Funny how life sometimes answers our questions not hours or months, but years later when we hardly remember the question. I have seen women in burqas all my life, but that day seeing them answered a question from the days of my innocence and childhood. It brought me to make one of the most painful confessions of my life.

Now my heart wants to shout directly into the ears of my people: “For Allah’s sake, stop blaming others for our miseries and problems.” I want to reach out to millions of Afghans, President Karzai included, and tell them: “We have had enough of the blaming game. Let’s not play it anymore. Let’s take responsibility for our own actions and our own faith, for our people cannot take any more pain of dirty politics and lies.”

While most parents tell their children to be careful while crossing the road or to stay away from strangers, my parents warned us against telling people my mother was Shia. I remember my father saying that people in our area believed if they killed Kafurs (non-Muslims) or Shias, they would become Ghazi (warriors against infidels) and go to heaven. She had grown up with these messages of hate against her and her people, not only from neighbors, but in school and the mosques and, as a married woman, even from her in-laws.

Whether at the bus, paying for a ride, at the café taking out my lunch card or at the gate looking for my ID, every time I open my small brownish wallet, my eyes move towards the bill at the corner. It is a Ten Afghani bill, old and torn. The color, meant to be a mix of bright tan and emerald green, now is faded green on dusty paper. The sight of this bill is so much like Afghanistan. After the fall of the Taliban, it was meant to be colored white for peace, gray for equality and red for freedom. As the years pass, it is colored with black for corruption, black for injustice and black for inequality.

In the rainy season of Pakistan, the news of my grandmother’s death made our lives rainier / This season showed me my father’s tears for the first time / His red eyes hurt so much, I wanted to take the pain away but didn’t know how

It was a huge room, like one in movies about kings and queens. All around the room were a dozen golden couches with a touch of light green. Three red sofas with golden pillows were at the end of the room. The smell of fresh roses was in the air, probably coming from the flowers on the balcony.

I was standing in front of the window in the small, dark living room, folding my arms against my chest, looking out at the drops of rain falling like the tears of a mother for her dead child, like a gift from the hell, like a curse from the devil. The dark, gloomy sky had a rhythm of pain, a rhythm of loneliness.

Navy blue, long and baggy / Top and bottom with different designs of flowers / Hanging outside the shop along with other white and green ones / Swinging in the cold wind of Kabul winter.