June 23, 2002

How did it feel to be an Afghan on September 11, 2001 when the World Trade Centre was attacked? Zoya, a woman from Afghanistan, recalls her experience

September 11, 2001. I arrived at the airport in Islamabad, accompanied by my RAWA friend Saima and a male supporter who was our bodyguard and driver. I was due to fly to Spain to attend several conferences at which I would represent the association.

When we entered the main hall of the airport, we noticed that many people were crowded around a television set that hung from the ceiling. None of them were speaking. I got closer and read the headline: ‘CNN breaking news — Attack on America’. There was nothing else on the screen, just dust, a lot of dust.

Soon the dust was replaced by the film of the twin towers.

So many times I had seen violence and terror in my country, but it had never been shown on television like this. I saw a man jumping from one of the towers. It was my nightmare. I imagined that I had been in the tower, the tower that to me was like a mountain. I heard on the news that a man had called his mother, and I thought of my parents. I imagined that the planes hitting the towers were like bombs hitting the shelter under my house in Kabul, or the thousands of other shelters where people thought they were safe.

The commentator mentioned that the attacks might be linked to Osama bin Laden.

I went to phone one of the RAWA safe houses. I asked them if they had seen CNN or the BBC. They told me the television was switched off. I told them to switch it on immediately and that I would call back later. I no longer knew whether I should go on my trip or not.

We were all convinced that Osama bin Laden was behind the attacks.

“If it was Osama bin Laden, then America will want revenge,” I said.

Saima nodded. “And that will be dangerous for everybody, everybody in Afghanistan. America can’t wipe him out in just one day,” she said.

“It will be a family war,” I said. “Osama bin Laden was for many years used by the CIA when they helped him fight the Russians, and now he is rebelling against America and America is angry. But many of our people will pay the price for this.” “And afterward,” Saima said. “What if America does punish the Taliban, and they lose power, what will happen then?”

None of us had an answer.

Later, RAWA told me to go ahead with my flight. After boarding, I sat in my seat thinking of the people who had been in the towers and of what they would have wanted to say to their parents or children if they had any understanding of what was happening to them. I was trying not to feel afraid of the flight ahead — I always feel a little claustrophobic in planes — when a Western couple came to sit down next to me.

They were both middle-aged, dressed in jeans and T-shirts. We did not speak to each other, but from their accent I guessed that they were Americans.

“Those Afghans,” the man said to his wife. “How can we let them do this to us?”

“Bush should just go ahead and bomb the place,” she said.

I sat quietly, wondering how they would react if I told them I was from Afghanistan, that I had never protected Osama bin Laden, and that I hated him as much as they did. A river red with blood separated the innocent people of Afghanistan from a handful of terrorists. I did not want to see Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar — the spiritual leader of the Taliban, who likes to describe himself as the Amir-ul Momineen, the Commander of the Faithful — killed right away. First I would take them in a cage round the most famous zoos of the world, so that people could see what wild animals they were.

But I did not speak to them. I tried to concentrate instead on the film that was playing. Of all the films available, it was a comedy, Mr Bean.

At Dubai airport, where I was due to change planes, I was stopped at passport control. The officer stared at the cover of the passport I had been given by the Taliban Embassy. ‘Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan’ it said on the cover.

“Who are you visiting in Spain?” the officer asked me, turning the passport over in his hands again and again.

“My family. My aunt lives in Madrid,”I lied.

My answer didn’t convince him. “Please wait for me. I need to take your passport with me for a short while,” he said.

Fifteen minutes later, he came back and handed my passport to me. “I’m sorry,” he said. “The flight is cancelled. There is nothing else available, and you will have to wait three days before we can tell you whether there is room on another flight. If you want to wait...”

It had been his turn to lie. “Why can’t I fly? Is it the passport?” I insisted.

“Sorry. There’s nothing I can do. We have received instructions to be very careful with Afghan nationals. That’s all I can say,” he replied. Through no fault of my own, my passport and my nationality had become a liability. I had no choice but to call RAWA again and find a plane to return to Pakistan.

As I sat waiting for my flight, I spent hours watching CNN. I felt that the Afghans, because of all they had suffered, were the people who could best feel the pain of the people in New York and Washington.

I watched the archive footage of Osama bin Laden. The way he dressed, the way he sat silently with downcast eyes or a lost, mystical expression — I thought he was trying to play the part of a prophet.

When I got back to Islamabad, I found our computer operator Mehmooda sadder than I had seen her for a long time. It is she who spends hours at a time dealing with the e-mails we receive from people all over the world. She drinks coffee to keep her going through the long nights when she works, because that is when the telephone rates are lowest.

“Most of the e-mails we’ve received are supportive, but you can’t imagine how much hate mail we’ve had,” Mehmooda told me. She showed me some of the messages. They were full of insults, but worst of all, many were from people who had previously been among our supporters. They said they did not want to raise funds for RAWA anymore because they hated Afghanistan. Up to ten per cent of the e-mails we had received since September 11 were negative, many of them obscene.

One man wrote, “Someday soon people will say: ‘You know, there used to be mountains in Afghanistan.’” Another, who signed himself as Lee, wrote, “Get out of your stupid country while you can. We (the USA) are going to blow you up with a nuclear bomb. You people should get rid of that stupid cloth on your head and join the real world. You ragheads.”

“What should I do?” Mehmooda asked me.

“Answer them. We should write an answer. Let’s make it as kind as possible, and send it to as many people as we can,” I suggested.

Mehmooda wrote a message that said we understood their anger at such a moment, that we too were shocked by the attacks and shared the anger and sorrow of the American people. We pointed out that we too were victims of the Taliban, whom we called ‘a handful of brutal subhumans’, and other Muslim fundamentalists in Afghanistan.

Many people who received this message e-mailed us back, apologizing for their earlier message.