Women of Courage

“Do not wait for leaders: do it alone, person to person. Be faithful in small things because it is in them that your strength lies.” - Mother Teresa

Throughout its history Afghanistan has been defined by two things – men and war. The men have included politicians, religious leaders, foreigners and warlords: The wars have been waged by them, or on their behalf.

Today the country is still beleaguered, but for the first time women are in the front line of the fight to define its future. Some would argue that they always have been, but their contribution has been either invisible - or so far off the radar of international awareness that it has been unacknowledged.

Described variously as a failing or failed state Afghanistan is once again the focus of world attention; once again a battleground. Fundamentalism, poverty, internecine tribal rivalry, greed and the drug trade have taken their toll with painful familiarity. But something is changing - through the bravery, determination, compassion and political awakening of women. Some are elderly, some are very young; some are uneducated, others have university degrees and speak several languages; many are Moslem, some are Christian; not all have grown up in Afghanistan.
These are some of the people and places I visited, with photographer Anastasia Taylor-Lind, in Kabul, Kandahar, Helmand and Samangan.

KABUL – FATIMA & ARIFA
There is edginess to the city today. A suicide bombing followed by a demonstration in the streets has made people nervous. We’ve been invited to Fatima Mohammadi’s curtain shop in Kabul but our driver is not keen to linger, or for us to be seen in the bazaar. Fatima is unconcerned however and keen to show off her products.

She is 38 but looks younger; soberly dressed and dignified. We first meet at the offices of MISFA – the Microfinance Investment Support Facility for Afghanistan – where Fatima explains how she qualified for the loan of 10,000 AFS (about £100) that enabled her to launch and develop the small business that changed her life.

Like many Afghan women whose lives were disrupted by war and exile, Fatima had little formal schooling. Married to Rostam, a metalworker, and mother of three children aged between nine and 19, she found it difficult to manage financially and give her children the things they needed.
“One day my neighbours told me about an organisation that provided loans to deserving families so I went along and applied for one. It made a significant difference to my life and I applied for a second loan, of 15,000AFS (£150).

“Business is flourishing. Each day I get more and more customers. Because of the extra cash my son is in school and able to complete 12th Grade; I have enrolled him in English and Computer classes. This is a big achievement for me.

“My husband too is very happy. He encouraged me to get the loans. We have all benefited.”
Life in Kabul is often brutally hard for ordinary people and even those with jobs have little left for luxuries. The daily realities of random bombings, loss of electricity, chaotic traffic and poor roads conspire to make even getting to work a major undertaking.

Fatima’s days start early with morning prayers. For six days a week she makes breakfast for her children and sees them off to school. She is in her shop by 7am and doesn’t leave until 7pm, but she has no complaints. The success of her small business has meant work for other women as well. “I have had eight trainees for a period of three months; now I have another one. It is good for everyone.”

At home Fatima’s 14-year-old daughter Zahara prepares the family’s evening meal. When we talk about her Fatima becomes emotional. She has hopes for her daughter that she never dared voice during the Taliban period but is passionate about them now: “I was unlucky because I never learned to read or write, but I have dreams for my daughter; I want her to be educated, to be a doctor.”

Sitting beside Fatima is 39-year-old Arifa, who has also turned her life around thanks to a MISFA loan. A mother of seven, she is married to a civil servant and works from home, producing exquisite embroidered goods that she sells to retailers. “All my children (aged between four and 17) are in school. It is hard to cope with constantly rising food prices and this is the only way I have been able to keep up. Before we had nothing but essentials – no TV even. Her face broadens into a smile: “Now we have TV and a washing machine.”

Both women have been matter-of-fact about describing their daily routines and upbeat about what the small MISFA loans have enabled them to do, but afterwards as we drink tea and chat with other women at the centre they become more animated and strident. They insist that security in the city is deteriorating day by day due to internal conflicts.

“I don’t care who these warring factions are, but it is because of their disunity and lack of a strong government that things are so,” says Arifa. ”We need the international community to bring peace and pressurise them into settling down and becoming reconciled.
“Women are the most severe victims of conflict. We try to be optimistic and hopeful of reconciliation, but until it comes I cannot concentrate on my work. Reconciliation is the real key to stability and peace.”

