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

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    While many Afghans with political connections
moved into Mekrorayan, many transplanted Russians also lived there,
Soviet professionals of every trade. We found our Russian
neighbours to be so nice that we gave little thought to the threat
they represented. My family, like most Afghan people, enjoyed and
embraced the modernization being brought to us, without giving much
thought to the danger of losing our culture and our independence.
We soon learned that the Soviet government didn’t spend enormous
sums of money and time and energy on a country they did not have
designs to fully control. The Soviet Union shared a 1,000-mile
border with Afghanistan, and like the British of years past,
believed they needed Afghanistan in their sphere of influence.
    But 1978 held great promise for me
personally. I was a senior at the Malalai High School in Kabul, the
same school where my mother taught. It was one of the best girls’
schools in Afghanistan. It was named in honour of an Afghan
heroine, Malalai, a legend in my country.
    Malalai was a simple country girl who, like
many Afghan women, followed the men of her family when they went to
war, preparing food, supplying water and tending to the wounded.
Her magnificent act of gallantry occurred on 27 July 1880 when the
British army was attacking the Afghan military during one of their
many efforts to invade and occupy our nation. Although the Afghan
warriors outnumbered the British, the British were equipped with
superior arms. With so many Afghan fallen, it was soon clear that
the battle would be lost. Malalai shouted at her father and
brothers to stand and fight. When the flag bearer fell in battle,
Malalai rushed to hold the flag upright. Later, she was shot and
killed herself, but she inspired the warriors with her courage.
    From that time on she had been a great hero
to all Afghan schoolchildren.
    I have many wonderful memories of those long
ago schooldays, sitting in a spacious classroom with the yellow
sunlight streaming through the tall windows. Although our school
was for girls only, our courses were the same as the ones for boys.
Due to the school’s excellent curriculum, the most influential
Afghans sent their daughters to Malalai High. Among my classmates
were granddaughters of President Daoud and the daughters of various
royal princes.
    Although I was occupied with the usual high
school activities, I spent a lot of time dreaming and planning for
the day when I would be leaving Afghanistan to travel to India and
enroll at university. My parents insisted I train to become a
medical doctor, following in my sister Nadia’s footsteps. But I
preferred the idea of studying Political Science, believing I was
better suited for a diplomatic career.
    For a number of reasons, I was one of the
more popular girls at my school. Perhaps this popularity was in
part because I was daring and rebellious, and teenagers admire such
traits in their peers. The undisputed leader of my group of
friends, I provided my girlfriends with many entertaining
moments.
    French was my favourite class that year,
perhaps because I was a natural when it came to languages. I may
have inherited a talent for languages from my father, who spoke
Farsi, Pashto, French, Hindu, Russian, English and Turkish. Mother
spoke only Farsi and a little English, and shunned my father’s
Pashtun language until the day she died. So my sister Nadia and I
always spoke Farsi with Mother and Pashto with Papa. We also spoke
some English, Russian, Hindu and French. I loved French the best;
for me, it is the most beautiful language.
    I secretly approved of our French teacher,
who was cool, and a bit of a rebel, too. Early in the school year
she had announced a new and exciting rule. Everyone in her class
must speak French and only French. If she heard any of us speaking
in Farsi or Pashto, we were fined five Afghani. That fund would go
to finance a special field trip to Paghman, a beautiful summer
resort about thirty kilometres from Kabul, where we would stay in a
fine hotel and enjoy the scenery and delicious food. As the year
progressed, many students slipped, forgetting to speak French. By
the end of the first term, she had collected ample funds to pay for
the field trip, which was planned for 27 April 1978.
    The day before our trip there was much
excitement in class. Our French teacher hinted that she planned to
bend the school rules on the trip, allowing music, dancing and
smoking. She even volunteered to supply us