Through Karima's Eyes

THROUGH KARIMA’S EYES

The bright, radiant full moon was raising on the skies of Rawalpindi. Another night had passed by without our true selves and the scent of our old, beautiful mulberry trees and their fresh, long barks. Fazila and I had never thought such a disgraceful occurrence could take place in our seemly quiet and perfect homeland.
We arrived in Rawalpindi with Madar about nine months ago. The weather was extremely grey and frightening. I remember Fazila was hugging me the moment we got out the small white truck which leaded us and our closest friends to Pakistan and that her eyes were a bit teary.
- What is this? – she whispered – It seems like Hell to me.
Me and my reflection were moved to a rocky two-story house inhabited by an uncle who we’d never met and two aunts whose skin was brown as the cocoa Father used to buy us once in a while from an extravagant market in the centre of Kabul. They gave us their home’s largest bedroom, a white-plastered room filled with old furniture and two cosy and warm beds which kept us safe from the cold Northern Pakistani winters. Mom also got a dry mattress and its comforts, yet she would have to share the walls with our uncle’s wives. Still, we cannot say they treat us the wrong way.
In the first days at our new home, we hid the purple and turquoise blue burqas away and walked a lot around the neighbourhood just like two Western teenagers would do in the same situation. Father joined us on the first week of our arrival. He had a small wound on his right arm, but he didn’t actually care about it. In the day he became our uncles’ new permanent guest, Father received a superb dinner consisting of hot naan which we dipped into a fumigant soy and mutton qorma, large red grapes and whipped cream pudding. We ate so much we believed the Devil himself would harm us for committing the dangerous sin of gluttony.
Father was a very religious man. Once he discovered there was a small mosque near our public hideout, he started to go there often pretty often. There, he would pray for the political and social situation in Afghanistan to improve and wish me and Fazila could have a beautiful life next to decent, polite men. I think that he should have spent less time doing that, he had been a spiritual rather than a physical Islamic man all of his life, just like many of his relatives, specially males, and hypocrisy was not a thing I used to appreciate.
The moon had found her favourite spot on the indigo sky. Fazila was seated on her bed, trying a blue shirt with long sleeves. Her breasts were far bigger than mine, or maybe that was just my senses fooling me. Still, I did think that after that Soviet swine with the grey moustache grabbed her left breast, it swelled a bit. My sister was a stronger young lady than I was, if such had happened to me I wouldn’t be smiling as often as she used to do. Besides that one tiny detail, we were physically identical, I thought, on a day I had a blurred premonition. I saw ourselves in a far-away country eating fried food and breathing grease and oil scented air. I ignored such vision, I had to think on what to buy the following day for my uncle’s birthday.

