls, but only if my lessons began after the noon prayer and ended before the late-afternoon prayer.

  The tent people made Agha promise that in addition to reading and writing, I would teach their children the Qur’an.

  I’ll never forget the first day. Agha strapped the heavy blackboard on his back. He took a circuitous route to the mosque to avoid a Taliban checkpoint located close to the encampment. With great anxiety, he crossed the Injil River bridge, entered the tent mosque, and leaned the blackboard against one of the tent poles. The refugee children began clapping and cheering. I placed a finger on my lips. “Have you forgotten your pledge already? What was our agreement? We are not to do anything that might upset the mullah.”

  After that day, it became Agha’s responsibility to fetch the blackboard from our home right after the noon prayers, circumvent the Taliban checkpoint, cross the narrow bridge over the river, and carry it into the tent. At the end of our class in the mosque, before the late-afternoon prayer, Agha carried the board back to our house so that it would be ready for my morning class.

  Soon, a number of refugee boys joined my classroom in the mosque. They were very young and full of energy. Their presence breathed new life into our placid, fearful group of girls. The boys didn’t want to attend school in the city. We asked their parents to keep their boys in the official school because of the added risk. But the boys rebelled. They complained that the teachers taught them nothing except Qur’anic recitation, Arabic, hadith, and sharia. “We are not allowed to play, the teachers hit us, and they force us to wear heavy turbans, even in the hottest weather.”