thought about how little money she and Bashir had saved, a few thousand Afghanis. “We have hardly any savings,” Nasrin admitted, looking at Nazir, her voice low and fearful.
Nazir nodded. “Nasrin, you will have to sell everything: jewelry, clothes, furniture, pots and pans, even the children’s toys and clothes. And secretly, to family only,” Nazir warned.
“Yes, I think I can do that,” Nasrin said in a small voice. Everything, she thought, her entire life—gone, as if it had never been. Then, a desperate escape south out of Kabul, encountering Afghan army checkpoints along the way. If they survived that, they would face mujahideen-held territory. Where would she find the courage?
CHAPTER 2
Escape from Kabul
NASRIN SAT IN the living room, holding herself stiffly to hide her trembling. Hafiz leaned back against one of the red cushions, sipping chai. Hafiz was Nasrin’s favorite sibling—a half brother and the eldest of five sons from her father’s first marriage. All the siblings looked up to him, often went to him for advice, even though they were now adults.
Nasrin’s tea had gone cold. “A missile hit an apartment just a block away the other night,” she said, her voice shaking. There was no need to describe the high-pitched whine and vibrating air, like a meteor falling from the sky, followed by a boom that felt like a volcanic eruption—Hafiz knew the sound all too well. Worse was the terrified weeping of the children: Mozhdah, Safee, and Masee. The only thing Nasrin could do was take them in her arms and crouch down in a corner of a room farthest from the windows, whispering to them to keep their heads down, telling them it would be okay. After the shock of impact, Nasrin could hear the shouts of neighborhood men running to the flaming, smoking rubble to search for survivors.
“It is only a matter of time . . .” Nasrin’s voice trailed off.
“So let’s make a plan,” Hafiz said firmly.
“Bashir has let me know through a, uh, contact, that we should go to Pakistan with a group to help pay for a truck to take us through the mountains. We have no passports,” Nasrin said anxiously.
The Afghan government refused to give passports to people like Bashir and Nasrin who weren’t supporters of the Communist government. A clandestine escape was the only way out. The quickest route to Pakistan would be via the main road south from Kabul to the province of Logar. From there, a road ran east to Paktia, the mountainous frontier region bordering Pakistan. The roads were peppered with checkpoints, manned by Afghan army soldiers, whose job it was to stop the exodus of fleeing citizens, as well as search for mujahideen weapons going in to or out of Kabul.
As Nasrin and Hafiz talked, a plan crystallized. Hafiz knew two other families also desperate to leave Kabul. One was his brother-in-law Rahmat Hasanzi and his family. There was also the family of Haji Abdul Shakoor Yousef. Hafiz made a quick calculation; in all, seventeen people would be escaping to Pakistan: nine children and eight adults.
Haji Yousef would be vital to a successful escape, Hafiz said. He was a cousin of a mujahideen leader in Logar, whose name was Commander Rawani. The commander would help facilitate their flight into Pakistan, connecting them with local drivers who had vehicles sturdy enough to navigate the steep, rugged mountain passes into Pakistan.
Travel to Logar would be highly dangerous. Shortly after the 1979 Soviet invasion, Logar became the heart of mujahideen activity, largely because of its proximity to Pakistan, which provided training centers and funneled money and weapons supplied by America, Iran, and China to the guerrilla fighters. Many mujahideen groups maintained their headquarters in the border city of Peshawar in Pakistan. Logar had also been where mujahideen leaders planned guerrilla attacks on Soviet targets. The Soviets had retaliated with a vengeance, leveling entire villages and killing all the inhabitants to try to intimidate Afghans and deprive the fighters of shelter and food. News blackouts didn’t stop reports of Soviet atrocities from reaching Kabul. In the rural areas, where mujahideen built pockets of resistance, the Soviets undertook bombing raids with Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-21 fighter-bomber jets and Mil Mi-24 helicopter gunships, often referred to as flying tanks. Soldiers would carry out systematic searches of the villages and, if a single bullet was found, shoot male family members. The Soviets destroyed crops and irrigation systems, killed animals, and at times, slaughtered entire villages, from women to babies.
To make it past the army checkpoints along the main road into Logar, Nasrin, her family, and the other escapees would have to disguise themselves as rural villagers, pretending they had come to Kabul to sell harvest vegetables like melons and eggplants. The women would wear burkas over long, loose-fitting kurta shirts, the men would be unshaven and don shalwar kameez with shawls and flat-topped, brimless woolen pakol hats. Nasrin would get her mother to scour the marketplace for used roughhewn outfits and the thick, heavy scarves, called chadors, that peasant children wore. They could take nothing with them—no books, toys, or Western clothing—nothing to identify them as urbanites.
Nasrin had already started selling the children’s books and clothes, as well as her jewelry, including gold bangles and a favorite gold and pearl necklace. She thought longingly of her collection of elegant high-heeled shoes. She had bought them before the Soviet invasion, when Kabul was referred to as the Paris of Asia, and young, educated women like Nasrin looked to Europe for fashion inspiration, wearing short skirts, the latest hairstyles, and heels. She would get a pittance for them, but every cent was needed not only for transportation, food, and water but also for bribe money, called baksheesh, that would—God willing—get them through checkpoints.
The most frightening part was how to get all four families to the bus stop where they would catch a bus to Logar province. They could not gather at one family’s home, then travel en masse—that would draw attention. Nasrin suspected that some of her neighbors were spies for the PDPA government and had been keeping watch for officials in case Bashir returned home. If he showed up, they would alert the army, which would send soldiers swooping in for an arrest. They could not leave the house in peasant clothes during daylight; that too would arouse suspicion. Only one bus for Logar left Kabul each day, and that was in the early morning. The curfew lifted at 4:00 AM. How would they get to the bus stop in time?
Nasrin’s eyes suddenly widened. She looked at Hafiz, grinning. “Atiq! Of course! Why didn’t I think of him before?”
Atiq was Nasrin’s cousin and a recruit of the Afghan National Army. His main job was driving the military generals to official functions, which meant he had access to a jeep at all hours of the day and night.
“A jeep is too small for all four families,” Hafiz pointed out.
“Atiq could make several trips,” Nasrin countered.
“Can he be trusted?” Hafiz asked.
“Of course. He is family,” Nasrin replied.
It was decided. Nasrin would contact Atiq and propose a plan to drive all four families in an army jeep to the Logar bus stop. It sounded insane, Nasrin thought. It sounded desperate. But then, they were desperate.
NASRIN HAD GOTTEN a message to Atiq to meet her close to her house at a small park that was now a dismal landscape of brown flower beds, dead trees, and missile craters. Skeletal dogs with dirty, short tan coats skulked about, noses close to the ground in search of food. To the casual passerby, it looked as if Atiq had stopped Nasrin: an authoritative soldier questioning a civilian. She explained to him how Ghafoor Alipour had tried to have Bashir conscripted into the Afghan army. She then outlined the escape plan to Pakistan through Logar and the need for the four families to pool resources to pay for a driver and truck to navigate the mountain passes into Pakistan. But first, they needed someone to pick up all the families from their homes and drive them to the bus stop.
“It’s crazy,” Atiq said, his face grim. “What if I’m stopped? Why would I have peasants in my jeep? And seventeen people? That’s at least two, probably three trips to the bus station. And I’ll have to pick up Bashir, wherever he’s hiding.”
“But you’ll do it?” Nasrin asked.
Atiq