wished to remain anonymous, but her story is one to be told. Z lives in
Afghanistan lik the rest of us. She knew freedom, and remembers the
ways things used to be. She was here in Kabul when the Taliban took over and she too does not like the many rules and regulations forced upon us. Which is why she has agreed to this interviw with me. And why she has agreed to share her story with me, and in turn, with you.
Z was there during the vicious struggle that lasted from 1993 to 1996. She was 18 at the time and studying at Kabul University. "At the time, Ahmed Shah Massoud had been battling Hekmatyar and his allies, who had closed the university and were using the buildings as barracks." Unfortunetly however, she was living very close by and took refuge secretly in the university. No one knew. What she saw, what she witnessed, and what went on right in front of her...
She was there when "Hekmatya lost, and when General Massoud's forces took control of that area." She heard the same "announcement on the radio calling for the other displaced students to come help clean up the premises so that they could be reopened." She knew it was a trap, but what could she do? The students came. Many students came "one morning, students who had spontaneously responded to this appeal and were eager to resume their studies." What they saw is what she witnessed happening. "Something sickening, something really atrocious."
What did she see? She saw the soldiers strip down a woman "completely naked and nail her to a pair of swinging doors at the university. They sliced her in half, into two peices. There was half of her body on each door. She watched the doors opening and closing," each time the woman's body connecting and unconnecting with itself. The sickening slosh of the flesh and organs that had not spilled out rubbing against eachother. And yet, all she could think of was the poor students who had come unsuspecting and going home traumatized.
"They cut off people's hands and feet. There was bloody stuff lying all over the place. It was a massacre. She doesn't know how many the killed, but it was incredibly awful." And the students! "The radio just said that the students should help clean the university, straighten things up. But they couldn't clean it up, they couldn't. The security guards worked at it, but there is no way they would come back later that afternoon, they just can't. They brought them over there so they could see what the other men did; they wanted them to know." Because that is how creul they are. Subjecting children to thee kinds of images. Images that do not easily leave your mind. Z still has them she says, they are not images you can just forget, even when your not diretly thinking about them, they are there. Haunting your subconcious and tormenting your mind.
Z