By Raha Azar
I wake up with a lump in my throat. It’s another day. I go for a walk even though my legs are sapped. I wear a black veil on my head and a black mask on my face. The streets are empty these days.
Most shops are closed. No one can afford to buy. I walk, sometimes my feet sink into the potholes on the street. It looks like it hasn’t been cleaned in a long time.
I see a body hanging on the other side of the street. I cannot believe it. I look more carefully. My hands and feet start trembling. Yes, it is a dead body. I heard gunshots last night. It might be related.
A few women are standing there, watching and whispering to each other. They have their children with them. I say, “Why don’t you take your children away?” They say, “No! They are children. They don’t understand!” I heard a woman speak, “People say he was a former police officer.” Another woman intervenes, “No, he was a kidnapper!”
A few Taliban gunmen, smiles of satisfaction on their face, walk around the dead body.
I get away from them. I continue on my way.
***
It’s Nowruz, but it’s not like previous years. I am sitting alone in my room. My mother calls me to watch TV with her. My mother’s heart is bleeding like mine. It seems that television is like a bandage for us both.
Nowruz is the beginning of spring and the renewal of life and nature, but I have no motivation to live, smile, or even dream. There is a heavy amount of sadness in my heart. Many of my friends have left. We no longer walk together, talk, or laugh so loudly as to draw the attention of shopkeepers and passers by.
The everyday sad news has taken away my passion for writing poetry. I am a poet. I have published a book of poetry but I don’t know if it is being sold anymore.
After days of despair, I feel life in my fingers again. Yesterday, on my mother’s advice, I started teaching to Grade 4-6 girls in a private school. Girls of higher classes are not allowed to go to school.
These days I am busy teaching my new students. They are good girls. They love me and I love them.
The girls are scared but they don’t say from what. I believe that they are afraid of them. I am also very afraid of them.
Maryam, a beautiful girl with big black eyes, is a sad student in my class. She always sits alone in the corner of the classroom. I go next to her and talk with her. She says that she does not sleep at night for fear that they might come and take away her father. She says, “Most of her father’s friends have been taken away because they worked in the armed forces of the previous government.” She says that she is not sure that she will be able to continue with school. She and her family might go away.
Whenever I go out of the house, seeing them makes me nauseous. They smell blood. Every time I want to go home faster.
***
One day father returned home early. He said that the weather is nice and we should go out for dinner. I liked father’s suggestion. I put on my good clothes and put on a light red lipstick.
Near the entrance of the restaurant, a man came to us in a hurry. He told my father that he should go to the men’s section and me to the women’s section! My father asked in surprise, “Is this a wedding hall or a restaurant? We have come here to eat together.”
The man said with irritation, “It is their command.”
My father got angry but did not say anything when he heard their name. He did not want to say anything.
We returned home. My little sister was crying.
I came to my room. I opened the window. The sky was dark. The wind’s old hands slapped the trees in anger.
I closed the window and lay on my bed. I was thinking about the fact that we must now live under the ominous shadow of the Taliban. Why should our people endure so much oppression and be silent? Life in the shadow of the Taliban smells of despair, the stench of a dead animal caught in the boiler pipe.
I wipe off the red lipstick and close my eyes although I know that my dreams are as scary as my days. Fear and terror are reviewed in the thousand layers of my brain. The days when they took the city were filled with the sound of gunshots. Out of fear, we went to my aunt’s house every night. My sisters’ school has become their military base. My sisters are afraid of school now.
I’m watching TV. All the news is about their new restrictions on women. Female TV presenters wear masks during the program! It is their requirement. People have written a lot about it on social media. Female presenters should wear masks so that men are not turned on. I say to myself, what a pain for women and what an insult to men who are thought to be turned on by seeing women’s lips and mouths on television.
Humanity cannot withstand this heavy volume of brutality.
Thousands of sounds and hopes cannot be suffocated behind masks.
The female presenter behind the black mask is a prisoner of the Taliban’s dark ideology. What is a woman? A woman whose lips and mouth are forbidden to appear even from behind the television screen. What are lips for? Other than kissing, talking, laughing, and reciting poetry? Have you ever thought about life without a mouth? I have not!
All the bad memories and events of this year pass before my eyes, the dead body on display, my sister’s cries, my student’s words, that black mask! Every time I review my daily diary, a piece of my heart falls to the ground.
Raha Azar is the pen name of a poet living in Afghanistan.
