MY first impressions of Maryam Totakhail are that she is a very courageous woman, firstly for revealing some harrowing and very personal years of her life in the book “For the Love of a Son”, and secondly, for agreeing to an interview about the book. Neither of these could have been easy, as both required the revisiting of some very traumatic experiences in her life. The writing of the book may have been cathartic in some ways, but the subsequent interviews – with me and other journalists – are probably the opposite, scratching at the healing wounds and opening them up again. Maryam is from Afghanistan, and her father, Ajab Khail, was a Pashtun from Paktya in southern Afghanistan. Her mother, Sharifa Hassen, was from the Tajiki tribe and came from an intellectual family “who raised their seven daughters to be educated and resilient, and equal to their three sons”. “I was born and raised in Afghanistan and left there when I was 17 at the time of the Soviet invasion,” Maryam told me. In fact, her rebellious behavior against Russians in Kabul had led her to driving recklessly towards two Russian women, almost running one of them over. The car was identified as belonging to her father, and after fabricating a story to explain the incident to officials, her father removed her to India on the pretext of needing medical treatment. The family lived in India for a while, and after her mother died, Maryam moved to America with her father and sister, Nadia. Despite his educated background, and having educated daughters, Maryam's father pushed her, at the age of 20, into marrying Kaiss, an Afghan Pashtun fifteen years her senior. In the book she says: “My fiancé's behavior led me to believe that I would be (revered) by my husband after we were married. Somehow I had forgotten that Pashtun wives are treated as (royalty) before marriage, and as servants after.” (P.159) When relatives heard about the arrangement, they called her father to say: “You must call off this wedding. This man is violent, he has a terrible reputation. He is considered dangerous by all who know him in Kabul.” (P.160) On her wedding night, she ended up in a hospital emergency room (p.161). Eventually, Maryam had a son, Duran, and then divorced her violent husband. However, he managed to convince her sister and father that he was a changed man, that he really adored her, and in so doing, kidnapped Duran from Los Angeles and took him to Afghanistan. Tears immediately well in Maryam's eyes when I ask her what it was like having to write about this. “It was a very emotional and upsetting processes, having to relive it all to tell my story. Tears would be streaming down my face, but writing the story was cathartic and healing, and I don't cry that much now.” (She still cried twice during the interview). “Before, it was very, very dramatic. When I found Duran, then I calmed down – even though he has gone back.” The first suggestion that Maryam should write about her experiences came from a doctor she consulted in America about eight months after her son was kidnapped. The stress had caused a skin rash, and the doctor asked her if there had been any changes in her life, at which point she burst into tears. “I said to him: ‘My son is missing', so he patted me and gave me a hug and said that I should write. I got so mad and said ‘What should I write? That my son is missing?'” The second time the idea of writing came up was when she had just been reunited with her son, Duran, and was at the airport in Pakistan with him, checking in for the flight to Washington. “We had no suitcases, just hand luggage, and the lady at the check-in counter said ‘a one-way ticket from Pakistan and no luggage?' and I said ‘yes, I have just found my son. He was kidnapped'. There were two producers who just passed by us and they said ‘you should write a book!' and they gave me a hug, and the check-in lady cried. And after that, everybody just kept telling me I should write. They said that all those mothers whose kids have gone missing should know that there is hope, that they can get their sons or their daughters back.” Maryam eventually finished writing her book in 2006, but publishers such as Doubleday weren't happy with the style. Eventually, a friend in Jeddah, Alison McColl, put Maryam in touch with Jean Sasson, author of the bestselling “Princess”. “I was very happy about this and thought that she would be a co-author, but she said no, that she was a very established author and that she would not be a co-author. She said: ‘If you want to have your book published, I will help you. You will be my heroine, and whatever we do will be 50-50.'” There was virtually daily communication during the writing of the book, as well as disagreements as to what should and should not be included in the book. In Maryam's original manuscript there were even more harrowing scenes and Sasson felt that these would be too much for readers to cope with, and could even undermine the truth of the story. The book not only tells about the traumatic kidnapping of her two-year-old son and the subsequent events, but the first half gives a detailed background to the family and Pashtun tribal life in Afghanistan. It describes a culture where women have no rights at all and are treated as chattels and objects, completely at the mercy of the men in the family. It goes back to the terrible suffering of her paternal