Afghanistan

Afghanistan A vast expanse of blank desert in Afghanistan, symbolizing the empty hope of Afghan women.

The wildly winding Helmand River that twists and turns like a curled ribbon through Afghanistan.

The picturesque Himalayan Mountains, found partially in Afghanistan, almost opposite to the dark dust of Afghan cities.

The fierce Hindu Kush Mountains of Afghanistan, dusted with an angelic layer of ivory snow.

Meat and vegetable kebabs, dripping with savory juices and a thick aroma of warm spices.

An Afghan market with intense colors and culture flying as quickly as the hasty winds.

Men riding on their "high horses" as they drag a headless goat in hopes of winning a game of their national sport, Buzkashi.

Women dressed in a clouded blue burqa, the conservative dress for Muslim women.

A map of Afghanistan and it's cities, the rivers twining in and out of the cities like spider-webs.

http://www.lonelyplanet.com/maps/asia/afghanistan/ media type="file" key="afghan.m4a" width="300" height="50" Afghanistan- By Lilah Yob When I was a young girl I always dreamed of traveling the world. Now, as I am arriving in Kabul, Afghanistan after my twenty nine hour trip from San Francisco, my heart beats fast at the thought that I am in a place completely new to my foreign eyes.

As I step into the Kabul International Airport from the jetway the taste of the stale, reused air remains in my mouth. Immediately the differences between San Francisco and Kabul jump out at me like white in a sea of black. The women and men are dressed in their traditional wear. The women in their round dresses with the burqas masking their faces. The men in the perahan tunbans, which resembles a traditional pant and shirt. In America men and women wear a mixture of clothing from all cultures and rarely one outfit matches another. Throughout the airport the signs for restaurants, shops, and terminals are written in Dari, Arabic script much different then English.

Prior to arriving in Kabul, I made arrangements for me to stay in an Afghan family household during my visit. I took a taxi from the airport to their house in Kabul. As soon as I stepped out of the taxi and onto the street outside of their house, I could smell the sweet naan that was being sold down the street. The doughy bread sat in piles on tables upon tables, there was an endless supply.

“Lydia?” I heard my name come from ahead of me. I looked up and there was a young girl who appeared to be a couple years younger than me, maybe sixteen. She wore a plain white linen dress with a black burqa concealing her face.

“Yes, that’s me. Are you Baasima?” I asked. I knew that the family had a daughter by this name so I thought it might be her.

“Yes, come on in, we are just getting ready for dinner,” Baasima said.

I walked across the red dusty path into the house and inhaled the scent of spiced rice and naan, along with the freshly brewed tea. It all made my mouth water after a long day of travel.

I took my seat at the table next to Baasima and began to make conversation. She shushed me under breath, and soon I saw why. Her family had begun to say prayer before they ate. I had not been expecting this. It is vastly different then my customs at home. After they had finished praying to Allah they all started to eat.

“How do you speak English so well?” I questioned Baasima curiously.

“I learned it from hearing my father speak it. My father learned it through his work.” She answered. After she said this, she gazed down at her food and seemed to want to focus on eating. Feeling like she did not want to talk anymore, I looked around the house. I knew that usually there are decorative items around the houses such as rugs and ceramics from bazars, but there seemed to be an extra amount. White lace was draped over the walls and colorful beads cascaded from the ceiling. I could not keep myself from asking Baasima about them.

“Why are there so many decorative items around the house?” I said.

“Oh. They are in preparation for my upcoming wedding,” she answered matter of factly.

“You’re getting married?” The thought seemed absurd to me. She could not be more than sixteen years old and she was already getting married. After pondering the thought, I remembered that it is custom for women and Afghanistan to marry at a young age. After listening throughout the whole dinner I learned that Baasima was having an arranged marriage with a man name Farrin, who was twenty three years old. They would start their three day long marriage ceremony in two days.

The next day as the family raced around the house in such rapid movements that I could not seem to keep track of their actions, I stopped and talked to Baasima.

“Hey. How’s it going?” I asked, I wanted to know about her feelings towards the wedding because I know that if I was in her position I would be a little more then anxious.

“Good. I mean I think all the food is almost prepared and the house still needs a little decoration but I think we can finish in time.” She answered honestly.

“No. I mean how do you feel, how are you doing.” I replied.