RAHINA
Rahina Samim would not look out of place on the Kings Road, with her stylishly cut dark hair, moderate display of bling and expertly applied make-up. Her head is uncovered and her manner is anything but subdued. She is 36 and single.

Rahina is an Afghan woman, but she has grown up in world light years away from the one that shaped the lives of those she now helps.

Programme Director of MISFA and a trained economist Rahina grew up in Switzerland. Today she looks after nearly 90 female entrepreneurs like Fatima and Arifa – assessing the suitability of candidates, then monitoring and mentoring their progress.
The process involves assessing the security of an area, negotiating with local ‘malekes’ (local elders) so that ventures selected are acceptable to the community, investigating markets and ensuring that money is not given to women whose husbands will squander it.
Help can take the form of cash advances or provision of seed, fertiliser, lambs or tools. Training is provided and Rahina takes care to point out that no interest or repayment is sought until enough time has passed for embryonic ventures to find their feet and show a return
An articulate woman, she speaks (in English) with passion and conviction about what Small and Medium Enterprise (SME) loans have done to change the lives of Afghan women – but she has no illusions about the problems.

“We are women and we work for women: what we do here is full of challenge, but when I see the results I am so happy! There is this woman I will tell you about – a woman who opened a bakery. Her husband is paralysed.

Smart, cosmopolitan and feisty, Rahina’s decision to return to Afghanistan was, she admits, traumatic. Her parents, both doctors, fled their homeland when she was eight and her image of Kabul was one plucked from her mother’s memory of another epoch. “She studied here, 40 years ago, and told me that Afghanistan was beautiful and that we had gardens, many intellectual people and poets. I came back and saw all this destruction and disaster and it was all very sad, you know – and depressing. I called my mother and I said ‘I don’t recognise this Afghanistan’ and she said that that was understandable because she had been away for so many years. She said “I can’t come back now because I know I would not survive the shock. I’ve seen it on television. I would rather live with my memories’.”

Rahina felt gloomy and negative as reality kicked in. “Ninety percent of Afghans are victims; you can get away with anything here” she says, recalling an earlier job at a Kabul bank where she was first bribed then menacingly ‘advised’ not to rock the boat by reporting the institutionalised corruption practised by her staff.

Today she shrugs off her bitterness, as so many Afghan women do: “I am a very positive person and I try always to keep my hopes. The day I lose my hopes I will not be alive. Also hope is part of our religion, Islam, you know.”

What some describe as Afghan complacency Rahina dismisses emphatically: “Yes, people look – lazy, is that the word?” ”Passive?” I volunteer. “Yes, yes – but they are actually very strong. They look around and say ‘God is great, God is here.’ When you understand what bad experiences they have had (30 years of conflict), and see they are still smiling, you think ‘How do they DO that!’! I think if I had been in this place during that time I would be crazy, in a psychiatric hospital, but they smile and say ‘Tomorrow is another day’.”

Again the conversation drifts away from the business of MISFA and into politics; to Afghanistan’s most controversial woman, suspended MP Malalai Joya. “She’s a very strong lady. These politic guys say she’s crazy, she’s not normal – because she tells the truth! She has lots of enemies, believe me.”

Rahina’s male colleague Sultan has met Joya: “Her message is everybody’s – we don’t want to see the faces of warlords in parliament; men who have committed war crimes and killed hundreds of innocent people. Again and again Joya stresses this point, so she faces huge critics. But oh my God, it is good that we have such strong women here!”

SHAFIQA, HALIMA & SAMIYA
There’s a story about the way business is done in Afghanistan that illustrates how complex life is there and why so many ‘western solutions’ simply don’t work. It’s related by a former British policeman, presently attached to Helmand Province’s Stabilisation Unit. Dave Wright is mentor to the emergent Afghanistan National Police and based in Lashkar Gah – a long way from the ANP’s administrative HQ in Kabul.

