THREE YEARS AFTER I first joined RAWA, it sent me to live at a refugee camp that lies on the outskirts of the Pakistani city of Peshawar.
I arrived in a cloud of dust so heavy that even though I wrapped my scarf around my face, the dust got into my eyes and hair. To get to the camp from the city, I sat on the open back of a truck, riding next to the supplies with some other RAWA members. For the last half hour we bumped along a dirt road that stretched across the desert. Cars that passed us going the opposite direction blew up fresh clouds of dust.
I was greeted by Ameena, the RAWA worker at the camp. Three years older than I, she was tall and skinny, with long dark hair that she wore in braids. Ameena told me that she had first arrived at the camp as a refugee when her father brought her there as a young girl. He had sold vegetables at a market in Afghanistan until he lost his job. She had studied at the camp’s school and since then has never left.
She showed me the house that we would be sharing. It was in the middle of the camp, a small dark mud house very much like the one I had been brought up—with bits of mud falling from the ceiling from time to time, just as they had done at home, and the same sound of termites munching their way through the table and chair. Piles of papers were everywhere. There was no heater. The toilet was a hole in the ground in a small shed outside. Apart from the papers, it was exactly the same kind of house that the refugees lived in.
We had only been in the house for a few minutes when the refugees started knocking at the door. The news of our arrival had spread quickly among them, thanks to the children who were always playing around the houses, and they wanted to welcome me with an embrace. It chastened me to realize that they believed we could make a real difference to their lives.
That evening, as we sat outside the house talking, I told Ameena that there were many more stars in the sky than I could see from the city. As a child, and with Grandmother’s help, I had often tried to spot the star that shone brightest.
“Yes, the camp is so dark it makes the stars stand out. You can see everything,” she said. “I often walk around the camp until after midnight. I’m always looking at the sky.”
“But surely walking that late is dangerous for you. Someone could come up from behind and…”
Ameena nodded. “It’s true that the camp is not always a safe place. We just have to be careful. But don’t worry about me.”
That night she wanted to give me her bed, but I refused and insisted she let me sleep on the carpet. I put my books and the little bottle of perfume I had brought with me on a small table. Although I knew I would never wear it in the refugee camp, I liked to see it there. From that first night I thought of the house as my home.
Early the next morning I saw much of the life of the camp pass outside my window—it was so busy it could have been a television set. Women, balancing milk from their goat on their heads, shouted angry warnings at the children who rushed past them, pulling and pushing at one another on their way to the school.
I was soon struck by how much compassion Ameena had in her heart—more than I would ever have. A few days after my arrival, we were due to hold an important meeting at the camp. RAWA members from other camps were coming for a big discussion on how best to run them. We were just about to start the meeting when I realized that Ameena was missing, so I went out to look for her.
The camp was huge. There were mud houses and tents for two thousand families, and they were set in a desert of dust, with not one green bush or tree in sight. I did not know where to look. It took me an hour to walk from one end of the camp to the other. I walked and walked, knocked on doors, asked dozens of people whether they had seen her, and sent children running to search for her. No one knew where she was.
I found her at last at the other end of the camp, her arms stretched around a dirty child—so dirty I would never have touched him—whom she had swung across her hips. He was in tears, his hair was matted with dirt, and the mucus from his nose was running down to his chin.
“Ameena, what on earth are you up to?” I asked angrily. “Have you forgotten the meeting? We’re all waiting for you.”
“Ah, I am sorry. I just saw this child. He’s only seven years old, and already he’s working in the brick factory. I thought I would take him to the store to buy him a sweet,” she replied.
The factory just outside the camp was a terrible place. Every day it spewed black smoke over the camp as old tires were burned as fuel. A boy like the one Ameena was carrying would get up at four o’clock in the morning and work without a break until evening, first shaping the bricks into a muddy mess and then carrying them, still in their iron molds, to the oven, his back straining under the weight, his hands scratched and bloody—all for as little as ten rupees a day. Adults were paid sixty rupees a day, less than a dollar, providing they worked fast enough to produce five bricks.
Children and adults worked at the oven on even the hottest days of the year, their bodies baking along with the bricks. They were treated like slaves. The work halved their life expectancy because of the dust and smoke they breathed in from the oven. The Pakistani owners of the factory never allowed us to visit it.
I could not be angry with Ameena, and we laughed as we made our way to the meeting with me doing my best to hurry her up. I always call Ameena “turtle” because she walks so slowly, almost as slowly as Grandmother.
Often I would find Ameena sitting with the women, crying as she listened to their stories. She was always willing to listen to them and became so wrapped up in their stories that she would forget the work she was supposed to be doing that day.
I HELD THE HANDS of the old woman, but they were so cold it was like clutching a corpse. She gave no sign that she was aware of my presence. She did not cry, she simply stared at the floor. Her head, wrapped in the black scarf of mourning, hung down to one side. Her face was white, her lips purple and caked in blood. The only movement was her thumb rubbing slowly against her index finger.
The men who had arrived with her at the refugee camp had told me that she had lost her son Najib. I knew Najib. He had lived and studied in the camp before becoming a supporter of RAWA and starting to teach classes to the boys. One year earlier he had left to take care of his mother in Yakaolang, a town in the center of Afghanistan that is populated by the Hazara tribe, which the Taliban hate.
A few days earlier, I had heard about the massacre there on the radio. I caught only part of the news—the radio is very old. It usually takes at least half an hour to find the right wavelength, and even then, the signal comes and goes. It never fails to make me furious.
