The Sewing Circles of Herat Page 13
He was replaced by Mohammed Najibullah, the man known as the Ox for both his hefty size and stubborn nature, and who survived in power even after the last Russian troops left in 1989, defying Western predictions of his imminent downfall. Of all the killings that have taken place in the Arg, Najibullah’s was perhaps the most grisly. Removed from power in 1992 when the mujaheddin finally took Kabul, he lived under UN protection until the Taliban captured the city. Taken to the palace from where he had once ruled, he was castrated in his old bedroom, tied to the back of a Toyota Land Cruiser and dragged round and round the compound, then hung from a traffic post outside for all the city to see.
Occasionally as things got desperate in Afghanistan, such as during the mujaheddin infighting after the Soviet withdrawal, someone would revive the idea of bringing back the king. But there were implacable opponents both inside and outside of the country. Iran, having got rid of its own monarchy, the Pahlavi Throne, had no intention of seeing a kingdom restored in its neighbour, while Pakistan still dreamed of a friendly government and feared a return to the Durrani dynasty would lead to renewed calls for Pashtunistan and a greater Afghanistan. Many Afghans, particularly members of the Northern Alliance, were vehemently against Zahir Shah’s return. ‘What did he do in the jihad?’ asked Dr Abdullah Abdullah, a leading Northern Alliance member who went on to become Foreign Minister, when we discussed the matter. ‘Zahir Shah can come and Zahir Shah can go. It creates noise but it doesn’t matter.’
The king himself had almost given up hope of returning to his homeland though he told me that like his grandson Mostapha, he kept a jar of Afghan earth by his bedside. ‘It is sand from Kandahar where the monarchy has its roots.’
But in November 2001, with the Taliban’s days numbered and many fearing a return to the mujaheddin infighting of the 1990s, Afghanistan was running out of options and once more the king’s name was being raised. Compared to what had followed, Zahir Shah’s reign began to be spoken of fondly as a golden era in Afghan history. Average life expectancy in Afghanistan was only forty-two years so few had actually lived through it. In Quetta’s Satellite Town I had seen flags and posters being prepared calling for the king’s return, though typically with all things Afghan, there were rival king offices on different streets, each denouncing the other. Francesc Vendrell, Special Envoy for Afghanistan for the United Nations, which was also mooting the Zahir Shah option, explained, ‘The king is a kind of dream of a peaceful and stable past. He was the only leader who did not harm the Afghans.’
This partly explained why there were so many people hanging out at the Fleming Hotel hoping to secure an appointment with His Majesty. The US State Department and the British Foreign Office had sent representatives to Olgiata, and Lakhdar Brahimi, the UN mediator, had just been to tea. Even the Northern Alliance had sent a delegation and the US Congress had authorised $400,000 for a new office. The Sandhurst-educated General Wali and his military advisors were involved in coordinating the Afghans on the ground helping guide Americans bombs onto Taliban and al Qaeda targets, and a royal website had been launched.
Homaira said the king had started leafing through old photo albums of Kabul again, after years of leaving them untouched, though he was depressed at the number of buildings that he knew had been destroyed, particularly the Kabul Museum, the Dar-ul-Aman Palace, and the experimental farm he had founded which grew seventy-six different kinds of grape and thirty-five kinds of orange. If the Taliban fell, the whole family were planning to go back. But they were wary. They had made such plans once before when the Taliban first emerged and described themselves as ‘the king’s soldiers’. The king had been so excited that he began packing and sent for new suitcases – ‘He said the old ones were too scruffy,’ said Homaira.
A mild man who rarely raises his voice, Zahir Shah was clearly infuriated by being taken in by the Taliban, and by what they had done to his country after claiming to take power in his name. Homaira said the only time she had ever heard him curse was over the destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas. The king looked pained when I asked him about this. ‘From Alexander the Great to the Nazis it is astonishing what people will do for power,’ he told me. ‘We went backwards instead of forwards, it was unbelievable.’
