The Only Candle
By Sayed Isaq Reha
As told to Ann F. Purcell
Copyright 2010 Sayed Isaq Reha and Ann F. Purcell
ISBN13 Softcover: 978-1-4568-6464-7
ISBN13 eBook: 978-1-4568-6435-4
License Notes: This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient.
Published by Sayed Isaq Reha and Ann F. Purcell at Smashwords.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
– Chapter 1 -- The Only Candle
– Chapter 2 -- The Cost of Marriage
– Chapter 3 -- The Struggle to Stay Alive
– Chapter 4 -- The Bloody Wedding
– Chapter 6 -- Pregnant Women in Afghanistan
– Chapter 7 -- Hoping for a Successful Future
– Chapter 8 -- A Trip to the Funeral
– Chapter 9 – Small America in Afghanistan
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DEDICATION
To the people of Afghanistan and the rest of the world
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INTRODUCTION
The purpose of this book is to explain the very unfortunate situation of the invasion of Afghanistan by the former Soviet Union over the undefended and unprotected country of Afghanistan.
With cruel rules and methods, the working people of Afghanistan, the mud houses and the very basic survival living resources of the poor Afghan people were destroyed.
The communists wanted to restore a regime that was against the dignity and the nature of mankind and they wanted to impose their regime on the Afghan people.
In this book, I have attempted to rip off the face masks of Afghan and Russian communists. Their cruel and controversial deeds have been illuminated by the stories in this book.
I am hoping that the people of Afghanistan and the people of the rest of the world will taste the bitterness of these experiences, will not trust communists and take this lesson so that future generations will be safe from their conspiracy and torments.
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Chapter One
The Only Candle
It was a hot summer day in Lashkargah, of the Helmand province. Afghanistan was still very much under the strangulating pressure of the Communist regime of that time (1981).
Mr. Mohammed Mohmand arrived home from work and saw an elderly lady in front of his house. She told Mohammed Mohmand that her grandson, Assad, was waiting in front of the hospital with his fourteen-year-old uncle who had carried him there on his back because Assad was wounded by a bomb and his leg was badly injured. Assad was lying bleeding in the dusty road in front of the hospital. She begged Mohammed Mohmand to take care of Assad and use his authority to argue that the small boy should be treated immediately.
Mohammed Mohmand hastily went to the hospital and spoke with one of the doctors whom he knew. He asked him to treat this five year old boy.
The doctor, also a member of the opposition, agreed to treat the boy. Fortunately, the child Assad survived and he was sent home to heal.
After a couple of months, Mr. Mohammed Mohmand and his family decided to leave the country because his life and their lives were at stake.
They looked for old clothing and disguises so that they could not be identified. One of Mr. Mohammed Mohmand's nephews, Fahim, had green eyes and looked European and they worried endlessly about his disguise. Finally they decided to get out the family’s mother and the younger children first, followed by Mohammed Mohmand and his brother Mr. Habib Mohmand, Fahim’s father.
Quietly the two brothers tried to cross the Helmand River to go to the city of Marja where the mother and children would be waiting and there would be people to assist them to go to Darwashan, a village where the now-healed Assad’s parents and family lived.
Before crossing the bridge at the Helmand River, there was a strongly armed checkpoint that had been erected to force people of the opposition to stay and prevent them from escaping Afghanistan’s communist stronghold. Fortunately for Mr. Habib and Mohammed Mohmand, there were two Government officials who wanted to ride in the truck in which Mr. Habib and Mohammed Mohmand were traveling. The driver of the truck told the communist officials, “I cannot give you the front seat because it is already occupied. You can sit on the top of the truck in the seat called Jangala.”
Everyone on the road saluted the officials in the Jangala and the soldiers at the checkpoint assumed that all the people in the truck were part of the Government and colleagues of the two Government officials. They waved the truck through. So, with greatest of luck, the escapees got through the checkpoint and were soon reunited with their family in Marja. Help from opposition party members got them to Darwashan and the house of the grandmother and extended family of the small boy Assad, whom Mohmand had helped to save.
They spent five days with Assad’s family preparing camels for the desert trip to the city of Quetta on the border of Pakistan.
Assad’s father asked Mr. Habib’s wife, a member of his ethnic tribe, if she would please take Assad with her as her son so that he could be educated in the United States. He pleaded that Assad was the oldest son of his family and “our only candle” to stay alive. He explained that Assad had been almost killed by a bomb but now, thanks to the intervention of Mohammed Mohmand, had been saved. He was very special to the grieving mother and father who were afraid that their family had been targeted by the communist regime. Already over one thousand villagers had been killed in the fighting and Assad’s family did not believe that there would be any other survivors to carry on the family name unless they could get Assad out of the country.