When I naively ask why so many routine documents have to be physically transported from the capital to local police offices, Dave laughs. He has already been down this road!
“I used to say, ‘Why don’t you email them?’. I was told ‘We have no computer’. And it continued. When the computers arrived there was no electricity, so even faxing was not an option.

A generator was purchased. Soon the fuel to run the generator ran out. Dust gathered on the computers (which well-meaning donors had provided with Roman keyboards, unfamiliar to the Pashtu-speaking Helmandi).

This is a country of paradoxes. Freedom of movement is fraught with difficulties and electricity, which brings light, warmth and the means to cook and communicate, is either erratic or non-existent. Yet mobile phones abound. The country’s infrastructure is shattered yet, like post-war Germany, it is has a unique opportunity to start afresh.

In Kabul a company committed to ‘Creating Electricity and Empowering Women’ is dedicated to doing just that. TZA ( Tolo-e Zanan-e Afghan), in partnership with the Department of Renewable Energy, gives women the chance to build on their engineering training, develop new skills and give the country something it desperately needs – reliable, cost-effective energy.
By harnessing the country’s wind, solar, geothermal and hydroelectric resources, and acknowledging the untapped ‘power source’ that is Afghanistan’s women, engineers like Shafiqa, Halima and Samiya are enable to earn a living and transform the lives of ordinary families.

Their work involves importing and testing renewable energy products from all over the world, checking them for quality and reliability and assessing them in terms of value for money.
The three women have agreed to meet us to talk about their lives and work. Initially reserved they are introduced to us before our interpreter, Akmal, has arrived and in the way of curious women everywhere we communicate with smiles, sign language and the rituals of hospitality. In Afghanistan this is tea – black or green and usually served with sweets instead of sugar. When Akmal joins us we pile into a taxi to the small showroom on Kabul’s airport road, where the women work.

Modest and exquisitely polite, the women wear headscarves and bright, pretty clothes. Halima, 35, is a widow whose wage has to keep her and her three children. Shafiqa, 30, a blonde a mother of four, is the most extrovert. She radiates enthusiasm about her work and is keen to explain how, after finishing high school, she studied to learn all about renewable energy. “This field attracted me and I took an engineering qualification, because power is so important; everyone in the community needs it.”

After a bewildering introduction to the properties of photovoltic batteries, electrical power invertors and solar devices that can be adapted to run a variety of items from fans to radios we walk the short distance to the workshop where the three women and their colleagues test load controls, assemble solar lamps and check equipment.

A five volt panel that absorbs sunlight all day can power four light bulbs for an entire night enabling children to read and study. Isn’t cheap by Afghan standards (5,750 AFS/??) but it’s reliable and once purchased, attracts no further running costs.
A job at the solar project for Samiya, 25, means that one day she may be able to live with her children again.

Elegant and attractive, dark-haired Samiya was forced into marriage during the Taliban era by a man who spotted her in the bazaar. “One day he followed me home and told my parents ‘I want to marry your daughter’. He already had a wife and I didn’t want to marry him, but my parents were scared. He was an important man. Now I want to divorce him. I live with my parents but they have no room for my children and I cannot afford to rent anywhere.”

So seven-year-old Mustafa and 6-year-old Mujtaba now live in an orphanage in Kabul’s District 6 where Samiya visits whenever she can. We make a detour to see them; the unexpected interruption of lessons and arrival of their mother is a happy interlude.

Independence for these women comes at a price as Gul Rasool Hamdard explains. As Head of the Engineering Department (Renewable Energy) for Afghanistan he is keen that I take a message back.”Twelve women were trained for one year, in production of solar energy. It was a partnership with the Ministry. The scheme attracted good women and we could do more if we had the money. Our society desperately needs more power and this is a good investment – but we have no budget. Fifty dollars (US) funds one woman’s salary for a month. Please, tell people to help us.”

VICTORIA
Afghanistan will not meet any of the Millennium Development Goals set for it. These include a bid to reduce by three quarters, between 1990 and 2015, the maternal mortality rate. Many births are not attended by skilled health professionals and many women suffer or die needlessly because of pregnancy related complications. If they can get to Kabul for treatment, they are lucky. If they can get to the Cure Hospital, and come under the care of Victoria Parsa, they are blessed!