grandmother, Mayana, and the miserable life she and her children (three daughters and a son) had after the death of her husband, Ahmed Khail Khan, who had been the head of the tribe. He had had three other wives, and the eldest son, Shair Khan, who assumes the leadership role, is a cruel man who seeks to make their lives as miserable as he possibly can. There are descriptions of deeply ingrained misogyny that is perpetuated not only by many of the men in her father's Pashtun tribe, but also by the women – a result of the rivalry and jealousy among the wives. “Just imagine – these women have all been abused,” explained Maryam. “You are part of the property of this man. He brings another woman – it is very common in those areas for a man to have more than one wife. She doesn't take her jealousy out on him, she takes it out on her. This is how it happens. Their kids are born, and there is rivalry between them, and it is because of how the men treat women. It creates rivalry.” Some years later, while still in Los Angeles, Khail met and married Khalid, a Saudi, and came to live in Jeddah. She had another son and, strangely, gave him the same name as her first son: Duran. “You know, after little Duran was born, all I talked to him about was his big brother,” she said. “And this was so wrong of me. I was so hurt by the kidnapping of my son, and I did not get any counseling. If I had, I probably wouldn't have treated him like that. I had kept all the clothes from when his brother was a baby, up to two and a half years old, and I dressed my little one in these clothes. I would say: ‘This was your big brother's', and for him, big brother became an icon and he would say ‘Where is my big brother? I want to be with my big brother!' and he would cry. He used to want to buy two of everything, one for him and one for his big brother. He would hide things in his room and say ‘I will keep this for when my big brother comes'.” Attempts were made over the years to stay in contact with the older Duran and finally in July 2003, with the help of Maryam's beloved cousin Farid, he was smuggled out of Afghanistan to Pakistan. Maryam had not seen him since 1986, and flew there to have DNA tests in order to prove that he was her son and thereby get an American passport for him. After a short time in America, Duran eventually came to Jeddah. “When I was living in Pakistan with the smugglers, little Duran would call me every day and he would talk to his big brother, and then he would ask me: ‘What does he look like? Does he have a moustache?' and I said ‘Yes, he has a moustache.' Then he would say ‘Tell me about his eyes.' Every day I was in Pakistan, I had to explain the same thing to my little boy about his brother. When his brother came here, he was very happy, and his whole world just revolved around his big brother.” However, the visit in Saudi Arabia did not go well and it soon became apparent that the older Duran was very disturbed and had a violent temper. “When my older son left, little Duran saw that I was sobbing and crying, but he did not speak to me at all about his older brother. He didn't mention him. His disillusionment was huge. After about a month, he looked at me one day and said: ‘My God, I don't exist!' He was barely 10. I wondered what was in his head. I said ‘What do you mean, you don't exist?' and he said ‘I am Duran, but I am not Duran, I am that Duran!'” Now that he is older, it seems that the younger Duran no longer minds having the same name as his estranged older half-brother. He has read Maryam's book several times and says that despite everything, he still loves his brother. She has also ensured that he speaks Pashto. Maryam is still in contact with the older Duran via email and it seems that history is repeating itself with a strange twist. “He is married and has two children and is living in America, but now he is going back to Afghanistan. However, my two grandchildren are missing. His wife has taken them away,” she said. Maryam is convinced that the only way to bring about change in the tribal customs of countries like Afghanistan is through women's education. “They need to be educated, and they need to be independent,” she said emphatically. “The reason they take all this abuse is that they have no other choice. They think it is the same everywhere else. They belong to the father, then to the brother, then to the son, and the husband and whatever he wants to do. They have to get permission from their mother-in-law. It is still like that today. They need to be well read to know what is going on, to know who they are. When the book came out, I was one of the guest speakers at (the) ‘Violence Against Women' (forum) in Washington D.C., seeking to prevent violence against women, especially in these countries.” She still misses her home country: “I miss the smell of the different seasons – each one had a different aroma. And I loved Jalalabad. I still dream of the picnics we used to go on. We were very outdoor people, so every Thursday or Friday we would go and picnic by the river. What I miss the most is not having to tell people who I am. I am an American Citizen, but people say, ‘Excuse me, you are an American Citizen but where are you from?' I am always having to explain my identity. I never thought I would be part of a minority.” “For the Love of a Son” by Jean Sasson, tells the story of Maryam Khail's life.
