Fox Little Women of Baghlan

The Story of a Nursing School for Girls in Afghanistan, the Peace Corps, and Life Before the Taliban
1. Auflage 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4835-1073-6
Verlag: BookBaby
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 360 Seiten

Little Women of Baghlan is the true account of an ordinary young woman who answers the call to service and adventure during an extraordinary time in world history. Her story rivals the excitement, intrigue, and suspense of any novel, unfolding against the backdrop of changing social mores, the Cold War, the Peace Corps, and a country at the crossroads of China, Russia, India, Pakistan, and Iran.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Fox, Susan

Leseproben

Chapter 1

THE HINDU KUSH

Off in a taxi and made the usual switch in Puli-Khumri. It was an uneventful ride until we came to an avalanche just before the Salang.

—Joanne Carter: Afghanistan Journal, April 21, 1970

“Taksi!”

Jo set her bag in the dust, among blades of grass worn thin by countless footsteps. A spindly row of trees cast elongated, early-morning shadows across the taxi bazaar, but already, passengers were queuing up.

A driver waved her forward. “Kabul?” He raised his eyebrows and nodded reflexively, eager for one more fare and a full payload. “Zut zut shodan!” —Hurry, hurry! “I have one seat left.”

Jo had done this a dozen times. It was another routine trip, but a reprieve nonetheless, a welcome break from teaching five and a half days a week. She climbed into the back seat of a sedan, a dusty, Russian-built Volga.

Three Afghans immediately crowded in after her, and she slid all the way across, to the far door. Three more Afghans fit themselves into the front, the one next to the driver wedged tightly against the gear box.

At least there was no one in the trunk. No last-minute traveler had pushed his way through the bazaar, shouting above the noise and confusion to get the driver’s attention, wanting to haggle for a reduced fare. Jo had seen it often: passengers climbing into the shadowy recess, their grins reminiscent of a Cheshire cat as they grabbed hold of a little handle on the inside of the trunk lid and pulled it down. But not today. No one was interested in riding to Kabul in the trunk of a car. The trip was five hours at best, and temperatures would be freezing in the high mountain passes.

Jo wore a skirt and sweater in deference to the dress code of a Muslim country and stuffed her coat into the small space by her feet. The men settled in, accepting her presence among them without question. The passenger next to her gathered the folds of a bulky chapan, a wool coat that covered his thin, drawstring tombans much like a heavy bathrobe. Careful not to press uncomfortably close, he maneuvered himself into position. Jo leaned away to give him room, and it occurred to her that she could have waited for the next taxi, and hired a car that was not yet filled. She could have paid for two fares instead of one—an easy guarantee of extra space. It was a tactic every Peace Corps Volunteer learned by the second day in Afghanistan.

But she had abandoned those little tricks long ago. After two years in Baghlan, Jo had become accustomed to Afghan life, including overcrowded taxis. Just as she had done so many times in the past, she traveled as the only woman and the only American in a carload of Afghan men. She hardly gave it a second thought.

The men in front were businessmen and shop owners. Dressed in tunics and tombans, they had covered their prayer caps with turbans. The driver left his prayer cap exposed, and wore a simple wool jacket. Unencumbered by a heavy chapan, he slid behind the wheel with a self-assured movement, and looked over his shoulder to give Jo a confidential nod. “Balê,” he said. —Yes. “I will get you to Kabul zud, zud.”

He reached up and adjusted the rearview mirror, setting in motion a string of colored glass beads that hung as decoration. “Insha’Allah,” he added. —God willing. Turning around yet again, he looked at Jo and grinned, as if sharing a private joke. “Shomâ fahmided?” —Understand?

Jo couldn’t help smiling at his cocky, familiar manner. She nodded. “Man fahmidom.” —I understand.

Satisfied at her response, he turned back, put the car in gear, and pulled out of the taxi bazaar. With quick surreptitious movements, the Afghan passengers wiped their right hands over their faces and beards to disseminate Allah’s blessing: a gesture repeated before every crossing of the Hindu Kush.

Jo understood their concern. “Fast, fast” seemed to be the objective of every driver she had ever hired, and like the Afghans with her, she worried about getting to Kabul safely. How many times had she left Baghlan—a village in northern Afghanistan less than one hundred miles from the Russian border—with a driver who careened through turns so fast it seemed they would fly straight off a cliff? Jo expected the same from today’s driver, but when he eased his way around bicycles, donkeys, and horse-drawn carts, she breathed a sigh of relief. Not far from the bazaar he turned onto the only paved road in the village and headed south toward Kabul.

