There she sits every day behind a big iron grill door, immovable, staring into Maidani, the area beyond her house. The woman’s face is pale, and her hair is graying
There she sits every day behind a big iron grill door, immovable, staring into Maidani, the area beyond her house. The woman’s face is pale, and her hair is graying. For two years the door has remained locked, and Rohafza has not been able to walk to her son’s grave in Maidani. A testimony*It is Rohafza’s daughter who talks about the event that caused her mother to lose her mind.
Eighteen years ago Hashmatullah, the family’s only son, was killed in the partisan war that followed the fall of the communist government of Dr Najibullah. Mujahedin groups that had been funded by the US to fight the Soviet-backed government turned their guns on each other plunging the country into bloody civil war.
A rocket smashed into their neighbourhood of Parcha Haft in Charikar, in the centre of Parwan, killing Rohafza’s 17-year-old son, her sister’s grandson and two of their classmates. “They were in class 11. They were coming back from school,” says Zarmina, one of Rohafza’s five daughters.
The war in Charikar was between the Shura-e-Nezar (a group led my Ahmad Shah Massoud) and Hezb-e-Islami of Gulbudin Hekmatyar. Zarmina remembers the rockets were coming from Ghorband, one of the districts in Parwan under the control of Hezb-e-Islami.
“My father was sitting outside when suddenly there was a big blast. Hashmat and his friends were thrown up in the air. My father took Hashmat to the hospital. He was half-dead,” she says.
At doomsday
The doctors did their best but Hashmatullah, Rohafza’s only son, died.
“When they brought his body home, it was doomsday in our house. We sisters could hardly see the coffin for the crowds that had poured in to mourn with us. He had many friends his age,” she recalls.
According to Zarmina, Hashmatullah who was the youngest in the family had come after a great deal of prayer and fasting by her mother. Their father had threatened to abandon Rohafza if their sixth child was a girl. God gave her a son and he was named Hashmat (literally greatness). But he died too young to live up to his name.
Zarmina says her brother was buried in Maidani, just metres away from their house, because of the “bad conditions of the war and rocket firing between the rival parties.”
The tragic death unhinged both her parents, the daughter says. Her father who had witnessed the tragedy was never the same again. Her mother lost her mind; her condition worsened every day. She would go to her son’s grave, and scream. “Sometimes in the middle of the night we would see she was not in her bed. We would find her at Hashmatullah’s grave,” Zarmina says. One time her mother tried to burn their house down. “Some of the carpets were burnt. Then we tied her with a chain but this only worsened her condition. Those days we had to keep an eye on her constantly,” she keeps talking.
There were times when Rohafza tried to run away. “One night our father had a dream that Hashmatullah said our mother was annoying him by coming to his grave. Thereafter we kept the yard door locked,” she says.
Hundreds killed
For three years, Rohafza’s refused to meet anyone. She lay in bed, alternately laughing and crying. “Bury me next to Hashmat,” she would weep and plead. “Put my head on Hashmat’s head,” she said.
According to Zarmina, their family was not the only victims in Charikar. Every family has suffered the loss of relatives. In Parwan province, hundreds of civilians lost their lives in Ghorband, Shinwar, Siyah-Gerd and Surkh Parsa districts.
“Some of the people were killed during the Taleban regime and some of them in the civil war,” she says. “At least one or two members of every family have been martyred. Once nine young were taken out of our neighbour’s house by the Taleban and shot dead. They are buried in Sarzamine Sokhta.” In Kabul’s seventh district, Sarzamine Sokhta (which translates as burned land) was where schoolteacher Mir Abdul Wadood’s two grown-up sons and their cousins were dragged away and massacred in cold blood by Taleban in 1999. (Read Killid issue 561, ‘My wife has never been the same since our sons died’.)
War trauma – depression, anguish and hyperaggression – is common in Afghanistan. A nationwide mental health survey by the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention in 2002 found nearly two thirds of the population suffering from psychological injuries. Barbara Lopes Cardozo, the psychiatrist who oversaw the survey and who has studied mental health of civilians in war-scarred countries like Kosovo, Somalia, and Uganda is quoted saying in a report published by Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting (www.pulitzercenter.org): “We found very high numbers for those having feelings of hatred and revenge – almost 80 percent – in Afghanistan.”
* The testimonies of survivors of war crimes are our contribution to creating greater public awareness about people’s hopes and claims for justice, reconciliation and peace. These testimonies and life stories are distributed internationally by the news agency IPS-Inter Press Service and are the basis for a radio drama that is being broadcast by seven Killid radios.