“Oh. Well....” she seemed hesitant but finally, after she looked around and saw we were alone she began to answer. “Okay. Actually, to tell you the truth, this is the most fearful I have been in all of my life. I am only sixteen, the thought of being married and getting pregnant all in the next month frightens me. What if I don’t have boys and only have girls. Will my husband be like the majority of men in Afghanistan and abuse me for it? Will he kill me? There are so many fears that come with unanswered questions.” Her voice was rough as she said it, as thought it was hurting her. Her words flooded into me and I realized that Baasima’s life was more intricate than I had originally realized. Before I could respond, she had already walked out of the room to continue with her tasks. Throughout the following day everything was so rushed and chaotic that I never had a chance to finish my conversation with Baasima.

Before I knew it it was the first day of the wedding ceremony. After the marriage contract signing ceremony(nikah), and the Qur’an reading, there was a huge feast that took place through the rest of the day and night. Tables were lined up in every room filled with food. There was everything from skewered meats to rice, stuffed grape leaves, pickled vegetables and bread. The food flooded the room with an aroma that seemed to put everybody in a good mood, it smell like happiness. The next two days of the ceremony rushed by in a furry of reading from the Qur’an and many elaborate, vibrant outfits that adorned the women.

It was time to return home and all I could think about was how I was leaving Baasima and how I hoped she would be alright. But thats all I could do, hope. So, I packed my bags and returned home, knowing that it was be an experience I would never forget.

**__ Shadows - media type="file" key="Tessa.m4a" width="300" height="50" __**  B y Tessa King

My eyes open slowly to a streak of light dimly peeping through a boarded window. A heavy pounding raps against my skull, and a groggy aura surrounds me. I search back through my brain to scavenge up how I got here, and my thoughts fall back to the agency. I had applied for the job as soon as it had come up, and I was almost guaranteed it. I was one of the few agents young enough for the undercover assignment, and the only one naiive enough to volunteer myself for the pain and torture of prostitution.

The throbbing in my head stops long enough for a dizzy emptiness to fill my body, and I fight to sit up on the soiled mattress beneath me. I know it couldn’t have been more than a day since I let them take me in, and they haven’t done anything worse than drug me, yet. Staring down at my arm, I finger the slight indent from where the agency had inlaid the tracking device. They had promised me they would get me out of here as soon as they figured out how far and where this human trafficking ring led. I could already tell though, that it wouldn’t be soon enough.

My ears pop as a thundering noise sounds from down the hall, the aged wood of the floorboards bellowing a deep moan as footsteps trudge across. I listen as they grow closer, and watch, stunned, frozen in place as the door begins to open.

A burly man with a deep olive complexion and black hair that resembled wire netting, lingers in the doorway.

“Waqt ba kaam gholem!” He shouts, ambling towards me, and yanking me forward by the arm.

I know enough Dari to understand that what he just said roughly translates to “Time to work slave!”

My pulse begins to reverberate through my ears, and I tried to brace myself for what came next. Two men entered, speaking to one another and smirking down at me. They began to undress, and one yanks me furiously by my hair. I try pleading with them, crying out for them to stop. My tears clear pathways across my dusty face, as I object to their forceful groping and wandering hands and I scream out, kicking and flailing my arms as they try to undress me. My objections stop as a sharp slap slices across my face, followed by a rugged fist to my stomach. Pain swells inside of me as they continue on, as if I were nothing to them. Just another empty shell of a being, another toy, another daughter, sister, child, an innocent woman, taken for their pleasure.

I wake up the next morning, laying in a pool of my own filth. A girl, no older than seventeen, hovers over me. She leans down, slinging an arm around my waist to help me up. As I stand, I can feel the sore tension in my body, and I whimper as she helps me out of the room. We hobble to a room several doors down and I stand in the doorway, staring in at the communal showers that match those of an unkempt jail.“You wash now, clean up yourself.” She urges in broken english.

I go to strip off my clothes, but realize I am still naked from that morning, clothed simply in my own filth. As I turn on the spout, the water burns the purple bruises that paint my body. As the water rains down on me, I began to sob, huddling against the bathroom wall, tucking myself into a tight ball.

The woman turns off the water and kneels down next to me, holding my body gently. “It is okay, you are fine. I am Fila, what is your name?”

“Joni.” I mutter, dazed.“You are very pretty Joni, not like other Afghan women. You from United States of America?” She questions knowingly.“Yeah, how’d you know?” I wonder aloud.

“Many women come through here, most from villages not far from here. But we have women from far, they look like you.”

I wonder how many girls there must be here, but restrain myself from jumping straight into an interrogation. “Are you from here?”