Mr. Habib’s wife refused. The next day, Assad’s father approached Mohammed Mohmand. Without thinking twice, Mohammed Mohmand agreed to take the child with him. He said “This is what my heart wants. I will do this with all love from the bottom of my heart.”
After the five days, the small group of refugees had collected food and had bargained for camels to take them the 14 day trip over the desert.
After two days and two nights of traveling, they arrived at the edge of the Helmand River in the province of Sistan. Only half of the family could fit on the ferry on its first trip. A heavy storm arose, however, and the ferry could not return. Overnight, the part of the family that had been transported over the river were without food or blankets as they waited for the storm to pass and the rest of their family to join them.
The next morning, the rest of the family went over the Helmand River on the ferry and they all continued on the grueling trip over the desert between Afghanistan and Pakistan. There were terribly hot nights where the family couldn’t sleep and the food was soon gone. The only thing that was left was a bag of flour. They would mix water with the flour and make a mash shaped like a ball. Putting this over a low heat of a small fire, the hard tack was their only food.
Mr. Habib’s wife grew so weak that she fell off the camel. The stirrups tied her to the camel and she was dragged about 60 yards. Assad grew weak also but Mohammed Mohmand rode right behind him in the saddle and held the small boy so that he couldn’t fall.
They couldn’t sleep. There were no pillows or blankets and it was excruciatingly hot. They were all lying directly on the sand and it wasn’t until 4 or 5 AM when it was cool enough to sleep.
One afternoon, the Russian war planes started circling. The guides warned the travelers that their colored clothes would show the Russians that they were not local villagers. The Russians had binoculars to see the travelers more clearly. The camel drivers told them to dig a grave for each traveler so that each one could be buried up to their neck in sand. They then collected camel thorn plants to put around the heads to make a little shade and also so that the Russians were unlikely to see them. After a couple of hours waiting like that, finally the day became so hot that the camel drivers realized that the heat would kill their passengers if the Russians didn’t. They urged all the travelers to dig themselves out of their graves and hot, tired, thirsty and hungry, they continued the trip.
Suddenly, after a while, closer to sundown, there was a little cloud that covered the sun, a little breeze and a bird, the size of a pigeon hovered near them. As it dropped to the ground, they noticed that it was very lovely orange color with gray stripes and a tiny crest. The bird sang and they rejoiced and were relieved when the small cloud gave them a tiny bit of rain.
Finally, the group arrived at the border of Pakistan. They were exhausted and desperately wanted to go to a place where they could eat and rest.
At the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan they didn’t have any food or water left. Just a little dry flour remained but they didn’t have the water to mix with it. They asked the camel drivers if they could take a few hours to rest. A stranger approached. They asked him if he lived nearby and if he could help them. That person was a shepherd and he was searching for his goat. He said ‘I’m perhaps 45 minutes away from home. Please let me go and ask my wife to prepare some bread, butter and milk for me to bring to you.”
Around 10 PM that night, the man returned with provisions. When the tired travelers tried to thank him too effusively, he said that this must be God’s help and he was just the tool. He had lost his goat and had happened on their group as he was looking for his goat. The hungry group was grateful to enjoy the bread, milk and butter. Mohammed Mohmand still remembers to this day the delicious taste of the butter and says that he has never forgotten how wonderful it tasted.
The exhausted family spent a month and a half in Quetta and then they made the trip to Karachi, Pakistan. Mohammed Mohmand went to the American consulate and introduced himself as a worker in the agricultural company of Morrison, an American company with a branch in Lashkargah. He had been the director of programming. He had already been once in the United States on an academic scholarship about 10 years before. Mohammed Mohmand requested refugee status for himself and his family. While talking with the Consul, he told the truth about Assad and how Assad came to be traveling with his family.
In the Consulate, the officials who determined if refugee status could be assigned, found the honesty of Mohammed Mohmand refreshing. Due to his honesty, his working background, his compassion and his political party, Mohammed Mohmand was to be permitted to come to the United States with his family and Assad.
After a year and a half waiting in Karachi, and it was under difficult economic situations, all members of the family finally received the necessary paperwork and were allowed to travel to Dallas/Fort Worth, Texas where one of Mohammed Mohmand’s brothers lived. They brought Assad with them and all the children were put immediately in school.
Mohammed Mohmand took some basic electronic classes and later became an electronics assembler for several years. After a few years, they were able to buy a house and then Mohammed Mohmand approached the principal of Assad’s school. Assad had proven himself to be very bright and had shown that he was brilliant in all of his school subjects. The principal was reduced to tears as he listened to Assad’s story. He told Mohammed Mohmand that “this is not what we usually do, but in this unusual case, I will make an exception for Assad and allow him to skip grades and go ahead in school as fast as his abilities allow.”
