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Book Among the Mujahideen The Gun Tree is an extraordinary autobiographical account of one woman’s experience of living with the mujahideen during the Russian invasion of Afghanistan.
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Zahrah Nasir was born Pam Morris in the highlands of Scotland. And nothing could be more incongruous than a 27-year-old Scotswoman, a battered wife, freshly divorced, out of a mental home and having lost the custody of her two children, charging off halfway around the world to a battle-ravaged country to become a war correspondent. An ideal recipe for disaster. However, not only did Pam Morris make it to Afghanistan, but she walked shoulder to shoulder with the mujahideen, witnessed the horror and tragedy of the Russian invasion of Afghanistan – and survived. It was also incongruously enough, “in a decrepit windowless room in Peshawar,” that she became a woman. “Was it when I started wearing makeup and bought my first pair of high heels? Was it when I gave birth to my first child? It was none of these things. “I became a woman when I was treated like one and shown respect… I became a woman the first time I went to war.” The Gun Tree is an extraordinary autobiographical account of Zahrah Nasir’s 10-day stay in Afghanistan. Ten days that stretched over a lifetime and changed her life forever. It is also the story of a mujahideen commander who trusted what he saw in her eyes and took her with him into the depths of hell, and sent her away before destruction struck. Nasir’s abrupt, staccato writing style is well suited to the physical and emotional trauma that she was plunged into with her first steps into Afghanistan. “Three weeks ago I was in Scotland. Three months ago I had been a battered wife. Three hours from now I’ll be asleep. Three hundred miles from here I’ll be safe. Three seconds from now I might be dead.” As she crossed the border, Pam Morris became Banafsha Khomar: “The erstwhile commander galloped alongside me and happily yelled, ‘Welcome to Afghanistan… Now you are an Afghan woman Pam… Your name is Banafsha Khomar’.” He had named her after the cornflower-blue daisy that grows wild in the mountains of Afghanistan. In a valley with 1500 mujahideen, Banafsha Khomar was the only woman. Disguised as an Afghan in a shalwar kameez and a black veil she travelled to the mujahideen base camp through Russian MIG raids, saw Afghans blown to bits, villages razed to the ground, young boys with legs blown off… the journey was the ultimate test in physical and mental endurance. Travelling at a gruelling pace, often 23 hours a day, the party only stopped for tea and naan. In the courtyard of the camp was a mulberry tree after which this book was named. Banafsha called it the gun tree because it was used by the mujahideen to hang their guns, ammunition and belts. It also became her special sitting place, always left vacant for her by the mujahideen. It was under the shelter of the mulberry tree that Banafsha witnessed the brutality of the mujahideen stoning a spy to death. Huddled under the tree she tried desperately to close out the chilling clatter of stones pounding against flesh and the screams that pierced the night. At last the screams stopped and the camp prepared for supper. It was also sitting under the mulberry tree that she participated in discussions on war, or on the next raid and watched the men play volley-ball and chess. She accompanied the commander on a mission into the mountains to bring down ammunition from an underground store and met villagers in bombed-out hamlets who shared their precious morsels of food with her and begged her to tell the world what was happening to them and their country. When the commander got news of an impending Russian raid, he forcibly sent Banafsha, accompanied by three of his cousins, back on the long road to Pakistan. A few hours after they left, Russian MIGs swooped down over them towards the camp in a terrifying bombing run of destruction and death. “I fought not to scream, not to turn and race back towards something I could neither change nor help.” The Gun Tree is a fascinating narrative of a woman who made the Afghan war her own, who in that wild and war-torn land earned the respect of the battle-hardened mujahideen and who, in those tumultuous ten days, experienced more than most do in a lifetime. Life for her was never the same again. She returned to Scotland only to find that she was a stranger in her native Scottish Highlands. She left after two years to marry and settle in the mountains of Pakistan, where she lives today.
Close to Afghanistan and the friends she left behind. |
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E-mail:
newsline@cyber.net.pk
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