“I do not know. I was sold to these men when I was seven, and they have sent me all over.”

“Who is the man that holds us here, what is his name?”

“We do not know his true name, but they call him Zemar, lion. Another man keeps us too, we call him Ajani, he who wins the struggle, he is only one who rules over Zemar. They are very mean, they will hurt you if you do not behave. You are lucky though, men here will pay much for you. You do not look like us, you are ashrat. So they will hurt you little as possible. But you must behave. Come dress yourself, men will come soon.”She holds out her hand to me, pulling me up, and leads me back to the room where it all began.

As I walk back into the dark room, I realize the soiled sheets have been hauled away, but the dark stench still streaks the room. I walked slowly, sliding down into the corner of the room.

“I have to go, work starts soon. I will come back if I can.”

She calmly exits, leaving me cowering in the corner, with nothing left to do but think about the life I now live. I remember listening to stories at the agency, from women who had escaped this life. But only now far from the safety of the crisp agency walls, do I understand what they have gone through.

A wafting air of juicy kebabs from a marketplace below makes a deep growling erupt in my stomach, and I wait patiently for food to come, staring at the door in anticipation. The beam of light falls slowly across the room, as the rich smell of food disappears. I lay my forehead down on my knees, defeated, a sharp pinching hunger in my stomach.The door flies open, and Zemar enters, leading in a small weasel of a man. I stand, trying to please them, hoping for food. I know my rescue won’t come for days, and it was up to me to stay alive until them.

The scrawny excuse of a man laughs as I stand and begins speaking loosely to Zemar. His voice rough, rugged, like the itchy threads of a poorly made wool blanket. They speak to each other in a rushed mumble of words that I cannot decipher. A large wad of money is tossed to Zemar, and he quickly thumbs through it. Slipping a sly comment towards my buyer, he leaves the room, money in hand. The weasly man saunters towards me and I cross my arm, backing away slowly, until my back is against the chiseled wall. He charges forward viciously going for the kill.

Eight men came in that day, and every other day for the rest of the week. A mixture of adrenaline and drugs lace my bloodstream, leaving me locked into a body that would not respond. I see many girls here coming and going as swiftly as night shifts to day, their screams and cries stabbing at the air. Here I am considered old at twenty-seven, but I’ve seen girls as young as six wandering the halls, lost souls. The problem of young children in sex trafficking is much bigger here than in the US., most likely because of the horrible issues of women’s rights.

These women are tossed aside in their society, treated like animals. In this country the women get seven years of schooling to a boy’s eleven years, and maternity mortality rates are the worst in the world. Their national sport, buzkashi, involves men riding on horses and tossing around a headless goat. And if you swapped the goat for a woman, well you’d get the other “national sport” of Afghanistan: Men riding on their high horse and tossing around beaten women.Many of these girls are taken here against their will, kidnapped from the streets, taken from homes, but sadly many are also here by choice. Not their choice, never their choice. Married off as young as eleven, these girls are stuck with sadistic pigs for husbands, who will take any chance they get to make a quick buck. They beat these girls, rape them, sell their bodies, take their blood and spray it on the sheets to prove their “purity” for customers. Their is no end to the horror these girls endure in this country. I only hope I get out in time to save them. After a month in this hell hole, I fear they will never rescue me. Maybe it’s because my captors have not moved me yet, or maybe they have forgotten me. This torture is horrid to endure and has changed something in me. My body feels permanently stripped, used. People speak of a hell where fire engulfs you and torture never ends. My hell consists of a life in which you never die, yet never live. Life where you have tasted living, yet get it stripped away from you and torn into pieces before your eyes. This is my hell.

Fila visits me when she can, her resilience and optimism is astounding. When you’re in here as long as her though, hope may be the last thing you can hold on to. I’m not the only one she helps though, I hear her voice through the walls, speaking to those who need it. She whispers in secret, comforting the helpless souls that haunt this building, a guardian angel protecting us all.

We sit together on the lumped sack of a mattress, as dawn struggles to peer into our room through the boarded window, just like old friends. I ask her how she has survived this long here, how she could cope with the pain and sorrow.

