Roused by the rattle of sisters chained

Sukreet is my student in water aerobics at the Prairie Life Center in Lincoln, Neb. She is from Afghanistan.

I know little about the upheaval in Afghanistan. It is 1996. I have just graduated from college. I don't remember knowing that women were banned from the Afghani university in September of that year. I am house-sitting for a professor and sending out resumes while I teach classes and take yoga. I am reading a book on Taoist discipline.

Sukreet's husband is a doctor. It took him six years to bring her and their two children here; six more years to retrieve her mother. I see the two women one day on a bench near a public garden. They are wearing clothing made of the most beautiful fabrics I have ever seen. They greet me like a sister. By then, all women in Afghanistan are forced to wear a black, sack-like garment called a burqa. They are beaten in the streets if their eyes or ankles show. Sukreet's children often join her in the pool after class. She wears a brightly colored swimsuit that would get her killed in her country.

I soon say good-bye to Sukreet and the class and leave Nebraska to explore the world, with no conscious awareness that women in Afghanistan cannot leave their homes without the company of a husband, brother or father.

After several weeks of traveling, I settle in Grass Valley, Calif., where I land a job as a business reporter. I write a story about beauty shops, while halfway round the world, the windows of homes where women live must be painted black because their faces supposedly corrupt men. I am practicing aerobic routines for my new class on the day in March of 1997 that a women is stoned to death trying to leave Afghanistan in the company of a man who is unrelated to her. By summer, Afghani women are ordered to stop their feet from making noise when they walk.

This does not enter my mind as I spend the season hiking in the Sierra Nevadas and swimming naked in the Yuba River, or as I travel to San Francisco, Los Angeles, Las Vegas and New York over the next few months. I am probably enjoying a fairly good wine with my friend John on the day in February, '98 when 20,000 people watch an Afghani teen-age girl take 100 lashes for walking with a man to whom she's not related. It is said she utters not a sound.

Summer returns, and I fret about my weight. I don't have any clue that Afghani women are drinking caustic soda to kill themselves. It takes three days for the throat burns to finish them. By autumn, Afghani parents are no longer free to name their children any but Islamic names. I shop for nylons in Amsterdam.

Reports emerge from Afghanistan late last year that kidneys are being stolen from children in refugee camps for the transplant trade. People accused of being gay are buried alive beneath brick walls, individuals accused of thievery have their hands cut off, and those suspected of having the X chromosome are stripped of every right and freedom that makes life worth living.

Earlier this year, I am finally roused from sleep by a series of chain e-mails imploring me to sign a petition objecting to these atrocities. My stomach turns. I wonder where in God's name I have been all this time. I sign the petition, send it back to the author. I think of Sukreet, her children and her mother, and I will not likely forget them, ever again.

Monday, March 15, 1999

Copyright 2010 by Deborah McAdams. All Rights Reserved. For Reprint Rights, click here.