Victoria, 27, a mother of three, has been married for 11 years and Head of Midwifery at Cure for less than one. He career started at the city’s Estafan Hospital but she aspired to higher standards than it then offered and transferred five years ago to Cure, originally known as Hope Hospital. There were just three doctors and two midwives. Recalling the early days of Cure’s ownership Victoria smiles: “There were a lot of changes; now when I go to a government hospital here I make comparisons between the professional standards. I wanted to become a midwife because I wanted to help mothers and babies. I read some books about maternal deaths; postpartum haemorrhage is a big problem. In Kabul now some NGOs are working to improve things, but in the provinces it is bad. There are no proper facilities for transport, few female doctors and lack of midwife care.”

Shortly before our visit Cure Hospital’s Medical Director, Dr Jacqui Hill moved on leaving not just a temporary skills gap but an ache in many hearts. Victoria’s is one. Even talking about ‘Dr Jacqui’ is difficult for her. “She was a good teacher and special for me. When I came to Cure Hospital there was no ob/gyn doctor, then she came. In my opinion she was the foundation of ob/gyn excellence here. There is no-one like Dr Jacqui: I worked with her, she was a very kind, a good teacher, trainer and good friend to everybody.”

Tears and emotion momentarily halt our conversation. Victoria is gentleness personified, but a tenacious self-improver who juggles domestic and professional demands with commitment to developing PowerPoint, Excel and presentation skills.

Victoria’s journey to work takes her past the ruins of the Palace of Zahir Shah; it’s still imposing structure a ghostly reminder of the city’s once impressive architecture. Dust, neglect – and allegedly itinerant drug addicts - may have reclaimed this shell of the past, but across the road another structure rises; the campus of the new American University.

Victoria’s focus is not on history though, only the daily demands of her job and family. She rises at 4.30am and is in work for 7am. “I like to be on time,” she says, admitting that her recent promotion has brought challenges. Home life for she and husband Gullamnabi, a laboratory technician whom she met as a student, is also busy. “I don’t think about being tired, here there are the mothers and babies who need me here and at home my own children. There is not much time to sit and talk with my husband and always paperwork for tomorrow! Maybe 5 minutes to watch TV.”

Pioneering treatment of fistulas, ob/gyn training for GPs and development of an excellent midwifery department is something Cure Hospital is justifiably proud of, but culturally there are is still a way to go. Victoria takes us to see Musuna, 27, who has just given birth to quads by C-section. All will live although two of the tiny babies are still in incubators. She is anaemic and needed a blood transfusion the previous evening. How will she cope, I ask, knowing how poor the family are. “She already has three children” Victoria tells me, “so now one boy and six girls.”
The following evening we dine with Victoria’s family who are a further revelation. Close knit, warm, hospitable and generous they represent values that are rarely found in the UK.

FARZANA
It’s the end of a busy day. Dr Farzana Wali Gibran is clearly tired and ready to leave for her transport home. She is also gracious and patient – generous with her very precious ‘free’ time.
Farzana, 36, has been practising for 15 years. Recently she completed a one year ob/gyn Fellowship Training Programme at Cure Hospital of which she speaks glowingly. Like everyone at this special place she is dedicated and loyal; married to a doctor and with four children between four and 13, she has a lot to be happy about. But like many Afghan women, her ability to pursue a fulfilling career as well as run a home, is due in part to her husband.

“My husband is a good friend – always he is supporting me, he looks after things at home so I can work at the hospital. My three children are also very helpful; they look after the small one and I am really grateful. I’m really busy, all the time. I have no time to listen to the news or watch TV, but he helps me and so do my children.” As she talks about her family Farzana smiles and laughs at the picture of herself as a multi-tasked whirling dervish.

