A Bed of Red Flowers: In Search of My Afghanistan Paperback - 2006

First line

ON ONE LATE AFTERNOON in September 1978, our family drive took me to the detention centre in Baghlan, where my father was imprisoned.

Excerpt

Prologue

On one late afternoon in September 1978, our family driver took me to the detention centre in Baghlan, where my father was imprisoned. My purple velvety trousers were brushing the dust from the unpaved road as we walked to the compound. I was holding the driver’s hand, forcing him to go faster. I wanted to see my father. For a child, whose world consisted of family — parents, a younger brother and a baby sister — not seeing my father for three days was a great deal of missing. I was three months short of being five years old.

At the prison, all I could see of my father was his face — striped with the lines from the shadow of the metal bars. He looked desolate. I wanted to hug and kiss him. But he was boxed in a small room. A thick wall, iron bars and several policemen stood between us. I was sitting on the ground, pushing my feet against the soil and crying, my trousers disappearing into a cloud of dry dust and hardly looking purple or velvety any more.

I shall never forget the angry voice of my father. “I didn’t raise you to cry on such a day,” he shouted at me. His words shook the compound. I stopped crying. Holding the driver’s hand, I stood embarrassed, head down, listening to my father. At times his voice grew thicker, as if he himself was going to cry, but he paused and continued. “You mustn’t cry,” he said. “You have to be strong and help your mother.” He told me to tell her that he was fine and that they had no reason to keep him imprisoned. He’d be home soon.

“Your ten minutes is up,” a voice announced coldly. There was a silent goodbye as my father shook his head. I had no tears, and my father faded from view.

I walked back to our car with the driver. There was a revolution inside me. I wanted to be strong, to break all those walls and bars and set my father free. I kept fighting the desperate need to burst into tears. My eyes were burning, much like my father’s. But his were inflamed with anger, mine with helplessness. I wanted to arrive home without tears, even though I knew my mother wouldn’t mind. She had shed many of her own tears in the last few days. I heard her cry at night, quietly in her bed.

That night I hated my mother’s sobbing. I wanted to scream at her “Stop it!” But I felt sorry for her. I knew she was crying from the pain of missing my father, and it was not the only thing. I also heard her talking to a friend in the living room as she described how men were verbally abusing her. She spent her days going to various government offices to see if she could obtain my father’s release. The governor of the city had told her she was “too young and beautiful to waste her life with a criminal” who was against the “rightful government.” A police officer had told her “there were plenty of men who would be happy to please” her. The principal of the school where she was teaching said he was going to report my mother to the “higher authorities” if she missed another day of work to follow up on my father’s case. But if she reciprocated his “keen affection,” she would be nominated that year’s best teacher.

* * *

My mother was not nominated any year’s best teacher, and my father was released after nearly five months in prison. “He had a brave lawyer and lots of luck,” as one of his best friends put it. It took me a while to grasp the gravity of my father’s crime in refusing to support the communist government. The full extent of its meaning did not become clear until later in my life. In some ways, to this day, the child in me still asks “Why?” Why was my father, who in his daughter’s view was a kind man and a good medical doctor, locked up away from us? Children see everything through the injustices they’ve suffered. In the perfect world that every child expects, this episode left a crack in the wall of my innocence.


Chapter 1

Escape


Let’s mourn—
Orders come from abroad, like death itself;
The guns are free,
So are the bullets,
And this year is the year of dying young,
The year of departures,
The year of refugees.
Qahar Ausi, 1989


At dusk, the downtown Kabul district of Dehe Afghanan is cloaked with grey clouds and grey smoke. The early spring rain has left dirt and water across the paved roads. For over a decade now the highways have not been maintained, and the potholes have become deeper, the city’s drainage system more derelict each year. It’s not cold, but we all hug our arms around our bodies as if shivering from fear. We all walk fast, very fast — hoping to get away from everything and everyone. It’s been ten years since the beginning of the war. Who started it? Who will end it? These days, we are so tired that we wish to forget. But is it possible to forget about war when minute by minute, hour by hour and day by day we feel that something bloody and terrible is about to happen?

