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

mother had
been one of the first women to cast off her veil, such courage had
been displayed only at safe places and events, such as in the
school where she worked and in the homes of family and friends.
Now, for the first time in her life, she was not breaking a law
when she appeared unveiled on the city streets.
    Mother often related the glee shown by her
family members when the long-awaited word came that veils were no
longer mandated by law. The Hassen boys fired up their scooters and
the girls leapt aboard, parading through the city centre waving
their veils while shouting their joy.
    My father was fond of repeating: ‘My
daughters, you are part of the lucky Afghan generation. You will be
educated. You will be respected by our society for your
achievements.’ My parents were so modern that they insisted our
education come before all things. Nadia and I were warned that
marriage was not an option until we had graduated from college.
Even in our day, few parents were so progressive when it came to
their daughters.
    Our lives felt so secure that we foolishly
believed nothing remained to be done when it came to women’s
freedoms. Tragically, Afghan’s future, and my own future, would
prove that we were wrong.
    Until I was five or six years old, I assumed
I was the fifth child of my parents, and that I had an older
brother named Farid, and two sisters other than Nadia, sisters
named Zarmina and Zeby. The three were not imaginary siblings, but
were our cousins, who lived with us. Farid even called my mother
‘Mother’. Their intimate connection to our little family came about
due to a heartrending story.
    A catastrophe struck my mother’s older
brother, Hakim, shortly after my parents and Nadia moved out of the
galah and into the city.
    Hakim was an idealistic man who happened to
be a representative of Afghanistan and assigned to the Afghan
Embassy in Berlin during the years prior to, and during, World War
II. When Hakim arrived in Berlin to take up his diplomatic post, he
became a shocked eyewitness to a great evil engulfing Germany’s
Jews. Although my uncle Hakim did not publicly speak out, he
quietly used his position at the embassy to provide visas for Jews
seeking to flee the country. German Jews were so frantic for their
safety they were willing to live in Afghanistan, a country
primitive by their European standards. Although the punishment for
anyone found helping Jews was death, Hakim used his position at the
Afghan Embassy to provide desperate Jews with false Afghan papers.
He even helped transport Jews from Berlin across Germany to the
Swiss border.
    I was always impressed that Uncle Hakim never
once tried to seek credit for his humanitarian actions. In fact, he
was notably reticent about the topic, embarrassed if anyone praised
him, saying there were many others who sympathized with the Jews
and he had not taken the risk alone. However, he admitted to his
family once that he was pleased to have saved a number of Jewish
scientists who lived to receive accolades in their fields.
    Hakim remained in Berlin until after the war,
but once it was safe to travel, he returned to Afghanistan. He had
been so long out of touch that his family in Afghanistan believed
he had been killed during the terrible battle for Berlin when the
Russians invaded in 1945, creating many thousands of civilian
casualties. The battle had been so deadly that news of the event
had even filtered back to Afghanistan. Upon his unexpected return
to Afghanistan, the family celebrated wildly, for it was as though
Hakim had emerged from the grave.
    Brought up in a family where education for
women was encouraged, and having lived for years in Europe where
women had many personal rights, once my uncle settled in
Afghanistan he married an educated Afghan woman who was the
principal of a girls’ school. Her name was Zarine.
    Hakim and Zarine were delighted to have two
children, a son named Farid and a daughter named Zarmina. When
Farid was four months shy of six years old and Zarmina was three,
Zarine became grievously ill with heart problems. Her medical
condition was not treatable in Afghanistan, so Hakim’s friends in
Germany arranged for his wife to travel there to seek the latest
treatment.
    Farid and Zarmina became listless and sad,
small children missing their mother. My mother volunteered to help
with them. Each day she would take little Nadia and Nanny Muma to
stay at her brother’s home to look after all three children.
    Finally,