“I suffered a lot to become a doctor. Towards the end of my training the security, day by day, became worse and worse. Rockets rained down on Kabul. Sometimes the doors of the hospital were closed, but I was committed to my work and always my husband encouraged me to continue.” Because of the instability Farzana’s training took longer; she was fearful but never left her country. “We tried to help all the poor ladies and I will never forget the night duties interrupted by explosions launched by the Americans against the Taliban. The conditions were not good emotionally!”

During this period she had to ‘dress modestly’ like other women – but weighed against the wider problems it was not onerous. “The first thing we worried about was security; the second was education of the children. We could deal with the burqa she laughed! God spared my husband, which is the most important thing. He spent four years of his life as a soldier; 62 young boys from his area were taken; only two came home, my husband and his friend and his friend had lost a hand. One day it was my husband’s turn to travel in a helicopter but a friend who had never flown asked to take his place. After the aircraft took off it was blown up by a rocket and everyone on board killed. “So, I think God spared my husband to be a doctor.” For both of them, it is a vocation.

Being accepted on the intensive Fellowship course at Cure Hospital helped Farzana fill the gaps in her training. “I have worked hard because we represent hope for people; now as a trainer I want to transfer my skills and my knowledge to my students.

“My own children are very smart and intelligent, although my youngest has development problems; I want them all to have a better childhood than me, I don’t want them to suffer what I suffered. I want them to have the same opportunities as children educated in America or London. That is my hope.”

PAKTYA - MAHERA
Just days before I meet Mahera news of two Taliban executions has broken in Ghazni, adjacent to her home province of Paktya. Two burqa-clad women, believed to be involved in providing sexual favours to American servicemen, have been shot in the head. Graphic pictures taken immediately before and after the killings are posted on the internet, a stark reminder that summary ‘justice’ can still be meted out with impunity

At 50 Mahera is an unlikely activist; she has a long memory and recalls the periods of Russian and then Taliban rule as ‘dark times’ for all Afghans, not just women. “But the Taliban turned back time,” she says, “before they came, women were free.” Like many she had high hopes of the Kharzai government; like many she is now disillusioned. “We were happy to have democracy, but unfortunately it has not happened.”

Mahera describes her family as ‘modern, professional and enlightened’. Middle class, middle-aged and educated she is married to a doctor and enjoys a more comfortable life than many Afghan women. She doesn’t need to put her head above the parapet; but she does.
“I have many projects that I plan daily, weekly and monthly; they include literacy classes and accelerated learning programs for women.” Travelling around her province she works to establish women’s shuras (consultative councils) in each village and encourage dialogue with their male counterparts.

In practical terms this encourages women to challenge decisions previously made and actioned only by men. Feuds between families, often resulting in violence and solved by arranging a marriage, are common. “By organising themselves, and having a voice women, are able to say ‘It is not fair to give a young innocent girl to an old man’. Meetings with larger shuras got endorsement but often there were problems with the men.”

Centuries of cultural conditioning endorsed by a regime that effectively airbrushed women out of any public debate did not yield easily and Mahera had enemies. “It was hard, but we persevered,” she said.

Fear of retribution does not appear to be an issue for this determined mother of six whose pride in her own children’s professional achievements is considerable. “”My daughter will carry on my work, whether I live or die,” she tells me. “It is important, and my message to women in the UK is please help and support us. Women have no influence here. I’m happy that ISAF and NATO forces are in our country – if they leave the Taliban will come back and things will be really bad, but I wish they would be more sensitive about our culture.

ZARAF
Zaraf Shan is a career policewoman; she’s also a mother of six and the senior female officer at Kabul’s new Prison/Detention Centre. At 42 she is slim, attractive and well groomed; no hijab covers her glossy chestnut hair and in terms of both running a tight ship and presenting a modern image, she literally ‘wears the trousers’.

Zaraf joins us as we chat to the prison’s director, Brigadier Zahir Hamidi, who is explaining why we can’t photograph the female prisoners or their accommodation.
Any lingering fears that this relatively new jail will conjure up images of ‘Midnight Express’, or even Kabul’s own notorious Pul e Charkhi Prison (described as “a slaughterhouse” during the period of Russian occupation) are soon dispelled as Zaraf introduces us to what can only be described as a model detention centre.

