Fatima (name changed) was only 11 when she was raped by two Talibani militants inside the campus of a wrecked Russian Embassy in Kabul.
The incident made her realise what it was to be a ‘Hazara’ in Afghanistan, and she decided to stay indoors and learn what her family was best at – making Qalin-bafi (handcrafted) carpets.
Seated on a mattress spread on the floor of her one-room ‘home’ (a barsaati) in Jangpura’s Bhogal area, Fatima, now 30, recalls how she landed up in Delhi. “My family was much more harsh than the authorities there. I was sent to school only on the condition that I would wash utensils and clothes, read the Quran on time and make carpets at the same pace as I used to earlier,” she says in fluent English.
Fatima was allowed to go to school only when she turned 15, was inducted directly into Class VII and dropped out after Class X as the school “never took girls seriously”. “When I reached Delhi in March 2013, I did not even know how to write my name in English,” she rues.
The first thing Fatima did after coming to the Capital was to join English tutorials. Now, whenever she is free, she teaches English to other Afghan refugees.
One of her students is Shakeela Zarin, a 20-year-old woman who was shot at in the face by her husband, a Talibani militant, when she was 17. Her fault: she tried to escape the confines of his house in Afghanistan’s Mazar-i-Sharif city. She has a damaged left eye, a disfigured face and no sense of smell, but she says the incident “liberated” her as she was brought to India for treatment. “I have had nine surgeries on my face, but I am glad that I could get out of that hell. For now, all I want to do is learn English,” she says with an innocent smile.
Fatima has been an inspiration for several refugee women like Shakeela. She has not only given them hope, but also the confidence to take up new challenges. Now, Fatima is set to become a professional yoga teacher and is already imparting classes on an ad-hoc basis. “I had joined the Mobile Mini Circus for Children in Kabul where I worked for nearly five years. I learnt acrobatics, gymnastic, skating and juggling and that is why in India, yoga attracted me,” says Fatima.
She along with several other Afghan refugees is being trained in yoga by ACCESS, a Delhi-based NGO, in collaboration with the UNHCR.
Sharing the room with Fatima is 33-year old Aneesa Mohammadi, who prefers not to narrate how she ended up in the Capital with her two children. But she has carved out a living for the three of them by creating beautiful crochets. “She works day and night making designer dresses, caps, bookmarks, decorative items with crochet patterns. Some of them were taken by a big brand and were worn by models at the Lakme Fashion Week,” says Fatima as Aneesa gets busy with her stitching.
Over 14,000 Afghan refugees have taken shelter in the country despite the absence of a refugee law and most of these are carving a niche for themselves from whatever minimal resources are available to them.
