A shrouded Afghan woman and her daughter make their way through a war-torn district
of Kabul.
A lost generation.
Dispersed for the first time: an Afghan refugee camp in Iran.
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A
literary journey
Born in Kabul
in 1949, Spôjmaï Zariâb began publishing short stories when she
was 17. “My father gave me a love of literature,” she says. “He was a exceptional
man. He never made me feel I was just a girl and never forbade me or forced me to
do anything. There was no television when I was a child, and in the evening he read
us poems, which I came to know by heart. My father would recite the first part of
a poem and I’d continue to the end. I must have been about three or four years old.
After that, Persian classical poetry greatly helped me on my literary journey. But
the short story, my favourite literary form, is a Western invention I owe my love
for it to foreign writers, especially Europeans and Americans.”
After attending the Faculty of Literature and the Fine Arts School in Kabul, Zariâb
spent a year studying literature in France. When she returned home in 1973, a military
coup by Mohammed Daoud, the king’s cousin, ended the constitutional monarchy and
a series of conflicts began. Five years later, Daoud was murdered in another coup
d’état, and in September 1979, President Noor Mohammed Taraki was killed by
his deputy, Hafizullah Amin. Two months later, Amin was assassinated by Soviet forces.
They installed Babrak Karmal in power and invaded the country in December 1979.
During the 10 years of Soviet rule, Zariâb continued to work as a translator
at the French embassy in Kabul. She published her work in Iran and, despite censorship,
through Afghanistan’s only publisher and printer, the Writers’ Union.
In 1991, when the situation was fast deteriorating, Zariâb moved to Montpellier
with her two daughters. When the Taliban seized Kabul in 1994, her husband Rahnaward
Zariâb, himself an eminent Afghan writer, joined his family in France.
Spôjmaï Zariâb’s short stories–written in Dari, a variation of Persian
which, with Pashtun, is the official language of Afghanistan–are crafted in a harmonious
blend of simplicity, sparseness and poetry. Humanism and universalism are the two
features of her work, which continues to draw inspiration from her native land.
Her collection of short stories, “The Plain of Cain,” won her many readers, as well
as “Portrait of a City on a Purple Background,” a theatre adaptation of her work
presented at the Avignon Off festival in 1991. In the postscript of her book, “These
Walls That Listen to Us,” Michael Barry, a French expert on Persian literature, writes
that “Spôjmaï, whose name means ‘full moon,’ is one of the three greatest
Afghan writers of our time, along with the two poets, Khalîlî, who died
in exile, and Madjroûh, who was assassinated.”
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The
Afghan writer Spôjmaï Zariâb is haunted by bitter memories and deeply
apprehensive about her people’s future. Exiled in France, she tirelessly denounces
the wars that have laid waste to her country, without ever losing hope. Each of her
short stories rings like a verdict against the regime of terror imposed upon her
compatriots, and against the humiliations inflicted upon Afghan women
Kabul, the Afghan
capital, is now a desolate and terrorized city. But you knew it in better times.
I was lucky enough to live there when my country was starting to taste democracy,
modernize, introduce reforms across the board and fight the feudal system that still
prevailed in some regions. In 1954, dress rules were abolished. It was rare to see
women wearing chadors (veils) in towns. Women quickly asserted themselves in all
areas of life, becoming doctors, members of parliament, soldiers, parachutists and
bus-drivers. They may not have represented a big percentage, but they were active
in such a wide range of activities.
The university was mixed and the first primary schools teaching both girls and boys
sprang up. In Kabul, you could find books of all kinds from around the world, translated
into Persian. We lived free and fulfilling lives. We could hold public meetings,
speak openly and set up political parties. Afghanistan achieved a kind of political
and social stability after a long and turbulent history.
But this short period of great hopes came to a sudden end in 1973 with the coup d’état
of Mohammed Daoud, which paved the way for communist rule and later the arrival of
the Red Army.
Your short story, “Boots of Delirium,” describes the Soviet invasion.
The narrator is a dying woman who witnesses Soviet tanks arriving in her village.
She has one obsession: to keep the gate to her house firmly shut. But the soldiers
break it and come in. The image represents the outright violation of a country.
