Free Letters to My Daughters by Fawzia Koofi Page B

village, where he could protect me from the other Mujahideen. His rank within the fighters would be enough to guarantee my security there. But he was clear that while I remained with my mother in Faizabad, not even his influence was sufficient to prevent local gunmen from forcibly marrying me should such a scheme occur to them.
    This was my mother’s greatest fear, and so it was decided that I would go with Nadir to the village where he lived in Yaftal district. The only way to get there was on horseback. Later that day, he arrived at the door with two white horses fitted with a type of bridle decorated with wool tassels, common in Badakhshan. I hadn’t ridden a horse since I was a little girl. And, as ever, my burka conspired to make my life difficult. Trying to even sit on a horse while wearing a burka is a challenge, let alone riding an animal through busy traffic. It startled at every blaring horn and strange noise. In the end, my brother had to take the reins and lead the horse through the city, while I did my best just to stay on. Every time the horse kicked or bucked, he would rein it in, just as I thought I was about to fall onto the road.
    I had never felt more backward than I did that day. Here I was, dressed in a burka while being led on a horse. I felt like I had regressed to my mother’s or grandmother’s generation. At that moment, it seemed like neither my country nor my life was ever going to move forward.
    We rode out of Faizabad and on towards my brother’s village house. We had two days of solid riding ahead of us, and the roads were very poor, barely even dirt tracks. I had taken control of the horse, so I was pleased with myself. The burka still made it difficult for me to ride, especially when I had to steer the horse around corners. With my restricted vision, I was very disoriented. And if the horse stumbled in a hole, it was very hard to retain my balance.
    As night fell, we came to a village where we could rest. Although we had been travelling only a day, already I could see the differences in the people. The village women were very welcoming and eager to talk to the new arrivals. As we spoke, I noticed how filthy their hands were, black with dirt from long, hard days working in the fields and infrequent bathing. Their clothes were those of simple rural peasants, which I suppose shouldn’t have surprised me, but I just couldn’t shake the feeling that somehow I had gone back in time. First the burka, then the horse and now the dirty village women who lived their lives in much the same way as their grandmothers and their grandmothers’ grandmothers had—it was like watching my country’s future unravel before my eyes.
    When I woke I found I was very stiff and sore. Horse riding can create aches in places you never thought possible. But I was still pleased with myself for riding unassisted through such tough terrain after a long time out of the saddle. You need to be skilled to ride in this part of Afghanistan. Sometimes your life depends on it.
    I HAD been living with Nadir and his family for two weeks when we went to visit an uncle and some of my other distant family in a nearby village. I was sitting with a woman who knew my mother when she asked me if I had been in Kabul when my brother Muqim was killed. I was completely shocked. I hadn’t heard anything about this. Everybody in the room could see the look of horror on my face and realized I didn’t know. My uncle was first to react. His instinct was to deflect the subject and he tried to suggest the woman was talking about one of my half brothers, Mamorshah, who had been killed by the Mujahideen fifteen years previously.
    That brother had been among a group of village men who helped fight off the Mujahideen when they attacked the town of Khawhan. He spent all night firing out of a small bathroom window in his house armed with just a pistol. In order for him to reach the high window, his poor wife had