King Zahir Shah and Queen Homaira (third and fourth from left) on their visit to London in 1971.
He seemed to be flagging so to lighten the mood I asked his favourite memories of his country. ‘I miss everything,’ he said, ‘I miss the mountains, the lakes, valleys, everything. But it’s the small things I most remember. One of my fondest memories is going to a remote part of southern Afghanistan where few people venture because the people are so proud and I was walking in the forest and a small boy came up to me and took his coat off and said, “Father, Father why don’t you come and sit down on my coat and have a rest.’’ Then he pointed to a little house on a hill with smoke coming out of the chimney and said, “Father, we have simple food and a fire, please come and eat with us tonight?” I said, “Thank you very much for your kindness, I would love to but son, I’m sorry, time does not allow me.’”
He said his most enjoyable trip had been that to Britain in 1971. ‘Given the past experience between Afghanistan and England, all our wars, I wasn’t too sure but I got the warmest reception I had ever had. The Queen for whom I have the greatest respect was the kind of personality who always made things easy for her guest. At the beginning she said to me, “Your Majesty there are lots of Afghans waiting to welcome you.’’ When we rode out onto the Mall, I saw they were Afghan hounds!
‘The Lord Mayor hosted a dinner for me at the Guildhall which was very tricky because the trumpets kept playing and I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do, or when. But it was a good trip which went a long way to thaw relations.’
Two years later, the king was back in London for an operation on his eye after which he went to Ischia to recuperate. ‘An Italian Foreign Ministry official came up to me looking worried and was so nervous he just kept stuttering, saying “c .. c .. c ..’’. He couldn’t say the word coup,’ he recalled. ‘At the time my feelings were numb but when he said the name of who had done it, my cousin Daoud Khan, I thought, well, he was a capable person and would at least rebuild the country. I was also very tired, you know the feeling of when you have lived in the same house too long, so I abdicated.’
I asked him if he subsequently regretted this and he fell silent. ‘If I had known all the terrible things that would happen in my country, I would have taken a different decision.’ He gazed into the distance with the terrible sadness of a man who clearly bears the weight on his conscience of one million of his countrymen dead, another one and a half million disabled, four million refugees, and a nation of children who have known nothing but war, and I wished I had not asked the question.
If Zahir Shah were to become king again, the scenes at the Fleming Hotel suggested that the succession battle might be bloody. The king had eight children by his wife Homaira, a cousin whom he married at sixteen. Two of their sons had died and Ahmad Shah, the crown prince, was a reserved soul who lived in Washington and spent his days writing Pashto poetry, with no interest in power. His other sons Mir Wais, Shah Mehmud, Shah Wali Shah and Nadir Shah seemed equally unenthusiastic. ‘I can’t imagine anything worse than being king,’ Shah Wali Shah told me, a thin wire of a man who looked like an artist with his metal-rimmed spectacles and long grey ponytail. With what seemed to be exasperation, General Wali told me; ‘They are a very quiet family. They shouldn’t be the royal family, they just want to keep to themselves.’
While Zahir Shah’s sons may not have had any interest in reclaiming the throne, his ambitious grandson was clearly desperate for a chance. Yet Mostapha had barely lived in Afghanistan, having gone from Rome to England where he was educated at Harrow Day School and Ealing College, then to university in Canada. ‘What does he know of the country?’ was what everyone said.
In his villa in Olgiata, watching the bombing on CNN and waiting fo
r a signal to pack his French novels, Hermès ties and old astrakhan hat in his new suitcases, the king seemed impervious to all the machinations around him. ‘At my age there is nothing that can happen to me. I just want to see a happy Afghanistan,’ he said as his police guards escorted me away into the night. ‘If my people want me then I will be king again.’ He looked very old and frail and I suddenly remembered something General Wali had said earlier as we discussed Afghanistan’s future: ‘History sometimes repeats itself and if you use the same ingredients you would probably end up with the same result.’3
Kabul, 13 November 2001
Salam Christina
Kabul is free, can you believe it! The Northern Alliance arrived at dawn from the Shomali road and we came out of our houses to welcome them and give them sweets and biscuits and throw glitter. They came on their tanks and in trucks and on foot and there was no fighting, the Taliban just left like thieves in the night.