The road would ultimately take them across the vast mountain range that sweeps southwest to northeast across Afghanistan into Pakistan and China. Jo settled into her seat, not bothering to reach for a seat belt. There were none.

“Asalâmu alaykum.” Comfortably wrapped in his chapan at last, the Afghan next to her offered the traditional greeting. —Peace on you. With a final tug at his chapan, he introduced himself as a teacher, a mathematics teacher in Baghlan.

“At the Vo-Ag School?” Jo turned as much as space would allow. “Then you must know my friend, Mr. Muktar. He teaches chemistry.”

The Afghan inclined his head. “Yes, I know him well. I would be with him today, if I didn’t have business in Kabul.” He gestured toward the passenger next to him. “This is my brother,” he added. “We are traveling together.”

Immediately, the brother leaned forward, his inquisitive dark eyes matching those of his sibling. Impatient with their Farsi conversation, the brother spoke in English. “We’re going to visit a favorite uncle.”

“Ah, yes.” Jo tried not to smile at the deliberate switch in language. It was nothing new. On most trips at least one or more passengers wanted to practice English, and in a crowded taxi she was often a captive teacher. She didn’t mind; it worked both ways. After all this time in Baghlan, she was still learning the nuances of Farsi. She complimented him on his effort, and teased him slightly by responding in his native language. “Besyar khub,” she said, —very good, and smiled at the mazâq, the little joke.

They chatted, comparing where they lived in Baghlan, and the names of Vo-Ag teachers they knew in common, until Jo was forced to change her position. She turned slightly, easing the pressure on her back where it was pressed against the car door. It was a small adjustment—she stood just over five feet tall and barely tipped the scale at one hundred pounds—but like a pebble thrown into a still pond, it caused a ripple of motion to pass through all four passengers in the back seat.

From her new position Jo surveyed the endless chain of mountains, cresting and plunging steeply to the valleys below. A great upheaval of land mass, the Hindu Kush rises toward the highest peaks in the north of Afghanistan, reaching an altitude of 25,000 feet near the Afghan-Pakistan border. Gazing at the snow-covered summits, she could understand why the Afghans refer to it as the “Roof of the World.”

Dwarfed by massive ridges, the taxi appeared as a tiny moving dot, clinging to a pencil-thin line of road etched circuitously into the mountainsides. Occasionally the open side of the road fell away to a deep gorge, with less than a foot of gravel separating the asphalt from a sheer drop to the cavernous space below. There were no barriers, and Jo held her breath each time they skidded around a sharp curve, as if by sitting perfectly rigid and gripping the edge of her seat with both hands she would keep the car from plunging over the brink.

The fact she was the only woman seemed irrelevant when she glimpsed the deep chasms flashing by her window. By comparison, she felt safe in the company of the Afghan men with her, secure in the knowledge they regarded her and the rest of the Peace Corps Volunteers as guests in their country. And she was, after all, an “honorary man.”

The peculiar gender distinction was something she had grasped almost as soon as she arrived in Afghanistan. She traveled alone, with her head uncovered. Therefore, she didn’t fit the traditional perception of female. She certainly was not male. What was she then, but an entity somewhere in between? And so, out of necessity, the Afghans devised a convenient niche that placed Western women into a category of their own—a third gender—with the rights and privileges of Afghan men. As such, Jo and the other female Peace Corps Volunteers moved about freely in Afghan society.

Of course, there were exceptions to her feeling of security: places not as safe, situations better avoided. She was careful not to get caught in large crowds, for example, where men could take advantage of a noisy throng to bump up against her, pinch and pat, then disappear into the confusion of a tightly packed group of people. If she found herself in a crowd of strange men, perhaps at a particularly large bazaar, she felt trapped, her anger tinged with apprehension, bordering on fear. When she could, she stayed away from large gatherings altogether.

Her friend Nan had more bravado, but all the same, armed herself with a large, heavy purse. Jo had been incredulous the first time she saw it and burst out laughing. “But, Nan,” she said, “you can’t slug someone with that thing. Either you’ll kill him, or start a riot.”

Nan’s dark Irish eyes had flashed a combination of defiance and amusement. “Just watch me. I’ll use it if I have to!”

They both felt safer in their own village of Baghlan, where everyone knew them: the students, neighbors, and shopkeepers at the local bazaar. And to be...