When the British departed Afghanistan in 1880, they left Abdur Rahman on the throne because he was loyal to Britain and would keep Russia out. His brutality earned him the name the “Iron Amir.” Because he was a Barakzai, the Popalzai khans of Kandahar refused to recognize his authority. Abdur Rahman attacked Kandahar and defeated the khans, including my grandfather Mukarram. Because of Pashtunwali (the way of the Pashtuns), even the Iron Amir could not kill my grandfather but exiled him instead.
Pashtunwali is the Pashtun tribes’ ancient unwritten code of honor, handed down from father to son. It guides Pashtuns from birth to death. Pashtunwali embodies many traditions: kinship, friendship, hospitality, disputes, war, and morality. When there is a conflict between Pashtunwali and Islam, Pashtunwali governs. In a Pashtun’s home it is Pashtunwali that rules. Afghans would never gamble in a mosque because the Koran forbids gambling. But outside the mosque Afghans gamble on everything. They are Afghans first and Muslims second.
When a dispute arises, tribal elders, following Pashtunwali, convene a jirga to settle the matter. All Afghans, no matter their status, obey the jirga’s decision. This is still the way in Afghanistan. Under its code of hospitality, a host must offer anyone protection without expectation of favor. Under its code of revenge, an Afghan is honor bound to avenge a death, an injury, or an insult, particularly if it involves one of the three z’s: zan, zar, and zamin (women, wealth, and land).
If the Iron Amir had killed my grandfather, he would have had to fight the Popalzai of Kandahar until they were avenged. That is why, instead of executing my grandfather, Abdur Rahman confiscated all his lands and belongings and exiled him and his family to Gandamak, a mile-high valley of farms and mulberry trees near Jalalabad. And that is why, in 1902, my father was born in Gandamak and not in Kandahar. My grandfather named him Abdul Rahman Popal, but my father never liked the name Abdul because it was an Arab name. He called himself “Rahman,” a traditional Afghan name that reflected his love of Afghanistan.
The Iron Amir died in 1901, the year before my father was born. His son Habibullah succeeded him. Perhaps wanting to restore relations with the Kandahar Popalzai, King Habibullah pardoned my grandfather. But the king did not want him to return to Kandahar—or any other city. The pardon was conditional: Mukarram had to stay at least twenty-five miles away from any city. That suited Mukarram because he was content to stay in Gandamak. But when his wife (he was the rare khan who had only one wife) insisted on moving out of the cold mountain valley and closer to Kabul, he relented and moved the family to the pleasant, fertile Logar Valley, twenty-five miles to the south of Kabul.
When my father turned seven, he was sent to the local religious school, the madrassa, to study the Koran. Although he spoke Dari and Pashto, he sat for hours, head bent over the Holy Book, memorizing every word in Arabic. The mullah placed a pinch of sand in the hollow of each student’s bent neck, warning, “Do not let a grain of sand touch the floor.” My father did not.
When my father turned sixteen, Mukarram tried to arrange his marriage to the daughter of a wealthy local farmer. Although once rich and powerful, our family had little money after the exile. The farmer demanded land, which my grandfather did not have, and the proposal was rejected. When my father heard this, he was so ashamed, he ran away, hitching a ride with a farmer to his sister Abiba’s house in Kabul. Baba expected Abiba would greet him warmly, but instead, she scolded him. “How could you, the eldest son, leave Aga?” But Baba was defiant. “I will never go back until I’ve made something of myself.”
Soon after he arrived, Baba followed Abiba’s husband to the Foreign Ministry, where Abiba’s husband worked as a guard. Baba was surprised to find hundreds of illiterate men waiting outside the ministry to have letters read or documents prepared by the ministry’s clerks. Baba began reading and writing letters for them as they waited outside. A few weeks later Baba was writing a letter when it was snatched from his hand by the head clerk at the Foreign Ministry. The clerk read the letter and, to my father’s great surprise, offered him a job. At eighteen Baba began work as a scribe, his first position in the Foreign Ministry.