My brothers went to follow the soldiers though my mother did not want them to in case there is fighting. It is hard to be a woman, my sister and I wished so much we could go too. One of our neighbours said he saw some dead Taliban on the main road, their trousers pulled down. That is a very bad thing.
We took our radios from their hiding places and listened all day waiting to hear about the new government which we hope will be very friendly, especially to women, and reopen the schools and give us back our jobs. Radio Afghanistan has been taken by the Northern Alliance and there was already a female announcer on the radio and also songs by Farhad Darya, a very beautiful singer who was banned by the Taliban. Do you know they smashed instruments and hung them from posts but now I pray all that is over.
My brothers have come back without beards! They say everyone is shaving them off. Our new neighbours have small children and they are laughing – their father has brought them a pink and green paper kite and it is flying high in the sky. How long it is since we heard laughter – now imagine, that was banned too.
I am so happy. I think we’ll celebrate every year on this date – I marked it on the calendar with a big red circle. Now I can hear Indian music playing along the street.
This is a sweet night
Marri
1 The Portuguese man, who was subsequently released from Italian prison for good behaviour and then disappeared in Africa, had a suitcase full of Korans and later claimed in an interview with Portuguese weekly Expresso that the assassination had been ordered by bin Laden whom he had met while fighting in Afghanistan.
2 One was to become famous during the Second World War as Bomber Harris who, as commander-in-chief of RAF Bomber Command, developed the controversial saturation technique of mass bombing, devastating Hamburg and Dresden.
3 The family subsequently returned to Kabul in April 2002.
5
The Sewing Circles of Herat
When your face is hidden from me, like the moon shadowed on a dark night, I shed tears of stars and yet my night remains dark in spite of all those shining stars.
Epitaph on the poet Jami’s tomb, Herat
WE SAW THE BROKEN MINARETS long before we saw Herat. We didn’t realise what they were at first. ‘Look, there’s a factory,’ said Justin, pointing surprised into the distance. The tall brick stacks sticking up from the desert-floor did look like Victorian factory chimneys in one of those industrial towns of northern Britain though with jagged tops and leaning in different directions as if slightly drunken. But then a patch of green came into view, a long oasis of pine trees in the flat gravelly landscape beyond which lay the Paropamisus Mountains, and we realised we were nearing the fabled Persian city.
I wound down the car window expecting to breathe pine-scented air but choking dust forced me quickly to close it. It seemed a long time since we had given a hundred rial to a hunchbacked man to push our luggage in a wheelbarrow across the no-man’s-land from the Iranian border. Waiting for us the other side was an imposing figure in a woollen cloak and Russian bear hat who introduced himself as Ayubi, scooped up a handful of earth which he kissed theatrically, and said ‘Welcome my Afghanistan’. He emphasised the word ‘my’ and we looked at him in awe. On his left hand he wore a large silver signet ring encrusted with turquoise and jet stones, and his eyes were full of life and fire and sadness. He exuded so much power that all the men with guns who had been circling us, rather too interested in our bags, slunk away at a single glance.
‘I have instructions from Tora Ismael to escort you to Herat,’ he said, speaking in formal Dari, the Afghan dialect of Persian which is spoken in the half or so of the country which is not Pashtun, and led us to a Toyota pick-up spattered with dried mud. Tora Ismael was Ismael Khan, a Tajik warlord who was the most important mujaheddin commander in western Afghanistan and had swept back into town the previous week, one day after the Taliban had left. Ayubi was his head of logistics. I smiled, enjoying the idea of being escorted by this impressive man to whom everyone seemed to bow, and feeling like one of those British envoys in the Great Game whose accounts I had read about being conducted to the courts of Afghan kings and chieftains (in some cases later to be horribly stabbed to death).
