September 27, 1996

On the morning of September 27, 1996, Mariam awoke to the sounds of shouting, whistling, firecrackers, and music. She ran to the living room and found Laila already at the window, with Aziza mounted on her shoulders. Laila turned and smiled. "The Taliban are here," she said.

The Fall of Kabul and the Public Mood

That day, the four of them—Rasheed, Laila, Mariam, and Aziza—went out into the streets to greet their new world. In every battered neighborhood, people materialized from the rubble and moved into the streets. Mariam saw an old woman wasting handfuls of rice, tossing it at passersby with a drooping, toothless smile. Two men were hugging by the remains of a gutted building, while firecrackers popped overhead and the national anthem played on cassette decks. Boys ran down Jadeh Maywand, pounding their fists into the air and dragging rusty cans tied to strings, yelling that Massoud and Rabbani had withdrawn from Kabul. Everywhere there were shouts of "Allah-u-akbar!" and bedsheets hung from windows painted with the words "zendabaad taliban!"—Long live the Taliban.

The First Encounter with Taliban Justice

Later that day, at Pashtunistan Square, Mariam saw her first Taliban. A melee of people had gathered, craning their necks toward the end of the square near the old Khyber Restaurant. Rasheed used his size to push through the crowd, leading them to where a slender, bearded young man in a black turban was speaking through a loudspeaker. In his free hand, he held a rocket launcher. Beside him, two bloodied men hung from ropes tied to traffic-light posts, their clothes shredded and their bloated faces turned purple-blue. When Aziza saw them, she shrieked and buried her face in Mariam's burqa. A young woman in front of Mariam turned around and said the hanging men were Najibullah and his brother. Mariam remembered Najibullah's plump, mustachioed face from billboards during the Soviet years. She would later hear that the Taliban had dragged him from his sanctuary at the UN headquarters, tortured him for hours, then tied his legs to a truck and dragged his lifeless body through the streets. The young Talib shouted through the loudspeaker, "He killed many, many Muslims! His crimes are known to everybody. He was a communist and a kafir. This is what we do with infidels who commit crimes against Islam!" Rasheed was smirking. In Mariam's arms, Aziza began to cry.

The Imposition of Taliban Law

The following day, Kabul was overrun by red Toyota trucks. Armed bearded men in black turbans sat in their beds, and from each truck a loudspeaker blared announcements, first in Farsi, then Pashto. The same message played from loudspeakers atop mosques and on the radio, now known as the Voice of Shari'a. Flyers were tossed into the streets, and Mariam found one in the yard. It declared that the country was now the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan and listed the laws to be enforced: all citizens must pray five times a day; all men must grow beards at least one clenched fist beneath the chin; singing, dancing, playing cards, chess, gambling, and kite flying were forbidden; writing books, watching films, and painting pictures were forbidden; if you steal, your hand will be cut off at the wrist. For women, the decrees were even more severe: they must stay inside their homes at all times, and if they went outside they had to be accompanied by a male relative; they must cover with a burqa; cosmetics, jewelry, and charming clothes were forbidden; they were not to speak unless spoken to, not to make eye contact with men, not to laugh in public; girls were forbidden from attending school; women were forbidden from working; if found guilty of adultery, they would be stoned to death.

The Aftermath and Significance

Rasheed turned off the radio after the announcements. Laila protested, saying, "They can't make half the population stay home and do nothing." Rasheed grinned and replied, "Spoken like the arrogant daughter of a poetry-reading university man that you are." He argued that many places in Afghanistan had always lived this way. When Laila said, "I refuse to believe it. They're not serious," Rasheed countered by pointing to what they had done to Najibullah. Mariam heard the answer in his laugh: that in the eyes of the Taliban, being a communist and the head of the dreaded KHAD made Najibullah only slightly more contemptible than a woman. The day marked a definitive rupture: the end of the chaotic Mujahideen era and the beginning of a regime that would systematically erase women from public life, a regime under which Mariam and Laila would endure even greater confinement and violence.