The Kandahar Lawyer

We were almost done with school when a Land Cruiser with UNAMA written on the sides drove up. I had a big smile on my face, because my mother was in that car. She got out with two of her colleagues. I stayed outside the principal’s room while she met with him. I usually waited for her while she met with the principal about their problems at school. My mother worked for the Gender Issues Unit of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan to help improve the lives of women.

When she came out, she said, “Yagana, my dear, I have to go to the Chinese Hospital.”

I knew there might be other women’s cases for her to review there. “Mom, can I go with you this time? You promised you’d take me with you sometime.”

Mom said, “You know I am not allowed to take you with me in my office car because of our office policies and security issues.”

“Can’t we take a taxi to the hospital?” I really wanted to go with her.

She finally smiled and said, “Okay, let’s go.”

At the hospital, we were taken to a room where a 19-year-old girl was lying with tubes coming from all over her body. I sat next to my Mom, who started interviewing the girl’s mother first.

The mother said, crying, “My daughter tried to commit suicide because we didn’t have money at home and her father tried to make her marry an old, rich man in our village. The man had promised to pay us 50,000 Afghani if we let him marry her. We had to accept this because we had to raise our other seven kids.”

I watched my mother write the report. My mother asked, “How did your daughter try to commit suicide?”

The mother replied, “She ate nails.”

We were shocked. “Why nails?” my mother asked.

“Because in our village we do not have any poison. There are no big buildings to jump from. This was the only option, I guess,” she said.

I suddenly burst in to tears. I realized my dream of becoming a lawyer was not a bad idea. I thought if I could become a lawyer, I could ask the government to help this family on regular basis or at least find her father a job so he could support his family. I thought of providing an opportunity for this girl to attend a literacy course so she could then teach the girls in her village. I thought of embroidery and tailoring courses. When I worked with the Afghan for Civil Society (ACS), we conducted workshops for women where they learned a skill and sold their work in the market.

After a while, a parliament lawyer came into the room. She shook hands with everyone. My mom whispered in my ear, “Yagana, she is a lawyer.”

I thought, wow, I’m finally seeing a female lawyer in Kandahar. But I was so disappointed when my mother told me she was not even a high school graduate. I felt as if I was somehow put here in this moment to observe the lawyer and witness my future job. The lawyer promised bunch of things to the family. Instead of trying to find out who that cruel old man was, she said “I’ll build a girls’ school in the village.” I was angry at the lawyer, because I thought, I am only a high school student and I feel she does not understand this family’s problem.

The mother of the girl said, “We don’t need a school at the moment. Just try to solve our current problems.” But the lawyer seemed to barely listen to the villagers.

It was as though she thought that just by saying she would build a school, it would fix all their problems. I wondered whether she thought about the larger problems building a school would create in a village controlled by the Taliban.

Most of the lawyers I knew seemed the same to me: they only knew how to deliver speeches and act as if they were being helpful. It seemed to me they weren’t really helping at all.

Later that day I decided that, God willing, I will fulfill this dream of mine of becoming a lawyer and solving my people’s problems. When I become a lawyer, I want to go to these villages that don’t have any access to the government, and introduce them to people who can help them. I want to really understand what their problems are, and hopefully take action to truly help them.

By Yagana

Coming Home

It took us eight hours to ride from Quetta, Pakistan to Kandahar, Afghanistan. On the way, there
were many Afghan restaurants. I was asleep in the bus when my mother woke me.

“Yagana, aren’t you hungry or thirsty?”

I was really thirsty. “Can we get tea here?” I asked.

She said, “Yes, I am sure we can get it.”

I looked outside the bus window; a sign on the right side of the road said: SHAIR AGHA’S RESTAURANT. We parked and my parents, my three brothers, my brother’s wife and I exited the bus.

A boy of about fourteen said, “Ladies, this way please.”

My mother, sister in law, and I followed the young boy. I asked my mother: “Why didn’t Father and my brothers come along with us?”

The young boy replied, “It’s your first time coming here, isn’t it?”

“Yes, so?”

“In our restaurants we have separate places to sit for males and females. So, your father and brothers will be sitting in the men’s section of the restaurant, and you have to sit in the female section.”

We washed our hands in a water pot in front of the room. There was a sign in Pashto. I guessed it said “LADIES.”

We entered the room, sat down and ordered “kabab” (steak). There were two other ladies with their four kids in the room. Sitting on the floor in an Afghan restaurant, on Afghan rugs, and eating kabab and tea from an Afghan tea pot felt so great. I was home.

We left the restaurant and went back to the bus. I asked my mother, “Who paid for our meal?”

“Your dad, of course.”

The driver started the bus and I went to sleep again. After four hours, my mother woke me up. “We’re almost there.”

I saw a big billboard: “WELCOME TO KANDAHAR.” At the bus station, a young boy came along with gums, juices, sweets, and snacks in a basket. My brother bought some snacks. Then we had to get out of the bus and board another because these buses were not allowed inside the city.

Finally, we then took a taxi towards Shahidah Square in Kandahar, to our final destination, my
mother’s cousin’s home. The seven of us were stuffed in the taxi. My dad and one brother sat in front seat next to the driver. My sister- in-law, mom, and two brothers sat in the back seats, and I sat on my mother’s lap.

As we drove through the city, I was astonished to see old and new buildings destroyed. Most had holes from bullets and rockets. Many houses were blackened by the smoke from fires caused by rocket attacks.