Father didn’t seem relieved to be in Peshawar anymore. He had abandoned his office a year before and was constantly telling us how he missed his messy, noisy life and the touch of fresh money and soft telegrams. That’s why we started talking about travelling abroad and beginning a whole new life in a distant patria. He got in touch with relatives who happened to be political refugees as well and told us one day to pack all our belongings. That’s how Fazila and I ended up in London. That’s also how our parents became exotic nomads who would sell gorgeous Pakistan hand-made items at modest prices all around the world. For years, the silly apple-shaped telephone owned by our aunt Ji, as she oddly liked to be called, was the only link between us and them, daughters and parents.
London was so much different from any place we had met or seen so far. The streets were filled with multi-coloured cars racing rapidly between the sidewalks where people with blonde, dark, silver and red hair ran by. There were tall buildings touching the city’s usually grey sky and the Big Ben would bang hourly. London’s trees looked dirtier and less vivid than Kabul’s and at night there were always lights on. The food there was extremely fatty. My premonition was accurate, after all.
It was in London, though, that we became important people, in my sister’s words. We went to school and ended up studying in college. We took a degree on Anthropology with the monetary help of our family. Months later, Fazila and I began to work as secretaries in a Human Resources Office, and later started to do scientific researches.
Unfortunately, our destinies weren’t as bounded as we first thought. Fazila went to the United States to work and share a house with our parents, who had fixed themselves in New York, where they had opened a tiny Afghan restaurant. I wanted to move with Fazila to the Americas, but I was asked to help some Afghans find a new home in England. Since they were mostly Papa’s friends, I really felt I had to give them a hand.
Many of the refugees I met had wounds and scars which were a consequence of war and disorder in Afghanistan. There were women who had been either raped or hurt and teased by Soviets and children who hadn’t had a single day of peace since they had been born. The way our common homeland had changed scared me a lot. I tried not to visualize the descriptions I was given. Kabul’s humblest houses and neighbourhoods were in ruins, every corner was covered in dust, the trees and flowers decorating the city were dying with the sweetness and innocence of its inhabitants.
While aiding these people get a better life, I met Ibrahim, a tall, unemployed Physics teacher from Jalalabad. He told me he was an Uzbek, although he had always lived a very Pashtun way of live. Ibrahim had worked in Peshawar for years, until he started to feel the threat of the Taliban on him and decided to flee as farthest as he could. That was how he ended up in London. I liked him and his dark eyes reminded me of the children who used to play with me and Fazila near our magnificent, rocky mountain house.
We started going out nearly a month after I met him. I became interested about the idea of returning to Afghanistan thanks to him, just so I could help others who were looking to get out of the country as we had done. I remember Ibrahim only wish was to see his relatives, whose biggest part was still living in Asia, willing to travel to Europe and to the United States, where my cousin Amir, the one who once puked over my colourful dress on a truck trip and spoiled my day, was living with his father and wife, a woman called Soraya who worked as a teacher.
Nearly after a round-belly cycle – an expression my sister used to refer to a nine months period – I agreed to return to Afghanistan with Ibrahim so he could see his family again and I could comprehend how bad was the situation there.
We travelled in a comfy plane to Islamabad, then on a smaller, dirtier one to Rawalpindi, where I visited the uncles with whom I had once lived with, and accepted a ride to Kabul from a merchant, one of my uncle’s dearest cousins, who would go every two week to the Afghan capital, where he used to sell carpets and towels. Before entering the country, I was told to put my violet burqa on, what I did quite lazily.
Afghanistan had changed a lot since I had left its lands. The country side people looked much thinner and unhappier than I remembered, scared and poor. Their houses reminded me of the old archaeological ruins that could be found in southern Afghanistan, the food they ate looked almost rotten. I became anxious.
When we reached Kabul, I almost cried. The clean streets I had once crossed with Fazila and Padar in order to go to the cinema were filled with debris and partially covered in dust. The trees which used to decorate the city were mostly gone or dead. There were many people begging for money in the streets and I not found could single woman who was not hidden under a burqa.
This cousin of my uncle, Faris, told us women no longer had the right to educate themselves or to go to a public hospital if they needed to. They couldn’t go to the streets on their own, they couldn’t vote or look a man in the eyes. Taliban were also allergic, very reactive, to music, dancing, homosexuality, Western cultural manifestations and certain books. However, Faris told me the Taliban guards wouldn’t mind to break the rules in the privacy of their mansions.
A van carrying two men with long black beards passed by us. They were Taliban and they looked at every citizen with the most menacing look they could put on their faces. I felt disgusted by their presence and the way they submitted the Afghan people to their insane rules, laws and religious beliefs. I also felt a little embarrassed by having felt and thought in the past that I could have had a much nicer and more comfortable life than I was having. I had the luck to be able to escape to Pakistan when the Soviets invaded the country and to be received in a decent home, I had the chance to travel abroad and go to college and I could walk all by myself in the streets of London and wear a short dress. How could I complain about my past when there were so many women suffering in front of my eyes, who wanted to flee from their lives and couldn’t?
I suddenly saw a woman taking off her grey burqa in order to take a deep breath. She looked exhausted and in need of fresh air. Still, the young Taliban who was walking around didn’t seem to care what were her motives for showing her face to the world. He ran to the young woman and hit her with a wooden truncheon. The window of my car was open, so I screamed in my best Pashto something like, You stupid little pig, she is free to spit at you if she wants to!
The Taliban looked around and saw our car. The wounded woman ran away as he stared at us with a face full of anger. Faris turned around his car quickly and drove us out of the city as fast as he could.
When we returned to Rawalpindi, I told my story to my several aunts and they felt proud of me. Ibrahim didn’t feel the same about what I did, since he thought we weren’t getting out of Kabul in our two legs. Faris didn’t seem to mind much about the Taliban’s possible reaction to my brave deed and assured us he would get a way to get on with his life.
In our trip back to London, I remembered I felt proud about myself. I saved that woman from the claws and weapons of that awful Taliban and said something that needed to be yelled, spoke aloud in all Afghanistan.
London became much nicer to my eyes than I had ever though before, but I still wanted to meet my parents and Fazila in the United States and to share at least a house with them.
I started to save a bit more money than I intended to. Meanwhile, Ibrahim got a job as a high school teacher. A round-belly cycle later, he proposed me in marriage. I accepted his request without thinking twice.
It was soon after this magnificent happening that we travelled to New York City, where my parents lived, as well as my warm, curvy mirror, Fazila. I discovered the little Afghan bar my parents owned had been recently transformed into an ethnical, trendy gourmet restaurant. I felt so happy for them.
Mom and Dad received Ibrahim in the family circle with smiles and cheers, as well as the monetary offer from his parents. They invited us to move to the US. We thought a lot about it for a couple of weeks and accepted the proposal.
Our marriage took place in a cold spring day, on my parents’ American house. Musicians filled it with sweet melodies and pretty children danced around the room where Ibrahim and I read some extracts from the Quran and looked at each other in a mirror, under a black piece of cloth. The party lasted until dawn came, and I remembered I got a terrible stomach ache for eating so much grilled lamb and green grapes. But at least Ibrahim and I were married and everybody felt good for us.
We returned to London in order to resolve a couple of things. My darling immediately began working on his professional transferring to the US, something he got permission to do in almost no time, since he was a much respected teacher in his school. I also discovered that the NYU was in need of an Anthropology assistant teacher. Ibrahim thought on his parents too and told them to live with us while they were trying to get a job. After many discussions, they took our invitation, they loved his son too much.
We prepared our change to New York rapidly, but wisely. After arriving in the city, we got to arrange every detail of our lives. We moved to a nice, cosy house on the Queens area, not far from where my parents and Fazila lived. My sister was dating Ali, a big-hearted doctor who seemed to please her a lot.
Even though I had done something necessary when I went to Kabul and was living a very good life, I realize I could do more for the Afghan women. I began to work a bit on an organization which major objective was to help women and children in Afghanistan get decent health care and education.
Fazila married a year after she met Ali and they had twins recently, two little boys whose names are Faysal and John. The US invaded our true nation and freed it from the Taliban. Afghan women are free again, at least they should be, and I will continue working on their future and hope they feel as happy as I am now.

Hi,

I just signed a petition asking European Commision President Jose Barroso, to press European leaders to start to make good on their promise to the world's poorest people at their summit next week in Brussels.

I hope that you'll join me in taking action by signing the petition now at:
http://www.one.org/international/barroso/?rc=barrosotaf

There has been a lot of progress against extreme poverty in recent years, but, as recent headlines about the global food crisis and natural disasters like Cyclone Nargis in Burma will tell you, there is still much to be done.

When we unite with one voice and call upon our leaders to take action, we can and will solve these problems.

Thank you