At the beginning of 1919, as the biting winds of January blew snow through Kabul’s narrow lanes, the deputy foreign minister called my father into his office. The head clerk was absent that day, and the deputy foreign minister needed a document prepared. My father worked quickly and handed the document to the deputy foreign minister. The deputy read with widening eyes, then went to a cabinet and pulled out a folder. He removed one of the many documents the folder contained and compared it to Baba’s. “Did you write this?” he asked as he handed Baba the document for him to see.
“Baleh,” Baba replied.
“I had been led to believe these documents were the work of someone else,” he said, almost to himself.
The next day, when Baba arrived at his desk, he found the head clerk sitting there. “You are head clerk now,” he told my father.
That year King Habibullah was assassinated while on a hunting trip. His twenty-seven-year-old son, Amanullah, only third in line for the throne, was governor of Kabul and controlled the army as well as the Treasury. His position won him the support of the tribal leaders over the stronger claims of his brothers, and Amanullah took the throne. During World War I Amanullah’s father had kept Afghanistan neutral, though he could have attacked British interests in India. But Amanullah was part of the young activists who wanted to attack Britain, which still controlled Afghanistan’s foreign policy, keeping it from being an independent nation.
As the new king, Amanullah told the British envoy: “Afghanistan is as independent a state as the other states and powers of the world. No foreign power will be allowed to have a hair’s breadth of right to interfere internally or externally with the affairs of Afghanistan, and if any ever does, I am ready to cut its throat with my sword.”
When the British still refused to recognize Afghanistan’s independence, King Amanullah ordered General Nadir to attack the British in western India. Not only did the Pashtuns in the British force refuse to fight against the Pashtuns in General Nadir’s force; they joined them in staging guerrilla attacks on the remaining British force. The British commander in India received a rare bit of wise advice from London: “You will not have forgotten the lessons of history that we have not so much to fear from the Afghan regular army as from the irregular tribesmen and their constant attacks on our isolated camps and lines of communications.” It was advice the Russians would fail to heed sixty years later.
The Third Anglo-Afghan War was soon over. On August 19, 1919, the Treaty of Rawalpindi was signed between Afghanistan and Britain, recognizing Afghanistan as an independent nation—but the hated Durand Line remained. Russia, of course, wanted to take advantage of Britain’s loss and began providing money and military equipment to Afghanistan.
Amanullah was the first Afghan ruler to be captivated by the liberal views of the West. Among the political exiles he allowed to return to Afghanistan was Mahmoud Tarzi, who had been banished by the Iron Amir. Tarzi was opposed to religious extremism and supported freedom of the press. King Amanullah was so taken with Tarzi’s views that he married Tarzi’s daughter Soraya. Together King Amanullah and Queen Soraya shared a passion to modernize Afghanistan. In a break with Afghan tradition, Soraya would be the king’s only wife.
After making a tour of Turkey and Europe, King Amanullah and Queen Soraya returned to Afghanistan intent on expanding women’s rights, building schools for girls, allowing a free press, requiring the wearing of Western dress, and creating a new constitution. King Amanullah’s sister shared these views as well and spoke about the need for educating women: “Old women discourage young women from learning by saying their mothers never starved to death because they could not read or write. But knowledge is not man’s monopoly. Women also deserve to be knowledgeable. We must on the one hand bring up children and on the other hand help men in their work. We must read about famous women of this world to know that women can achieve exactly what men can achieve.”
Amanullah was king, but as has always been the case with Afghanistan, the tribal leaders were really in control, and they opposed his reforms. The Afghan government paid tribal leaders to provide fighters for the Afghan military. But the soldier’s loyalty was always to his tribe and tribal leader. When General Nadir opposed Amanullah’s attempt to weaken tribal influence, urging him to respect tribal tradition, Amanullah appointed him ambassador to France—the Afghan way of exile. The general needed a personal secretary to record meetings and prepare documents in the embassy in Paris. He asked his brother in the Foreign Ministry for a recommendation, someone who had not gotten his position through family connections, someone who came from poverty and was hungry for work, a man of good character who was honest and could be trusted.
That man was my father.