The young woman, suffering from head injuries, becomes delirious. She wanders through
the country in her imagination. Instead of bunches of grapes hanging from vines,
she sees arms, legs and heads. The cows no longer give milk but blood. In the town,
she approaches a group of children but sees they’re wearing huge muddy boots like
the soldiers. Their eyes have turned to stone pebbles, expressionless and inhuman.
They stand for the lost youth of my country, young people turned into instruments
of war.
In another short story, “Identity Card,” you describe a teenager whose mother hides
him for fear he’ll be drafted into the army.
This story symbolizes the future of the country, which was subjected to a totally
fabricated war. The two great powers of the time [the Soviet Union and the United
States] made the country a battleground for their Cold War. The Afghans were just
cannon fodder. Their trust was betrayed and their rage against the invader cynically
manipulated. They became tools of ideologies that didn’t serve their country’s interests.
This fratricidal war continues today and has taken on wider dimensions of ethnicity
and language.
Did the Afghans have a choice other than siding with one of these camps?
Unfortunately those extremes were the only choice. But most people, the “silent
majority,” didn’t join either camp. This was my family’s case. For this majority,
killing people on either side was equally horrendous, because it was always an Afghan
who died. A nation is like a wall–each brick that falls off makes it weaker.
As a writer, what was your experience of Soviet rule?
The new regime banned the import and translation of all foreign books, even censoring
Persian classics. Only Soviet books, translated into Persian by Tajiks, were to be
found in the foreign literature shelves of bookshops. They seemed to have been written
by machines, not people. That being said, there were also some very good books, such
as those by Chingiz Aytmatov. I could never have imagined that deep in Kirghizstan,
under such a regime, a writer of this stature could exist. His short-story “The White
Ship” enchanted me. It said everything, indirectly. Aytmatov became a ray of hope
for me.
When writers find themselves in this situation, they have to find literary techniques
to convey their message. Fortunately, the censors did not quite measure up to their
job. They didn’t know much about literature and a lot of poets and novelists were
published by the Afghan Writers’ Union, which was very active and had a sizeable
budget.
When the Soviet troops left, what did you think would happen to the country?
There are some historical moments when you simply can’t predict anything. After
all that had happened since 1973, we were still in for some surprises. Anything was
possible. Nothing could be forecast. We missed opportunities to take quick and wise
decisions to head off disaster. Now we’ve ended up with the Taliban, who know nothing
about Afghanistan. They’re religious apprentices who’ve been trained in Koranic schools
in Pakistan from the youngest age. They arrived with a rage to destroy, to destroy
everything.
I heard they burned all the vineyards and pulled up the pistachio-nut trees. Pistachios
were one of Afghanistan’s main exports. All the Taliban’s actions are guided by one
idea: to make the country completely dependent — no more agriculture, no more irrigation
systems, no more economy, just a completly devastated country. With the Russians,
it was the tanks. With the Taliban, it’s fire. We had political fanaticism and now
we’ve got religious fanaticism. And fanaticism of any nature leads to a kind of blindness.
You emigrated to France in 1991 a few years before the Taliban took over, having
stayed right through Soviet rule. Why?
I didn’t want to leave but Kabul had become too dangerous. The schools had closed
because of repeated bombings of the city. At the time, my two daughters were seven
and eleven. I have three now. I wanted to protect them for a while and I went to
live in Montpellier. But I didn’t intend to stay. I couldn’t face applying for the
status of political refugee and giving up my Afghan passport. Many times I went to
the post office to send the application, but I could never bring myself to post it.
But when my husband arrived in 1994, I realised all the bridges had been burned.
I had to accept that I might never again see my country, my home-town and my house.
Do you have any contact with Afghanistan these days?
We had friends there, but they’ve all left. So has my entire family. We stayed
for as long as we could in the country. We always said that everything could change
but they couldn’t take away the country.
Are there ties between Afghan communities around the world?
There are some associations, newspapers and magazines. But such links are very
hard to maintain. For one, immigrants don’t have the money to keep in touch all the
time. Also, Afghans don’t have a long experience of exile. There was no Afghan emigration
before the Russians came. We’re a people very attached to the land, to our families.
Now we’re scattered all over the world–Europe, the United States, Canada, Australia
and Asia. Most of the refugees don’t know the language of their host countries. It
takes them five or six years to adapt.