When I first saw the refugees arriving, I was at a loss for words. There were three dozen or so, mostly women and children. We tried to do what we could for them, but the adults all sat as if in a daze, resting their chins in their hands. They had lost everything. They were in a world of their own.
I did not even try to say the words one usually says to someone who has lost a close relative or friend—“I am sorry, and I hope that you will be strong enough to survive this tragedy.” It would mean nothing to them, given their suffering, and they probably wouldn’t even hear me.
The mother, a scrawny, disheveled figure, was sitting motionless in a corner of the room. Next to her was the young woman who had become Najib’s wife only two weeks before his death. Her hair and her hands still bore traces of the rust-brown henna she had worn for her marriage. I found it impossible to look at his mother because my mind was so full of Najib, remembering how hard he had studied and how he was always ready to help.
I was too overwhelmed to stay in the room, so I walked out without saying anything. I knew that at that moment I did not have the strength to help them. Sometimes I think that even if I sat for days on end listening to the terrible stories the refugees have to tell until my ears dropped off, I might become crazy myself, but I would not change anything in their lives. So it is better to get on with my work. Better to show that we are working to help them, rather than promise them the world.
Eventually I learned the details of the massacre, which took place in January 2001, from a RAWA friend who was collecting the survivors’ accounts for a report. I did not take part in this. I could not bear to sit and listen to the men who had survived describe the killings, imitating as they did so the sound of the Kalashnikovs with their tongues, while the women around them who had lost sons, husbands, and brothers relived their agony. It was the sound that they had been forced to listen to as they cowered in their houses. At each volley of bullets, they pictured in their minds their men falling to their knees.
For me the job of interviewing refugees to write reports for the publications is one of the worst jobs in RAWA. I can’t do it. Although I’m sure no one can tell by looking at me, because I don’t show my real feelings, there is so much happening inside me when I have to hear one of these stories that I am afraid of how I will react.
A Taliban commander had retaken the town and ordered that all boys and men between the ages of thirteen and seventy who were considered to be anti-Taliban be rounded up. The commander’s soldiers herded the men to assembly points, put them before firing squads, and executed them. About three hundred men were slaughtered. One teenager was skinned alive. The killings were apparently intended to deter people from cooperating with the Taliban’s enemies in the future.
One man who had escaped told me that after the killings, he had taken Najib’s mother by the hand and brought her out of Afghanistan. “She never said a word to me. Not even to ask where I was taking her,” he said.
Three days went by before I could bring myself to visit the mother. I sat down beside her and felt her pulse. There was almost nothing. Her daughter-in-law, who was seventeen, sat in a corner, glancing occasionally at me.
“Mother,” I began, “I have no words to express our grief. Najib was a brother to us. He helped us, and as long as we are alive, you can count on us to help you. Even to seek revenge for the blood of your son.”
At that moment I would have done anything for this woman, even pick up a gun. I wasn’t thinking straight, and I should never have said those words. Sometimes my feelings get the better of me and I cannot help speaking out. The mother was still immobile. There was no life in her eyes. I could not tell whether she welcomed my words.
“Mother, this is your home now. We will look after you. Najib is not alive, but his friends will always come to see you,” I continued. I talked and talked, but she never acknowledged me.
Eventually I stood up. “I am sorry to have spoken so long,” I said. “I know this is no time for you to hear me.”
There was still no indication that she had. Nor did she move as I walked out of the room. I had taken only a few steps down the corridor when I heard the scream, a shrill scream that hit me like a slap in the face.
“Najib!” the mother cried. “You have killed me, you have killed your mother!”
I ran back into the room. The mother who had been so still only a few moments ago was in a frenzy, beating herself and pulling at her hair as her daughter-in-law struggled to calm her down. I sent someone to fetch a doctor, then took hold of the mother’s hands and managed to get her to sit down. Her pulse was so fast I thought she would die.
Suddenly she stopped shaking, as if her energy had all been spent. She placed her hands on my cheeks and kissed the top of my head. In return I kissed the back of her hands.
The next day I learned that she was refusing all food and drink. I went to see her to try to make her drink some milk. As her daughter-in-law held her head steady, I brought the glass to her lips. The only result was a thin film of white over the crusts of dried blood on her lips. The doctors put her on intravenous feeding.
I never spoke to her again about her son’s death. But I could not get her out of my mind, no matter how I busied myself with other work in the camp. An old nightmare returned. Someone or something is coming toward me. I know it wants to hurt me. I am powerless to shout or move. I open my mouth but can’t make a sound. My legs won’t move. Something is closing in on me, but I have no idea what it is. All I know is that it is black. It comes closer and closer.
I wake up, and because I know that I will not be able to sleep again, I switch on the light and go and do some work, whatever the time. Usually it is two or three o’clock in the morning. I worry that one night the something in my dream will get so close that it touches me.
When I spoke to Najib’s widow, who I knew could neither read nor write, I told her, “Don’t wear the black clothes of mourning. If you want to show your love for Najib, why don’t you do something he would have been proud of—why don’t you join the literacy classes at the camp? He would be happy to see you do that.”
“I will try,” she replied.
She started the next day. It was the only time during the day that she did not spend at her mother-in-law’s side. She was a good student, although she worried constantly about her marks. We had given them a room in the orphanage, the only one we had available. It was so hot that they had to leave their door open, with a curtain hung across it in an attempt to keep out the flies and mosquitoes.
We asked all the girls in the orphanage to take special care of the mother, and not to burst in on her by suddenly pulling aside the curtain. We asked the girls to try to persuade her to drink some milk with them every day. Little by little, she started eating again.