One

sTories oF old

ven the day I was born, I was supposed to die. I have stared death in the face countless times in my 35 years, but still Im alive. I cant explain this, other than knowing that God has a purpose for me. Perhaps his purpose for me is to govern and lead my country out of the abyss of corruption and violence. Or perhaps his purpose is simply for me to be a good mother to my daughters. I was my fathers nineteenth child out of a total of 23, and my mothers last child. My mother was my fathers second wife. When she fell pregnant with me she was physically exhausted from the seven children she had already given birth to. She was also depressed at having lost my fathers affections to his newestand youngestseventh wife. So she wanted me to die. I was born out at pasture. During the summer months, my mother and a host of servants would make the annual journey to graze our cattle and sheep in the highest points of the mountains, where the grass was sweeter. This was her chance to escape the house for a few weeks. She would take charge of the entire operation, gathering enough dried fruit, nuts, rice, and oil to sustain the small party of travelers for the three months or so they would be away. The preparations leading up to the trip would be a source of great excitement, my mother packing and planning every last detail before a convoy on horses and donkeys set off across the higher grounds. My mother loved these trips. As she rode through the villages, her joy at being temporarily free from the shackles of home and housework, and being able to breathe in the fresh mountain air, were evident to all.

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s Tor ie s o F o ld

There is a local saying that the more powerful and passionate a woman is, the nicer she looks while sitting upon a horse in her burqa. It was also said that no one ever looked more beautiful on horseback than my mother did. It was something about the way she held herselfher uprightness, her dignity. But the year I was born, 1975, she was not in a celebratory mood. Thirteen months earlier she had stood at the large yellow gates of our hooli (house), a large, sprawling, mud-walled, single-story structure, and watched a wedding party descend the path that snaked down from the mountains through the center of our village. The groom was my mothers husband. My father had chosen to take a seventh wife, a girl who was just 14 years old. Each time he remarried, my mother was devastatedalthough my father liked to joke that with each new wife my mother became yet more beautiful. Of all his wives my father had loved my mother, Bibi jan (literally translated, the name means beautiful dear), the most. But in my parents mountain village culture, love and marriage very rarely meant the same thing. Marriage was for family, tradition, culture, and obedience, all of which were deemed more important than individual happiness. Love was something no one was expected to need or to feel. Love only caused trouble. People believed unquestioning duty was where happiness lay. My mother had stood on the large stone terrace safely behind the hoolis gates as the party of more than ten men on horseback ambled its way down the hillside, my father dressed in his finest white shalwar kameez (a long tunic and trousers), brown waistcoat, and lambskin hat. Beside his white horsewith bright pink, green, and red wool tassels dangling from its decorated bridlewere a series of smaller horses carrying the bride and her female relatives, all wearing white burqas. They were accompanying the bride to her new home, which she would share with my mother and the other women who also called my father husband. My fathera short man with close-set eyes and a neatly trimmed beardsmiled graciously and shook hands with the villagers who came out to greet him and witness the spectacle. They called to each other, Wakil Abdul Rahman is here! Wakil Abdul Rahman is home with his most beautiful new wife! His public loved him and they expected no less. Wakil (Representative) Abdul Rahmanmy fatherwas a member of the Afghan parliament, representing the people of Badakhshan, the same people who I represent today. For as long as my family can be traced back, local politics and public service have been our tradition and our honor.

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T h e Favored dau gh Ter

Politics runs through my blood as strongly as the rivers that snake all over Badakhshan. Before my father and I became members of parliament, my fathers father, Azamshah, was a community leader and tribal elder. The Badakhshani districts of Darwaz and Koof, where my family and my last name originate, are so remote and mountainous that even today it can take up to three days to drive there from the provincial capital of Faizabad. And thats in good weather. In winter the small mountain passes are completely closed. My grandfathers job was to help people with their social and practical problems, connecting them to the central government in Faizabad and working with the provincial district managers office to provide services. He never once flew on a plane or drove a car, and the only way he could physically take issues to the government authorities in Faizabad from his home in the mountainous Darwaz district was on horseback or on donkey, a journey that often took him a week to ten days. Of course, my grandfather wasnt the only one who traveled this way. Horseback or foot was the only way any of the villagers could connect with the bigger towns: It was how farmers could buy seed, how the sick could reach a hospital, how families separated by marriage could visit each other. Travel was only possible in the warm spring and summer months, and even then it posed great dangers. Atanga was the greatest risk of all. Atanga is a large mountain bordering the Amu Darya river. This clear green river is all that separates Afghanistan from Takjikistan on the other side. The river was as dangerous as it was beautiful. In spring, as the snow melted and the rains came, its banks swelled to bursting, creating a series of deadly fast-flowing currents. The Atanga crossing was a series of rough wooden stairs fastened to either side of the mountain, for people to climb up and then down the other side. The steps were tiny, rickety, and slippery. One small trip or mistake and a person would fall straight down into the river and be swept away to certain death. Imagine returning from Faizabad holding the goods youve just purchased, be that a 15-pound bag of rice, salt, oil, or other precious cargo that had to last your family all winter. Tired after one week of walking, you have to

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