The new facility was handed over by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), to the Afghan Ministry of Justice, in January. Generous funding from Italy was clearly well spent and as well as cells the prison was equipped with furniture, sewing machines, kitchen and catering equipment.

As Zaraf show us around it seems that there are no ‘no-go’ areas; cell doors are open or ajar but still she knocks briefly before entering. The rooms are large, lined with bunk beds and bright soft furnishings; they are en suite, have televisions and as we speak to the women, young children play at their feet.

Zaraf’s own children – three boys, three girls – provide a bond with the women many of whom hardly qualify as criminals by UK standards. Most are Afghan but 32-year-old Numthip is from Thailand. “You must speak to this sister,” urges Zaraf, putting a friendly arm around Numthip’s shoulders,” she speaks some English.” How are things here, I ask? “Much better than Bangkok I think!” grins Numthip.

“Sister” is not a word usually used in Afghanistan about women who have fallen from grace, but we hear it again and again in the prison. After declining offers of tea from the inmates I return to Zaraf’s office where she starts to look at her watch; it is weekend and she wants to get home to her family.
Female prison guards in Kabul are drawn from the ranks of the ANP (Afghan National Police) in which Zaraf has served for 18 years. Her husband is also a police officer and she never wanted to be anything else. “From childhood” she repeats to make the point, “it was my dream. It is a very hard job for a woman, but my family support me and so I don’t feel the problems so much. I love police work and if you want to do something very much you never get tired of it.”

Trading her police uniform for a burqa during the Taliban era was hard for her. “I wasn’t sure if I would ever be a policewoman again; we were almost without hope. I will always remember after they left seeing thousands of people on the streets again. I thought, ‘What’s going on here?’ and I cried with happiness under my burqa.”

Today Zaraf is responsible for 15 staff managing security in the women’s prison, patrolling, looking after administrative issues and looking for ways to make things better. Four doctors are attached to the prison and the women have access to advice on birth control, female health, STDs and hygiene training.

Another swift look at her wristwatch reminds me that we are trespassing on Zaraf’s precious family time. She has lived through turbulent times; I wonder what her hopes are for her own daughters?
She is emphatic: “I want her to be anything that she wants to be. I know how upset I would have been if I could not have been a policewoman. Freedom is the important thing.”


SAMANGAN - KHADIJA
We are late. The long and rather fraught seven-hour drive from Kabul, at breakneck speed, has left little time to eat, get our bearings or exchange more than the basic courtesies with our hosts at Afghanaid’s compound in Aybak. From there we make a further short journey, to meet the woman who I first heard about in London, weeks earlier.

She is 31-year Khadija Haideri; poet, mother and teacher – a woman who married for love and left her home in Mazur-e-Sharif to run a child peer group in Samangan province. The tiny village of Hazrat-e-Sultan, where Khadija and her girls wait for us, bakes in the afternoon heat. We are hot and rumpled; Khadija looks cool and elegant.

Nothing stirs in this arid place where the sky goes on forever and the mountains stand like sentinels in the distance. Khadija’s’ classroom’ is reached via a gateway in a mud-walled enclosure where a sign acknowledges the support of Comic Relief. As we approach there is a flurry of activity; 16 brightly dressed girls rise to their feet; I am given paper flowers, tea and a seat at the front of the group.

On a silent cue the young voices combine to sing an earnest song. I don’t understand the words, but the delivery is faultless, the refrain emphatic and the message clearly serious. It is a song about their hopes, for themselves and their country, for a brighter future.
As the ubiquitous chai sabz or saih (tea, green or black) is served Kahdija invites me to talk to the girls. Several want to become doctors or teachers, midwives; one wants to be a judge – another, quietly announces that she intends to become president. There is much laughter, but it is not the sceptical kind. Halmina believes that this dream is within her reach, which speaks volumes about what the peer group project has achieved.

The group meets three times week; those attending receive an education, instruction in handicrafts, children’s rights, women’s rights and business. Khadija nods, showing me their bank book with everyone’s name in it. “They are saving as a group; they want to invest in a shop where they can sell their own products.”