It’s very tough being forced to look for refuge somewhere else in the world. The
war’s been going on for 20 years now. It’s a lost generation. Six million Afghan
refugees – it’s a terrifying figure. Dispersing a nation is the best way to wipe
it out.
How do you see the future of Afghanistan?
As I say, after 1973 all bets were off. This hasn’t changed. No prospect seems
more likely than another. But there’s still hope.
One solution might come from King Zahir Shah. He’s the only person who all the tribes,
all Afghans, still listen to. But we have to move quickly. Time is running out. My
country is losing another generation because children aren’t getting access to education.
And education is a basic right of all the world’s children. Why should it be an impossible
dream for Afghan girls? They’re only allowed to go to Koranic schools, until they’re
about 10 or 12. And what do they learn? To recite verses in Arabic, a language they
don’t even understand. It isn’t any better for boys. The lack of teachers, administrators
and equipment has reduced schools to nurseries, without the facilities.
But people are organizing to provide minimal education services.
There are underground schools in Kabul. Mothers teach girls in their homes. It’s
a kind of resistance. You have to be very brave to do that because it’s illegal and
the regime cracks down hard on illegal activity. For example, a woman just has to
be accused of adultery, by anyone, without any proof, and she is stoned.
How do the men–their husbands and their sons–react to this kind of punishment?
The Taliban control nearly 90 percent of the country. Read the latest reports
of Amnesty International and the UN Human Rights Commissioner. They describe these
atrocities. Not only have ethnic minorities been uprooted and persecuted, the entire
population lives under the constant threat of sanctions and all kinds of punishment
and humiliation. Most people who stayed in Kabul are those who could not afford to
escape. So they obey the “laws” to survive, laws that are unimaginably absurd.
One example: I heard of one Afghan living in Pakistan who died. He wanted to be buried
in Kabul, so his family decided to take him there in his coffin. When they reached
Afghanistan, the procession was stopped by the Taliban. They wanted to check the
contents of the coffin, since smuggling is common. They saw the corpse, but noticed
the dead man didn’t have a beard. It isn’t obligatory in Pakistan like it is in Afghanistan.
So the body was given 80 lashes as punishment. It’s madness.
There’s been an increase in religious fanaticism in many countries. Why has there
been this radicalization of Islam?
The two keys to the rise of Islamic fundamentalism–whether in Afghanistan, Iran,
Algeria or other Arab countries–are illiteracy and ignorance. They pave the way for
a “poor understanding” or rather a total misunderstanding of religion. To add to
these deficiencies, there’s the gap between generations, and the deep divide between
rural and urban people. Don’t forget most members of the jihad (holy war) movements
come from the countryside, where people generally distrust modernization and freedom,
regarding them as a threat. In recent years, globalization and other kinds of progress
that serve the political and economic interests of large industrialized countries
have been imposed on these countries at a vertiginous pace. Perhaps the fundamentalists
are trying, in their panic, to bolster their movements by taking an increasingly
hard line. In any case, the rise of fundamentalism harms Islam because it makes it
look like a fanatical religion, devoid of spirituality.
The horrors of war have inspired most of your short stories so far. What are you
focusing on today?
Before being a writer, I am an Afghan, and I think that all Afghans today share
the same concern–that the nightmare their country has endured for the past 20 years
come to an end. That the country be saved from the discriminatory rule of the Taliban
who are still backed by Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. That
Afghan women be rescued from the clutches of these religious lunatics. Before the
Taliban, 40 percent of teachers were women, a clear proof of their intellectual level.
Now they are excluded from society. Their physical, intellectual and psychological
plight is alarming. They’re not allowed to consult male doctors. Worse still, many
are being sold into sexual slavery in Pakistan.
Never before have the women of my country been subjected to such humiliation, and
never has Afghanistan gone so far backwards. What’s left of my country? The land
is destroyed and strewn with landmines. There are many thousands of widows, orphans
and maimed people. The country is ravaged by war, cold, drought and famine. Millions
of refugees live in camps, mostly in Pakistan and Iran, without any means of subsistence
and in inhuman conditions. What I write, and will write can only be about these concerns. |