Assad was in the eighth grade when Assad’s parents started begging to see Assad again. They were living in Pakistan at this time. Mohammed Mohmand sent Assad to Pakistan to spend several weeks with his family. When his parents saw their son, Assad, they were hugely impressed and were very appreciative that he was speaking English. They noted that he was well educated and that he had learned all the social graces. He was polite and bright. They sent prayers for Mohammed Mohmand and thanks for the many gifts which had been sent with the youth from Texas.
When Assad returned to Texas, he finished high school and went to the University of Seattle, Washington. He graduated with a degree in computer science and got a Master’s Degree in Computer Science. He married an Afghan girl who was very beautiful and also very educated. Her family was reluctant to have her marry him because his parents were not nearby for them to interview. So they wanted to meet Mohammed Mohmand, his adoptive father. Mohammed Mohmand who was in Kabul, Afghanistan at the time, agreed to come to meet the girl’s family in Washington State. They were so impressed with Mohammed Mohmand that they agreed to the marriage.
Assad had a huge wedding in the Marriott Hotel of Seattle and invited all the children of Mohammed Mohmand. Mohammed Mohmand and his family were very excited about Assad’s marriage and warmly welcomed his new wife as a family member. They invited Assad and his young bride to come to Texas to celebrate their pywazi (Afghan’s invitation from the groom’s family for the first visit of the bride to get familiar with the rest of the family). This traditional meeting includes greetings, lots of dinners, gifts, and celebratory get-togethers. Assad’s birth family welcomed the news of his marriage with great happiness and felt that their dreams for their “only candle” had come true. In fact, their predictions had been accurate. A few months after Assad had left with Mohammed Mohmand to go to Pakistan, the family had welcomed the birth of twins, one boy and one girl. Then their village was attacked by the communists and all the villagers were forced to hide in a wheat field to stay alive. Both babies died of dehydration because of the very hot weather.
Shortly after that experience, Assad’s family moved to Pakistan and established a successful trade business there.
Assad is now one of the ranking directors of a computer firm in Seattle, Washington.
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Chapter Two
It was in the late 1960s during my summer break vacation to the central part of Afghanistan in the small city called Shaharaak (translated as “small city”). I was enjoying my three months stay in this very beautiful city with its few shops, a few small government office buildings, very mild temperatures during the summertime, and very pleasant, surrounded as it was with beautiful mountains and nature delights like jungle. A large river branched in the jungle and at some points, we could fish the clear sweet water for delectable milk fish. Beyond the jungle were the high mountains in which you could go hunting by horseback for the famous Marcopolo deer with their massive curling horns. Most of the people who worked there lived in mud houses in nearby villages.
One evening shortly after sunset, the city was quiet. Suddenly the peace was broken by a truck that came with soldiers and they picked up a young man called Shaheen (meaning Eagle, in English) and they accused him of being the murderer of two brothers with whom he had been working.
Shaheen worked with these two brothers to collect herbs from that region. These herbs, asafetida, were famous for their ability to cure toothache, digestion and stomach ache. These marvelous plants killed gas and were extensively bought by doctors who used traditional plants to cure.
Shaheen had murdered the two brothers for money.
The soldiers handcuffed Shaheen and used a chain to hobble his legs. Shaheen was a huge tall and very powerful man with red eyes (as if sleepless). He had dark skin and wore a moustache. He always looked very tired. The soldiers brought him to the police station and my brother, the regional governor, went with some government workers to try to investigate why Shaheen had been imprisoned.
Meanwhile, in the police station, his jailers showed Shaheen pomegranate branches that had been soaked to be used as whips for torture and interrogation. They made prisoners lie down, they tied their feet together and elevated them and they whipped the prisoners until they confessed. They also tied the prisoners hanging upside down to whip them.
They threatened Shaheen with the pomegranate branches and with their walkie talkies, telling him that the electricity from the walkie talkies would shock him with 3000 kilowatts of electricity. By giving him all these details, Shaheen’s jailers wanted to scare him into talking without the torture itself. He was not educated and they felt that these tricks were worthwhile.
Shaheen resisted and denied guilt for a while but when they started to whip him, he broke down and started his confession.
Shaheen told the authorities that he was engaged to be married in the province of Helmand which was far away, that his future father in law wanted 25,000 Afghani ($500) for a bride price and that he also needed money for the wedding. For that purpose, Shaheen tried to think of what he could do. He questioned whether he could earn enough to cover the bride price, the wedding and a house to live. He was advised to go to Ghorat, a central part of Afghanistan, to find work. Ghorat was very mountainous, very cold in winter, but very pleasant and cool in summer. Many springs there, all year around, had clean clear cool water as if it had been refrigerated.
