Najiba Kasraee grew up in Kabul, Afghanistan. This is an excerpt from her life story, focusing on her childhood in Kabul, as she told it to the British Afghan Women's Society. “I remember that there was only four of us in the family: my grandmother, my mother, my brother and myself. My first memories are that my father was talked about as that person who was always not there." Najiba's father, a doctor, had been arrested and imprisoned when she was less then three months old. He was standing for a seat in Parliament in Kandahar, Afghanistan's second largest city. He would spend the next five years in prison. “My mother was always talking about this man," Najiba remembers. “We had a picture of a young, handsome doctor, he was looking so gorgeous, and she would say ‘This is your father'." “Every time we had something nice, nice food, my mum would always cry and say ‘I'm not sure what he's eating today', so this was so painful, every time – and I didn't like it, every time she would cry." “I think I understand her now, I think I never understood when I was a child, and it was irritating, whenever we have a bit of good news she'd always say ‘oh, your father...' and my grandmother, my father's mother, they would cry together, and me and my brother would be just waiting to eat!" “I remember a time where people would come to our house and say ‘Oh he'll be released next Thursday'. My mother would cook something nice again and we'd clean the house, and nothing happened. So the day he was coming, I didn't have any high hopes, thinking it's going to be the same again, but we were so happy because something nice will be cooked out of chicken – chicken was a very prominent thing in those days in Afghanistan." One Thursday, her father did return. “I saw a crowd of people, and I saw this man, a very thin man, a very thin man, with a beard... he had these really deep lines on his face and he smelled of cigarettes, which I didn't like. He sat down on the floor and he said ‘Hello my daughter'." “I was shocked, I said no that's not him, because the picture was so beautiful, the young man, and I wanted him to be my father, not this guy." “That night, my grandmother said you have to sleep with us, you know with me, you and Haron, and that was another shock, you know, not sleeping with mummy any more." “But from the next morning, this thin man came again and he said ‘I want to be your friend, and I am your father but I want to be your friend', and he told me the story about Aladdin and the forty thieves of Baghdad, so this was my first conversation with him. Then he took us all out, and every time we gathered for dinner, he would tell us a story. As a doctor, he believed that you have to have happy thoughts when you're eating, never speaking about any problems, because that's how your digestive system will be regulated, your pulse, your blood pressure. Dinner became story time, it was wonderful." “And my mum completely changed, I couldn't recognize her. She cut her hair, she wore red lipstick, and she started wearing eye shadow. She was in her early twenties when my father was gone, he came back when she was about 27. I thought she was an old woman, that my mother never wears make-up because this is for young girls not for her. But she was only 27, she was a beautiful woman. I just realised how beautiful she was, she had blonde hair, thick blonde hair and she cut it and was wearing make-up from that day and her clothes changed. She was wearing colourful stuff, it was wonderful." Najiba's father was a senior member of the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan, the PDPA. In 1978, the PDPA overthrew the secular President Daoud in the Saur Revolution. “Just a few days before the 1978 coup there was a political big demonstration where one of the high members of the party was assassinated, so thousands and thousands of people came out, and I think the President got scared, seeing the sheer power of this party, and he ordered the arrest of the politburo, the top people, and my father was one of them." They came to her house in the night. Najiba's mother refused to open and the men eventually left. “That night, we were burning all the documents that my father had. The most important thing was the list of the names of people." After the 1978 coup, which killed Daoud as well as several members of his family, Najiba's father became Minister for Agriculture in the new administration. “Our house was on the outskirts of Kabul and was not seen as being very safe, so we had to move to a more central area. I had to change schools. I then went to this top school in Kabul for girls, I was number one in my old area in the class, here I was hardly in the top ten; everyone was so posh, all the girls were so chic, I only knew where France was on the map, they had already visited it, they were speaking about their vacation in Paris. And these people were leaving Afghanistan, these were the elites and the intellectual layer which were not agreeing with what was happening. So my class was becoming emptier and emptier and emptier." At this time, Najiba is 11 years old. “Life completely changed." she recalls. In the winter of 1979, while Najiba's family were at a party at his palace the President of the Revolutionary Council, the leader of the government, is killed, after the palace is stormed. “And we went there, and this is the night when the Russians attacked that palace. So we were under that attack as well. The President was killed and his two sons were killed, and we were taken from the palace, the next night we were taken to, first we were taken to an interrogation center. I was eleven, my mother was pregnant seven months and my brother was twelve. He actually had his twelfth birthday in prison. And then they took us to Pul-e-Charkhi which is the notorious prison in Kabul, we spent altogether eleven days in prison." “I don't think I knew what this meant, at the age of eleven. When we arrived at the prison, the whole thing was so dirty, my mum took her ring and she gave it to the soldiers and said ‘Could you give us some biscuits and milk and soap'. She started washing the covers, they were all stained in blood." “The soldiers were very rough with us in the beginning, but she was trying – and she was seven months pregnant, now I'm thinking, she could have been thinking all the things that could have happened, but she was such a brave woman. She took us through all of that without knowing." After 11 days they were released, and the family reunited. Najiba's father resumed his political career, in yet another administration. However, the civil war, which begun with the 1978 Saur Coup and still continues today, was making Kabul increasingly unsafe. Resistance forces, the muhajideen, were rebelling against the PDPA government with increasing violence, also towards civilians. “The Mujahideen was getting more powerful and powerful and powerful, and we were under attack every day, the Kabul... you know, we didn't have the suicide, suicide is a very new thing in Afghanistan. We had bombs and rockets. And the water resources in many schools were poisoned." As many other girls, women and students, the security risks eventually made it impossible for Najiba to leave the house. “So for one year I didn't go to school, from ages 12-13 I was sitting at home, not going anywhere. And all the top elites were sending their children abroad. I was so bored at home. I was like a prisoner in my own house for an entire year." Najiba eventually convinced her parents to send her and her brother away, so that they would be able to continue their education. “So I left for Russia with my brother, to Moscow." The British Afghan Women's ٍSociety have been collecting the life stories of Afghan women based in the UK for the past two years. Najiba Kasraee's story is one of several narratives which will be presented in full to the public through a traveling exhibition, a booklet and a documentary film.