Afghanaid draws up guidelines, co-ordinates, monitors progress, evaluates and reports; 95 % of its staff are Afghan and it works with the National Solidarity Programme. Funding, however, comes from other sources and in Samangan alone is spread over 195 projects related to water provision, training for women, carpet weaving, tailoring, establishment of kitchen gardens and agriculture.

Competition for funding is keen and people like Khadija are key to delivery. She is a woman of rare value however as I discover when I meet her husband, who runs the parallel boys peer group, and their children Pakiza, 7, and four-year-old Parniyan.
The couple, who come from different ethnic backgrounds (Tazik and Pashtun), married during the Taliban period when music and dancing was forbidden. “I was very sad about that “says Khadira. Her quiet dignity belies a great strength and like many Afghan women she is passionate about the value of education. “When I was a student we studied under bombings; it was difficult but I persevered. My message to other women is to take courage and fight for themselves. They cannot wait for others to do things for them.”

She and Shefiqa work six days a week; officially from 7am to 4.30pm but Khadija later reveals that she runs classes at home for those unable to attend during the day. School, for some poor families, is a luxury they cannot afford.

There is an obvious rapport between husband and wife and a shared pride in their own children who are obviously bright; Pakira, who is in Grade Three at school, coaches children from Grades Two to Four in the evening, alongside her mother.

The couple met when Shefiqa was working as a photographer. “We already had family connections but then I noticed that he kept taking my photograph,” she said with a smile. Both are committed to crafting a better future for Afghanistan. Shefiqa worked as a journalist before they came to Aybak and completed a short BBC-sponsored training course in Afghanistan. Khadija graduated with a BA and became a teacher and published poet, but hopes her daughters will “go further”. “I had many obstacles when I was young and although we can’t predict the future I hope that things will get better in this country so that their dreams can come true.”

Her poems - the four line ‘rubay’ verse form, published in Dari under the title ‘Appearance and Words’ - reflect this. When she had children herself she became even more aware of how great the need for education was, describing it as the “key to everything”. So whose decision was it to leave their home in Mazur-e-Sharif and commit to teaching the next generation in Aybak? “A joint one” they say, in unison.

NAJIBA
Najiba laughs as she shakes the almond tree; dappled with sunlight she is a picture of happiness. Her small son Mehran mimics her mirth as he dodges the falling nuts and leaves. This garden, invisible from outside the dried mud walls of the compound that contains it, is idyllic.
It is also a thriving commercial enterprise that owes its existence, in part, to Afghanaid, a charity that has been active in the country for more than 25 years. Najiba’s garden is in the village of Q’Mazar Bala in Samangan province, around 250 kilometres North West of Kabul. The province is conservative and women routinely wear the burqa outside their homes.

Five years ago a study revealed that Samangan had one of the lowest levels of access to safe drinking water in Afghanistan and 62 per cent of households suffered health problems related to poor diet. In some areas children spend their entire day walking to a water source and returning home with it.

Poverty and malnourishment go hand in hand but projects sponsored by the EC, Afghanaid and the National Solidarity Programme have achieved much towards combating it. Projects targeted specifically at women have had singular success.

We travel along arid, dusty roads to a village that from a distance, and to western eyes, looks primitive and uninhabited. Dwellings made of dried mud hug the earth closely beneath the blinding sun. Accompanied by Afghanaid’s Women’s Co-ordinator in the Aybak area, Khori Gul, we prepare to see an example of how female empowerment is bearing fruit.
The home that 28-year-old Najiba shares with her husband Zainuddin and three children, contains a 12,000 square meter garden that has quite literally ’borne fruit’ – in abundance and in an idyllic setting.

Najiba’s garden is a breathtaking testament to what can be done with advice, provision of quality seed and cookery lessons.

Petite, curious and initially shy Najiba becomes animated as she warms to her subject. “This is the first year of the seed programme. I grow lettuces, radishes, onions, tomatoes, leeks, and squash – all sorts of things. I’m very, very pleased! There is so much – already I have sold some vegetables and given some away to my neighbours. And I’ve learned how to make new dishes - cooked and raw food - and how to pickle and preserve things.