We entered a noisy street where kids were playing marbles. Houses stood close together with big gates and no doorbells. People knocked on the doors with stones because the houses were huge and the rooms were far from the gates. I saw many people come out of an enormous, beautiful mosque after praying to Namaz, one of the pillars of Islam and an important part of Muslim life. People were gathered outside the mosque, hugging each other, asking after one another’s health, and talking about their problems. If someone was missing from prayers, people would go to their homes make sure the family was doing well.

When we reached the house, we got out of the car; I was exhausted. We knocked on the large
gate, and a little boy nearly four years old came out without any pants on, holding a piece of bread. We went inside, through the dark kitchen, its walls black from the smoke of cooking. Pairan-Tumban, the Afghan clothes, hung in a long line on a rope inside the yard. In another part of the yard, a lady was taking water out of a well, and three other women sat on the mud floor washing more clothes with their hands.

My mother called out loudly, “Jamila Jaan!” to her first cousin. My mother had told me about Jamila, who had eight children. The women all got up from their washing, and Jamila’s first daughter, who was engaged, said loudly, “Is this Yagana, who I last saw at eight months old, now a young lady?” Jamila and the others cried and kissed my mother on her cheeks. They kissed all of the women, one by one. Kissing on cheeks was very different for me; they kissed each cheek three times.

Jamila Jaan yelled, “My son, come out, please.”

Her son came out of the room, and said, “Asalaam-u-Alikum, everyone.”

He shook hands with my aunt, mom and myself. He hugged my brothers and my father.

My sister in law said, “Ohhh, I am so tired.”

I laughed at her. “So do you think we are not?”

Jamila’s first daughter smiled, “I bet you are all tired, let’s go inside.”

They took us to their room, a long, empty room with red Afghan carpets. Everyone asked us
different questions: How are you? How did you feel on the way here? Did you have any difficulty with the police?

Some of the women left the room to prepare our meal, and the smell of the food made me hungrier. Soon afterward, a long dastarkhoan was laid out for us to eat on, and all the food was placed on it. Everyone sat down and said “Bismillahi rahmani rahim” (By the name of Allah the most merciful and compassionate). There were almost 28 people sitting and eating together. The adults sat on mattresses and the kids sat on the rugs. Three people shared one plate. You could hear the noises of the kids asking for different dishes. Some ate with hands rather than with spoons and forks.

I ate fast as I was really hungry. I tried all the dishes. One of my favorite was eggplant. They had cooked it so wonderfully that I didn’t want to stop eating it. The food was just like my mother’s cooking at home.

After eating, we had tea, and everyone seemed so happy. Someone talked, another listened. Someone smiled, the other laughed. My mother and her cousin shared their stories into the evening. Finally, I felt very tired and went to another room and slept on a mattress on the floor.

This was my first time back in my homeland, where I belonged, and it couldn’t have been more different from the way I was raised in Pakistan. There, we ate with spoons and forks, but Afghans used their hands. There, we washed clothes with a machine; here they washed by hand because they still didn’t have electricity at home. Afghans cooked dishes on the open flame, rather than using a stove. The floors here were made of mud but were clean as glass. Even though I felt culture shock in this place, this day was the most precious moment of my life, close to my own culture, my true home.

By Yagana

The Fearful Celebration

It was a bright day; I was sitting alongside the window in the classroom. As the principal of the school entered the class, he began calling a few names, including mine, and asking us to leave the room. We were all scared, but we left the room and headed towards the yard of the school where another one-hundred girls from different schools were standing. One of my close friends whispered in my ear, saying: “Maybe it’s a school contest.” I thought the same thing, except as the principal was finished gathering girls from different classes, we saw another man standing next to our principal wearing jeans and shirt. We were all busy finding out what was happening.

The man introduced himself. He was there to test us for a one-year scholarship program to the States. He pointed out the key objectives of this program. My schoolmates and I were pretty much shocked; some declined to take the test because of the security issues which may have put their parents’ lives in danger, along with other reasons. I was aware of all the consequences; still, I persuaded myself to join the rows of the test takers. With a great hope, we took the test, which took us roughly three hours.

Once we finished, I looked my watch and realized my parents were probably enormously concerned about me. When I got home, I told my parents the story about the American as a joke, because I didn’t want them to get mad at me. I didn’t know that my parents, who are engineers, were so open-minded. On one hand, they were tremendously pleased for me if I possibly could go to the States; on the other, they were concerned for the security and safety of their daughter, as we live in an area where the Taliban are well-known.

The next day, my classmates were wondering whether I would be going or not? I kept a promise I made to my mother. I said, in a light-hearted, casual way, “No, I won’t be going.” For a week, my mom dreamed about me getting killed by Taliban because of the possible scholarship. However, it was all a bad dream.

For a while, we determined to not talk about it. One day, when I was busy with my school assignments, my mom called me with a loud voice: “Yagana … Yagana … Yagana.” I felt stunned when I saw my mom. I saw tears of happiness in her eyes. She came close to me and started hugging me. Someone from the American program called her to say, “You daughter has passed the final test and has been designated to go for one year to the States.” I was exceedingly happy. A dream came true, although there was a dread still in my heart which didn’t permit me to be content. That was my fear of the Taliban. My family and I sat together and discussed it very seriously.

I had to make a decision. If I said yes, I would create problems for my family. If I said no, I would miss my golden chance. It took me many days and nights of thinking. It was extremely hard for me to finally decide. One night when I was looking at the sky, many things were going through my mind. I closed my eyes and asked God to help me with this decision. My eyes were full of tears when I opened them. At last I knew what I ought to do.

By Yagana