Shaheen therefore went to Ghorat and chose the province of Shaharaak to work. He had been told by some people that there were two brothers by the name of Ata Mohammed and Feda Mohammed who were hiring people to harvest herbs. He went to interview with them and they offered him the job. It was a hard job starting at 7 AM and going through sunset. The work consisted of using shovels and picks to harvest the herb “hange”. It was agreed that Shaheen would live with the brothers and sleep in their tent.
After a few months of work, one evening, after they ate dinner, the two brothers were counting money by the light of a kerosene lantern after a trip into town to sell the herbs. Ata Mohammed had 11,000 Afghani and Feda Mohammed had 14,000 Afghani.
Shaheen watched this scene and was thinking about his fiancée, his wedding and his financial problems. He also remembered how nice the two brothers had been to him, giving him a job and a place to stay. He debated with himself what to do – whether he should continue to work for money slowly or make a lot of money this night.
After long deliberation, he decided that this was the night.
Two hours after the brothers had fallen asleep, he arose and went out into the night. One of the brothers woke when he arose but went back to sleep, thinking that Shaheen had just gone to the bathroom. Waiting another 15 minutes, Shaheen took a shovel and went back into the tent. He hit both brothers in the head with the shovel. After they were unconscious, he hit them again and again until they were both dead. Then he lit the kerosene lantern and saw so much blood that he went into a panic. After searching for the money, he finally found it hidden under the floor mat. He also took the brothers’ watches and decided to stay overnight in the tent, leaving for Helmand in the early morning to walk over the mountains and through the jungles. He decided that if and when he became hungry, he could ask nearby villagers or shepherds for something to eat. In the morning, after dawn, he washed his face, ate some breakfast and started his long journey.
His journey was very long and dangerous. As there were no paved roads, there were many wild animals and hardships. After about 3 weeks, he arrived in Helmand. (This is the story that he told the Government authorities.)
When he got to Helmand, he went home and tried to tell his family that he had been working very hard and that his employers had been very kind hearing about his problems with the bride price and wedding costs. He said that they had agreed to give him money in advance to achieve all this. His family believed him. He went to his future father-in-law to ask for the daughter’s hand in marriage. His future father in law was very happy and asked the servants to bring food and drink to celebrate his new future son-in-law. They started to discuss dates and the details of the wedding.
In the meantime, when the murder case was brought to the attention of the government, their investigations turned up that Shaheen had been in the tent with the brothers the night of their demise.
Learning that Shaheen was from the province of Helmand, the government sent soldiers to search for Shaheen to arrest him for the murder of the two brothers. After his 20 days of travel, Shaheen had arrived in Helmand and within 10 days after that, while he was preparing for his wedding, the soldiers arrived and captured him.
After his confession Shaheen was brought to trial the next day and the judge decided to put him in prison for life. If he had killed just one man he would have been executed. As he killed more than one man, he had the sentence worse than death, which was life in prison.
First of all, you should understand that an Afghan wedding is traditionally paid by the groom. Furthermore, in Afghanistan the groom has to provide a bride price to the bride’s father. One kind of bridal price is an instant payment of 25,000 or 30,000 Afghanis. The second kind of bridal price is called Haqul-Mahar which can be paid by the groom to the bride during the next few years. Sometimes the wife tells the groom “I forgive you the Haqul-Mahar.” And then he doesn’t have to pay it any more.
This tradition of Afghanistan has caused many crimes to be committed and lots of anguish for young Afghan men because, without the money for a bride price and the money to pay for the wedding, a groom cannot have his bride whether there is true love or not. In fact this type of tradition often prevents true love. Because of the money, an ugly and nasty old man can force a marriage with a young beautiful woman. He might be 60 years old or more and she might be 18. He might treat her like a slave, beating her and cursing her and feeling free to use her for his nature but he can marry her because he has the money for the wedding and the bride price.
In time, Shaheen was brought to a bigger and more secure prison in a larger city. His mother was terribly depressed and the whole family cried because he had ended their lifetime desire to have him married. There are thousands and thousands of families in Afghanistan who have experienced similar grief. Thousands and thousands of crimes have taken place because of these traditions. Many people in Afghanistan have gone to their graves unmarried because the men did not have the money to provide bride prices.
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Chapter Three
My cousin, Esmatullah, who is three years older than I am, is now living in Sidney, Australia. In the beginning of 1980, however, we were working together in Kabul, Afghanistan for a chemical fertilizer distribution company. After I had worked in this job for forty days, the government issued an order that I should register for the army. Instead of complying, I went to my home in Kandahar and started planning my escape from Afghanistan.