“In winter it s very, very cold. There’s lots of snow and rain; it’s very hard here, hard to move around."

Najiba’s husband is unable to work but clearly takes pride in what he and his wife have achieved in their garden, a plot that reveals an abundance hard to imagine from outside the high walls that enclose it. Through the square vegetable garden and behind the main house Najiba leads us across a stream to an orchard where grapes, almonds and peaches grow. Another area extends beyond for further cultivation.

As ‘sisters’ communication is so tactile and intuitive that it is easy to forget how conservative this area is until Khori Gul explains that Najiba would like us to eat, take tea and meet some of the young women who have learned sewing and carpet weaving skills in her Aladdin’s Cave of a house. This poses a problem because Amin, our interpreter, is male and not welcome in ‘the women’s room’. I want to speak to the two teenagers who have crafted the intricately embroidered dresses and waistcoats hanging on the walls. A compromise is reached: Amin cannot come in, but he can stand outside the open window . Perching on the sill, he continues to translate for me.

Parwan, 19,and Rojan, 16, are the seamstresses who have made the glittering waistcoat and hat that will be worn by a young boy at a family ceremony. It took three days to make; the materials cost 300AFS and it will sell in the bazaar for 800AFS, turning a profit of 500AFS. Afghanaid provided the training, trainer and raw materials in consultation with the local community that decides what products are needed. “Before it took one week to make a handkerchief that sold for 50AFs,” says Najiba.

Twenty women did the training course; each trainee passed on skills to two others. It’s a slow process, but this is an area where change does not come quickly and all progress is significant.

HELMAND - FATIMA
When Fatima found out that her husband had decided to take a 14-year-old bride she was not happy. In fact she was livid. “ I tore my clothes and cried; she was an orphan with just one sister, and he didn’t even tell me! Now we fight all the time.”

It’s hard to imagine Fatima distraught; warm, extrovert and irrepressible she displays none of the reserve that characterises most women at Lashkar Gah women’s centre. Her eyes sparkle with mischief, her hands are everywhere – touching clothes and hair, patting the settee and pulling me over to sit beside her. “Now, I will tell you my story,” she says without bidding. “It is good and it is bad. I expect you will wonder how I survive!” This announcement is delivered with laughter, enthusiasm and not a trace of self-pity.

Earlier in the week Fatima had featured as an inaugural member of the town’s first Women and Children’s Justice Group attended by PRT (Provisional Reconstruction Team) Justice Advisor, Fraser Hirst. A mover and shaker in her own town of Gereshk, she nodded enthusiastically as he gently led the more reserved ladies through the process of selecting a leader, suggesting what qualities they should look for and how a deputy might also be elected if more than one obvious candidate was proposed.

Fatima was not a candidate for office; she is already committed to a women’s shura in her home town where she is principal of the local school. But her experience and confidence do much to move things along in a process utterly alien to many of the members.

When we catch up with each other again Fatima is waiting for a car to take her back to Gereshk. Travel is fraught with difficulty in Helmand and without transport and a driver she would be unable to attend the Lashkar Gah meetings. Determined to make the most of our time she seizes me with the compulsion of Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner to tell her tale.

“I have six children; four boys and two girls. That is quite enough! I am educated; I finished 12th Grade and became a teacher. When I had just two children my husband took a second wife who gave him five children.”

This arrangement seemed to work and the family lived together in relative harmony until the surprise third wife was introduced. The three women get on well: “I do not fight with them, but with him!” she insists, adding matter-of-factly that he beats her “like an animal”.

“I earn money, I have a good job – but I have to give it all to my husband.”

We touch on the subject of divorce and Fatima laughs.”Oh no, no ; it is not our custom. But it is good to say this to you; women here never talk about these things.” It occurs to me that while Fatima’s story sound grim, it has done nothing to dampen her spirits, any more than the death threats she receives for raising the profile of women in the province.