‘Are you a pilgrim?’ a man at Tehran airport had asked me two days earlier as I fought my way to the front of the queue for a plane-ticket to the holy city of Mashad in eastern Iran from where we would cross the border, and I nodded happily, thinking that yes, in a way I was. It was twelve years since I had last trodden the soil of the land once known as Khurasan, thirteen since I had last been in Herat, and it had been a long struggle to return.
Only five of the original twenty or thirty minarets still stood.
As we squashed into the back of the jeep, two gunmen sharing the front seat next to the driver, Kalashnikov barrels sticking up between their knees, Ayubi explained it was an emotional journey for him. He had been living in Mashad (he later gave me his address there as Ice Factory Road) and had not seen his home city since September 1995 when the Taliban captured it. Ismael Khan and hundreds of his commanders had fled to Iran but Ayubi had fought to the end and been caught. For all his fierce appearance he had a poetic turn of phrase like the warrior poets of old. ‘They beat me fourteen times but eventually I escaped and got to Mashad where my body was so broken I was in hospital for two months,’ he said. ‘My family thought I was dead. Now my heart beats like the wings of a bird to see my home again.’
The sign at the border to Herat said 123km but it seemed much further as the road had long ago disintegrated into scree through a combination of being bombed, driven over by tanks, and lack of any maintenance. Ahead of us lay a discarded glass Coca-Cola bottle and a burnt-out tank. It felt like driving into a wasteland. After about an hour we suddenly found ourselves on a 5km stretch of tarmac which was just long enough for me to sit back and naively say, ‘Oh good, the road has been resurfaced,’ and then it was back to ruts and gravel which Ayubi thought was very funny. ‘Dear Christina, by the time you come back to Herat I promise you all roads will have tarmac,’ he said expansively, ‘even to the most small places.’ After a while we drew behind an overloaded truck of Japanese televisions. The Taliban had fled from Herat the previous week, two days after abandoning Kabul to the Northern Alliance with barely a shot fired, though they were still defending their stronghold of Kandahar in the south, and the Heratis were obviously already shopping.
Like the television truck, our pick-up was rocking as much as a ship on a rough sea and by the time the minarets came into view we were in a kind of stupor induced by bumping all afternoon across the desert in a trail of dust. We had had nothing to eat but a packet of hard vanilla biscuits and, between the clouds of grey blown up by other vehicles, there was nothing to see but a few small groups of camels or the occasional lone figure swathed in cloths and turban, rifle over the shoulder, standing gazing into nowhere, like the illustration of an Afghan tribesman in a Victorian book. Justin and Ayubi fell asleep, jerking awake again every time their heads banged against the window. Once, I notice
d the ruins of an old fort just off the road and wanted to investigate but the driver laughed, saying the area was land-mined and that if we stopped, we would be robbed by bandits or attacked by Taliban. Spontaneity had become a dangerous pursuit in Afghanistan.
As the light faded to pale apricot and the dust rose, the figures took on a ghostly appearance and the whole journey began to assume a surreal hue. Once, some years before on the other side of the world in Zambia, a man in a government office where I was trying to buy a map had questioned what I was doing there. He did not seem to understand the concept of foreign correspondent, instead asking me, ‘Are you an explorer?’ I told the official that I tried to go and find unreported places and people to write about. For a moment he looked confused, then he nodded vigorously, ‘Ah, I see, you are an old-fashioned voyager.’
Back in Afghanistan, that’s what I felt like, an old-fashioned voyager, though I suspected the road to Herat was worse than it had been a hundred years before. Robert Byron, Peter Levi, Eric Newby, Bruce Chatwin and almost every British writer that has travelled in Afghanistan all waxed lyrical on the quality of light, describing arriving in the country as like ‘coming up for air’, and of air as ‘crisp and light as champagne’, and so it was. ‘Here at last is Asia without an inferiority complex,’ wrote Byron in his classic The Road to Oxiana of arriving in Herat in November 1933, shortly after the assassination of Zahir Shah’s father, King Nadir Shah, the country then as now in turmoil.