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

us as though we were demented.
    Askar shouted, ‘Shut up, you silly girls.’
But that only made us cry louder.
    Soon we arrived at the fruit market and
Askar, disgusted by our behavior, leapt from the taxi, leaving us
to fret over our fate. I glanced at the taxi driver. He was a
hard-faced man who had a look about him that was frightening. He,
too, jumped out of the taxi and walked over to join some strange
men standing in the bazaar. As he spoke, the group of men turned to
stare at us, their eyes blazing. We were convinced those men were
in on the plot.
    I told my sister, ‘I need to go to the
toilet, Nadia, quickly.’ We knew that there was no female toilet in
the bazaar. I was bent double by pain. ‘I must go to the toilet,’ I
repeated shrilly.
    Nadia grabbed a plastic bag out of the car
and said, ‘Here, use this.’
    I did the best I could, but I messed up my
clothes and the taxi as well. Although Nadia threw the bag out of
the window on to the street, there was a terrible stench inside the
taxi.
    When the driver saw Nadia discarding the bag,
he marched to the taxi, then drew back, making a strange noise in
the back of his throat. ‘What do I smell?’
    Nadia and I both resumed our crying.
    By then I had hysterical hiccups, but
reckless with fear I cried out, ‘Are you going to kidnap us? Please
don’t! I don’t want to marry an old man! I’m just a child!’
    The driver drew back in offended anger. He
simmered and fumed, glaring at me while impatiently tapping his
foot on the sidewalk. When Askar returned with his fruit, the
driver opened the door and ordered us out of his taxi.
    ‘What is going on?’ Askar demanded in a
bewildered voice.
    The taxi driver had worked himself up to a
nice fury by that time. He shouted, ‘ You take these shitting
kids out of my taxi! Look what they have done! ’ He yelled as he
pointed out the plastic bag. ‘ They have ruined my taxi! Take
them out of my sight! ’
    Askar was infuriated, too, when we found
ourselves stranded in the bazaar without a taxi in sight. It took
us more than an hour walking around to locate another cab. By that
time, Askar had got the full story from us.
    Askar was a servant, yet he was a proud man
who protected his reputation. We had humiliated him in the bazaar,
a place he often frequented. When we got home, he yelled at our
mother, explaining what had happened and accusing her: ‘You have
created two crazy kids with your paranoid predictions.’
    In defense of our mother, it must be said
that Afghanistan was a country where girls and boys were routinely
kidnapped to be used as sex toys or to be worked as slaves.
Children had no legal or humanitarian rights in my country. Her
fears were not totally unfounded.
    *
    There was one occasion when I was truly in
danger of being kidnapped. It was in 1973, a few months after my
father had returned from his latest medical treatment. The holy
month of Ramadan had ended, the month spent by Muslims fasting
during the hours from sunrise to sunset, to figuratively burn away
Muslim sin. The first day of the new month after Ramadan is spent
celebrating, observed as the Festival of Breaking Fast or Eid
ul-Fitr .
    I believe that Eid arrived during winter that
year, which was the best time because in Afghanistan schools are
out for three months in the winter, rather than the summer as in
most countries. Our brutal winters make school attendance nearly
impossible. Middle- and upper-class Afghans leave Kabul in the
winter to trek to Jalalabad, one of the most beautiful cities in
Afghanistan, and my personal favourite. Everyone in my mother’s
family would make their way to her brother’s home in Jalalabad for
Ramadan and the festival of Eid.
    My small world was ablaze with joy for my
father was home and I was with my cousins celebrating Eid. Although
I no longer spoke endlessly about my desire to be a boy, I still
kept my hair short and bothered little with the feminine clothes so
loved by my sister and female cousins.
    My cousin Zeby and I kept busy flying kites.
We were still young enough to escape censure for playing boys’
games with the boys. I overheard several relatives mention that I
was more masculine than feminine and I admit their observations
caused my cheeks to flush with pleasure.
    During our time in Jalalabad, my parents
decided to visit an Islamic shrine about an hour’s drive from the
city, close to the Pakistani border. My mother said that we must go
to that shrine to pray for all our