Farzana F.
فرزانه
(FRANCE)
“I thought about how behind every dead body there was a human being, a value, and a family, who had been destroyed. ”
Farzana is a social and political activist as well as a former police officer for Afghanistan’s Ministry of Interior Affairs. At the ministry, Farzana was responsible for recording and monitoring war casualties on a daily basis.
Q1: What is a single memory or story you remember from Afghanistan?
Despite the hardships, racial and ethnical prejudices, I also experienced gender discrimination as a woman. I had good days in Afghanistan. I have good memories. But I can’t forget my darker memories either.
When I was a university student, I was involved in civil protest. I was one of the protesters at Dehmazang. I found myself with a dead body on one side, and an injured person on the other. I survived by accident. The image of the dead and the injured people continues to haunt me. So does the image of the young boys and girls who had left class to participate in the protests. The families had to look for signs of them among the dead bodies and blood. My phone was lost and everyone thought I was dead until they saw me in a live interview on TV.
There were two more tragic scenes I witnessed during my time as a police officer at the 300-bed police hospital. One night the hospital parking lot filled with cars, and when I asked what was the matter, I was told there was a war going on in one of the provinces and fifty people had died. Fifty ambulances with fifty dead bodies, people aged between twenty to thirty. Most of them were younger than twenty-five. I thought about how behind every dead body there was a human being, value, and a family who had been destroyed.
Another day I was working and had to stay overnight. I was very tired and wanted to drink a glass of tea when I heard screaming and crying. When I asked what happened, my colleague told me there was a dead body. When I walked over, I saw the body of a man covered in blood and his thirteen-year-old daughter was crying and shouting “father.” I felt my body was on fire.
There wasn’t a single day that went by without my witnessing a martyr’s body in the morning and evening. I would see the ambulances, transporting martyrs on a daily basis, and I would see families coming to identify bodies. Afghanistan was in sorrow and fire even before August 15.
Farzana in Kabul.
Q2: Tell us the exact moment you decided to leave Afghanistan.
I was at my lowest when I decided to leave Afghanistan. Previously, I had been married and my husband moved to Germany. We started having issues living long-distance, and we ultimately got divorced because I did not want to leave Afghanistan. I believed that, after the difficulty I had faced to earn my education, it with my generation’s job to rescue Afghanistan. We needed to fight, to work hard for the country. So I didn’t want to leave Afghanistan under any circumstances.
In my last days on the job, I would hear about a province falling to the Taliban. It made me feel disappointed, but even then, I was sure the international community and the president of Afghanistan would not let the country collapse into Taliban control.
It was either August 12 or August 13 that I saw a list of provinces under Taliban rule and only a few provinces remained free. Then after the collapse of Herat and Mazar, I felt even worse. I still couldn’t imagine the collapse of Kabul, though. On August 14 I went to my office and all my personal belongings were still there. The next day I went to the bank and from there I wanted to go to the office, but when I called a colleague, she told me everyone had left, and that the Taliban were now inside Kabul. I went out and found the Taliban riding around the city in military vehicles, wearing black-and-white turbans. People were frightened and they were running in bare feet. This was the moment that I felt all my hard work and values being destroyed. The next morning, I heard Zabihullah Mujahid say on the radio that women were not allowed to go to work anymore.
Then I got the invitation from France. It was incredibly hard to choose to leave, because I was leaving all my loved ones behind. But after struggling for two nights outside the airport, with the help of the French military, I entered the terminal. At that point, I began to see myself as a body that others decided where to take. All my loved ones remained in Afghanistan, while I was evacuated.
In the past, the airport had always been organized. “I was brokenhearted to see the airport had become a ruined place, where artists, children, young people, and the military were desperate for the opportunity to escape — for the chance to live a full life.” Inside that airport, I said to myself: Millions of people died for the values that are now being destroyed.
When I boarded the plane, everyone was crying. Everyone had left someone behind: a husband, a mother, a sister, a child, a country. My values, my dreams, and everything were destroyed. I was evacuated as a body without a soul.
Farzana visiting a graveyard of students killed in 2016.
Q3: What is something important that you wanted to bring with you? Or what is something you wanted to bring but could not?
I think, it was very, very difficult to live, work and study in Afghanistan; It was not easy especially for women, but the women who had values and worked hard for Afghanistan, their values had been destroyed, I could not take them with me. The most important person I wanted to bring with me was my mother, but I couldn't.
Since human being is a social and emotional thing in life, when I left the house for the last time and went to the airport, I did not say good bye to my family and thought that I would return. When I left the house, I told my mother not to not come outside to watch me leaving. But when I went out, I saw my mother looking out the window and crying. Then she opened the window and told me and Raihana (her sister) to go, maybe “I won't see you again.” [cry continues...]
I think many valuable things remained there, many things. But the most important part was my family and my mother. [cry continues...]
Even now that I have been in Paris for almost six months, despite the fact that there is security and other resources, the image of my mother behind the window, waving her hand, crying is unforgettable and is with me.
Farzana during police training.
Q4: If you could send a message that will be heard in thirty years, what would it be?
I want to tell people that life is difficult, especially for those who live in a war zone — for those who live in countries like Afghanistan that are used as fuel for the goals of powerful countries and superpowers. But never stop fighting. Always try.
Then I have a message for people who had a brother, sister, child, or father in the military: The military fought for our values, but they have been sold by their political leaders and decision makers. Dreams and values of the youths who were fighting at cost of their lives have been wasted and none of them know about their futures. Study the facts of history and make an honest judgment about who sold out your fathers and brought us into this situation. My children and my family should know that we were not to be blamed. They should know that others sabotaged my future. Today I am a migrant and a person with nothing, but in my own country I had been independent and even supported other people.
People should differentiate the sides of the conflict and should not trust those who sold our future.
Farzana with her police uniform.
“ I felt like crying when we left. Leaving your home is very difficult.”