For the Love of a Son: One Afghan Woman's Quest for Her Stolen Child

message of the decree was simple:
there would be no joy or freedom for anyone living in
Afghanistan.
    Most of the edicts focused on former female
freedoms. Women were to remain in their homes. Other than
physicians, females would not be allowed to work outside their
home, nor would they be allowed to attend school.
    If it was imperative for a woman to go out,
she must be covered head to toe in a shapeless burqa, even her eyes
covered with a thick veil, and if so much as a foot showed
underneath she would be flogged on the spot by the religious
police.
    Women were no longer allowed to wash their
clothes on the banks of rivers, something women of Afghanistan had
been doing since the beginning of time. Since most homes were not
equipped with a washing machine, the problem of keeping clean
became considerable.
    Dancing, even at wedding parties, was
forbidden. Music was banned everywhere. If music cassettes were
found, the owner would be arrested and imprisoned.
    Female doctors were not to treat male
patients. Female patients could only go to female doctors, leading
to terrible tragedy when sick women could no longer get any medical
help at all. (Later, female physicians would be totally banned from
work.)
    No taxi drivers were allowed to transport
women not properly veiled. If a woman was found out alone in the
street, her husband was liable to be beaten or imprisoned.
    When the law was first passed, Afghan men had
only a month and a half to grow a beard. From then on if any man
cut or shaved his beard, he risked going to prison.
    The popular pastime of building and flying
kites was prohibited. All kite shops in the cities were to be
closed and anyone caught making a kite would be imprisoned.
    Photography was considered idolatry.
Television was banned. All cameras, photographs, films and
portraits were to be destroyed.
    Even laughing out loud in public could earn
one a prison sentence.
    Almost immediately we found ourselves
watching news footage of Taliban men beating up burqa-clad women.
For what was never clear. The Taliban appeared to despise women for
the simple act of existing.
    Although women in the Afghan countryside had
never ceased veiling, city women had been wearing western-style
clothes for years. Few were accustomed to the claustrophobic
traditional burqa, layered with many yards of pleated fabric,
hooded with only a small embroidered screen for the eyes. Even
underneath the burqa, the law said women should dress modestly,
although we all hoped that Taliban enforcers would not go so far as
to peek under the women’s skirts.
    I was happy that my fashionable mother had
not lived to see this day. Surely she would have been one of the
first women to suffer a beating from the religious police for
clicking her fashionable high heels on the Kabul pavement.
    Stories leaked out of the country from family
members and friends. While some relatives or friends were
humiliated at the hands of the Taliban, other incidents were
life-altering and even life-threatening.
    One cousin reported that the new restrictions
were being put into place without warning. Often Afghan citizens
would find themselves beaten or arrested for an action they did not
even realize was against the law.
    All females over the age of puberty donned
the burqa speedily enough, but few women realized that shoe styles
also caught the unwelcome attention of the Taliban. One day my
cousin walked with her husband to the market. She wore her shoes, a
white pair she had often worn before without incident. Without
warning, a red-faced bearded member of the Taliban swooped
furiously down on the couple, screaming threats. They were
paralyzed with fear, not knowing what they might have done. Soon
the man made it clear that he had become incensed after spotting
the tip of a white shoe from beneath her billowing pale blue
burqa.
    My cousin said she believed he might execute
them both on the spot. She prayed to Allah to live to return to her
little children, who would be on the streets if made orphans. But
thanks be to Allah they weren’t killed, although he pummelled her
husband with his fists and then attempted to stamp on her toes.
Thankfully my cousin was nimble enough to jump away in the nick of
time. The incident meant she could no longer go outside her home,
because her white shoes were her only shoes.
    A male friend had the audacity to wear a pair
of blue jeans, which the Taliban considered a sinful import from
the West. He was attacked by a group of men.