She says that she feels more at ease in this building the longer she’s been here, an odd sense of security. They raised her, it makes sense that she would have some attachment to them, that’s the only way to survive all these years here. But I can’t help but wonder how much longer she’ll last. She’s growing older, smarter, and something tells me these men don’t want her to comfort these girls. I just hope she lasts long enough to get out of here.My heart pulses in my head as I awake to the fierce winds of argument, Zemar stands in the hall, stabbing another man with his sharp words. I catch the name Ajani, and stare at the two men as they battle back and forth. This must be the Ajani that Fila had warned me about, she said he was the boss of Zemar. They screech angrily at each other, a crash of voices ripping at one another’s throats. Their muddied fingers point viciously at each other as their brows furrow together, creating a thick caterpillar inching across their faces. Spit and dust specks are seen in the dim ray of light beaming through the room, and I cower into the corner of the room, a child hiding from arguing parents. One man stalks away, and a thundering crash is heard as a door flies open, smacking forcefully against the wall.

The man reappears, his sausage fingers coiling tightly around the frail stick of an arm. Fila stands limply beside the man, the outline of his hand wrapping tightly around her arm, imprinting a hand print into the cocoa powder of her skin. Her legs are splotched with purple bruises, a dalmatian of abuse. Her lip is split, and puffing out to match her inflated eye. Swelling surrounds her face, painted over in deep hues of pain. I watch, as they continue to yell at each other, hand gestures flying as wildly as the horses that gallop in their goat-grabbing games of buzkashi. He throws Fila into my room, and she falls to the ground, sliding across the splintering wood of the floor. I move forward, but they beat me to her, picking her up again, speaking harshly at her. As they yell, their faces swell like a ripening tomato. Fila dangles from his grip, her head washed away with a river of drugs replacing the blood she has lost. She tries to mutter something, her jaw swaying with the slight slur of words, but nothing is heard. He yells at her to speak up, and hits her with a stinging slap. Grabbing her jaw, he holds her face to stare at me and asks her if it’s true, if I am the woman she spoke of. He squishes her face together, sending a mixture of spit and blood dribbling from her mouth. She lets out a low moan, and he shakes her, still holding her by the jaw. Her head bobs back and forth, a bobble-head of herself. I hold myself back, trying desperately not to reach out and save her, knowing that keeping myself alive could save hundreds of girls. Her eyelids slowly drift closed, and he gives her a final shake. She gives no response, and her body grows eerily still, my eyes water as he flings her empty body to the ground.The two men pause a moment to stare disparagingly at me, and Zemar grabs me by the arm as he did with Fila. “Where are you from?” Ajani asks hostily .“I’m from the United States.” I reply timidly. “Why did you come to Afghanistan?” His eyes narrow, honed in on me. “I was visiting, a vacation.” I had practiced this in training, lie, lie, and lie, say anything to stay alive. “You lie, Afghanistan is very dangerous, especially for a young woman such as yourself. We know you work for an agency, now we want to know who.” His english was clean, crisp, like freshly ironed sheets. “I don’t work for anyone, I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Lie, my gut told me, deny everything, use your training. Zemar’s grip clasped tighter to my arm, the blood swelling as my circulation was slowly cut off. A flash of light flickered in my eye as his fist smashed into my jaw, and I could feel my teeth wobbling, collapsing like an demolished building. A grimy iron taste coated my tongue as blood gushed in my mouth, staining my lips in a natural lipstick. “I will ask you once more, what agency do you work for?” “I don’t work for anyone.” As the words slip from beneath my lips, I can tell it was the wrong thing to say. Zemar lets me go, but I feel a fist colliding into my body, followed by a tough kick. I tumble to the ground, and feel the pain spreading like venom through my body. Their fists attack my body in a savage flock of strikes, and feet stomp me out like an old cigarette butt. Spots of black appear in my eyes, and my vision begins to fade into darkness. I hear their heavy grunts as they batter me to nothing, and soon a ringing bursts in my ears, playing over the sounds of my torture. My body begins to numb itself as the last bits of my existence switch into a bliss for my last moments. My body lightens as all becomes numb and I drift away. I wake in a room of white, to a man in a long white labcoat staring out at me. He greets me, and explains that everything will be okay. He says I am safe, that they just need to perform a few tests and then I can leave. He asks me to recall the events that have led up to this moment, to try and figure out how I got here, and so that is what I have now done. Where this all led me to, I do not know. I have seen nothing more than this room yet, and whether I am at the agency, or some hospital, I cannot rid this ineffable feeling of euphoric joy. I feel lighter, as if something in me has changed. As I pause to think, a realization zaps my brain, Afghanistan may have been my hell, but this was my heaven. Alex Hoff —media type="file" key="alex.m4a" width="300" height="50"