The curfew starts at 10:00 every night. But there is another unspoken curfew that is imposed not by the communist government but by fear, a curfew that sets in much earlier. Which is why, at this hour, a cocktail of bicycles, motorbikes, pickup trucks, white-and-blue buses, red-and-orange minibuses and yellow taxis, all overcrowded, are merging into a river of traffic. People flood along the main road between the vehicles to reach the two bus stations. Vendors scream their hearts out in a desperate attempt to sell their apples and beans, spinach and meat. Fabrics are measured and cut at speed, four customers at a time. Even the clouds are racing over my head.


From the Hardcover edition.

Media reviews

“This is a remarkable book: an utterly engrossing read that provides a window into a culture that has long existed on the periphery of the world’s vision…Pazira’s account exudes an unself-conscious frankness and intelligence that will give readers a perspective on the last 30 years of Afghan politics and society that simply cannot be gleaned through media accounts.”
—Quill and Quire

"A Bed of Red Flowers is more than the remarkable story of Nelofer Pazira’s difficult life in war-torn Afghanistan, her family’s sacrifices and escape, and her eventual triumph as a writer, teacher, journalist and actress. Written movingly, honestly and lyrically, it is the story of Afghanistan itself, a haunting diary of the tragedies that have plagued Pazira’s nation in the last thirty years."
—Khaled Hosseini, author of The Kite Runner

"Through occupation and civil war, from being a refugee to a movie star — Nelofer Pazira’s journey is a story told with passion, humanity and eloquence. Her unforgettable story provides a searing reminder of Afghanistan’s long years of war and how a country was held hostage long before September 11. A Bed of Red Flowers is a deeply moving tribute that will grip you from beginning to end."
—Ahmed Rashid, author of Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil, and Fundamentalism in Central Asia

“A Bed of Red Flowers is a straightforward, open account of a childhood stained by war and stupidity. It is also a chronicle of the choices one woman made to live her life with courage and dignity, and for the benefit of others.”
–The Globe and Mail

“Powerfully and thoughtfully written, A Bed of Red Flowers is a rare account of a misunderstood country and its intrepid people, trying to live ordinary lives under extraordinary circumstances.”
–Winnipeg Free Press

“It’s a remarkable journey. An inspiring read.”
–The Gazette (Montreal)

“Equal parts lament for a long-gone era and memoir of a remarkable life, Nelofer Pazira’s A Bed of Red Flowers does exactly what a contemporary book about Afghanistan should do. It reminds us that behind that nation’s endlessly chronicled conflict and strife are real, three-dimensional people caught in the crossfire of political agendas and battles for supremacy.”
–Toronto Star

“The juxtaposition of Pazira’s life in Canada with that of Dyana, desolate and suicidal in Kabul, leavens the book and gives it both seriousness and page-turner appeal.”
–The London Free Press

“[A Bed of Red Flowers] is both a love letter to a country that no longer exists, and an optimistic–tempered with just the right amount of clear-eyed realism–look into a possible future.”
–Edmonton Journal

“Pazira presents the moving and stunningly written memoir of her childhood curtailed by the arrival of Soviet rule in Afghanistan and her family’s sacrifices and eventual escape to Canada.”
–Concordia University Magazine

“A Bed of Red Flowers is not merely a remarkable memoir of one family’s struggle; it’s also a succinct account of Afghanistan’s political history. Within these 400 suspenseful pages lies a concise retelling of the complexities and futility of war in a country constantly used as a battleground for other people’s ideologies. Pazira shows the reader the frustration of a diverse culture in which people have always had to choose between lack of safety and lack of sovereignty. This book is a victory, bringing us a truth banned or distorted by most with the power to speak about it. An enriching and heartrending read.”
–NOW (Toronto)

“Pazira is a gifted and cinematic story-teller. Every page is a scene, moving the story through wartime survival and sacrifice to a relentless search for answers.”
–The Observer


From the Hardcover edition.