More Teachings From Kabul

Suraya #3

Living with danger

Suraya moved quickly from her personal story back to her political story. It is a story of chaos, terror, and instability. I had a difficult time following the timeline of political changes, let alone grasping the complexity and disorder of life for Suraya during these years.

From her perspective, in the late 1960s and early 1970s there was a tension in the Afghani government between the royalists and those trying to create a republic based on democratic principles. In one way or another, extremists took over and pushed the government toward chaos and repression. In-fighting among groups always led to instability and disruption of the lives of the people, with devastating effects on Suraya and her fledgling women’s movement.

From the time she began her struggle for Afghani women, Suraya knew that her life was in danger. In 1978, during one of the periods of warlord extremism, she was arrested. At first, government officials came to her house and said that she must not go out, but that they wouldn’t arrest her if she stayed in her house. Two days later, while the men in her family were sleeping downstairs, women police officers came upstairs and took her away to jail.

For ten days, her jailers tortured and beat her. They used electric shock to try to get her to tell them the names of people who were against the government. After she told me this, Suraya stopped talking for a moment. She had me feel the large growth on her scalp that still remains from the abuse she suffered in prison. Like Kaethe, she knew not to give any names. Instead, she became angry and thought that their treatment of her was an example of how horribly they would treat others. She believed that it would be better to let them kill her than for her to speak about her friends. She didn’t see her torturers as powerful but as pathetic in their need to hurt her.

After one of these torture sessions, Suraya was carried back to her cell with her entire body bruised. Soon after, she was unexpectedly sent home, only to be picked up again and brought to another jail two days later. The torture began again.

In this second jail, Suraya was kept with a small group of women. Every day they believed that this was the day that they would be killed. Still, they laughed and talked, because as Suraya said, “That is our way.” But there were moments when terror crept in.

Suraya said, “They put us in a room with nothing in it. Although we had one another, we were very sad and sometimes afraid. The six women with whom I was closest were young—one was just twenty, one had just been married, and one had just given birth and had been nursing her baby when she was taken to prison. Her milk was flowing, yet the authorities separated her from her infant. Another woman was a young doctor who had been taken away from her clinic.”

Suraya stopped her description of the jail for a moment and said, “I want to tell you the names of all the women in the cell. You must write them down. They must not be forgotten.”

As she listed the women, I carefully spelled the women’s names. They were: Sinega, the youngest; Solela with two children at home; Zahera with an infant at home; Alema three days after her wedding; Fazala, a young student; and Shala, a physician.

Suraya went on, “I tried to encourage them and to tell then that we were fighters for women, but they were so worried about their children. They kept asking me, ‘What will happen to our children?’ I could only tell them that what we were doing was for our children.”

Suraya’s belief that they were acting for others was so strong that the women listened to her. Her words made them feel calmer and more connected to one another, to the women in the streets, and to Afghani women not yet born. Suraya was able to keep clear about this commitment, even as she was tortured. She was taken away many times and brought back to the room bloody and unable to walk. The women would care for her, and she would encourage them. Her imprisonment lasted for eighteen months. She said that she never forgot that her suffering was for the suffering of others.