New Delhi:
Sushmita Banerjee was all of 25 when she met Jambaaz Khan, an Afghan moneylender, at a theatre rehearsal in Kolkata, West Bengal. It was 1986. Sushmita’s good friend performed Cupid. Sushmita and Jaambaz met as soon as per week, for an hour, at Flury’s within the metropolis. Over espresso and a pastry shared between the 2 of them, they received to “know” one another.
It wasn’t sufficient, lamented Banerjee later, when she discovered herself in Kharana, deep inside Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, the place Jaambaz took her after their secret wedding ceremony beneath the Particular Marriage Act on July 2, 1988. Sushmita was a “Bengali Brahmin” woman. She married “Afghan Muslim” Jaambaz in opposition to her mother and father’ needs. When her mother and father found the wedding, they tried to get them divorced; however in useless. Sushmita left Kolkata for Kabul with Jaambaz.
Sushmita was 27 when she married Jaambaz. She didn’t convert to Islam.
Lower than three years after she arrived in Afghanistan, Jaambaz was gone. He had left Afghanistan to return to India, the place he had his moneylending enterprise. Sushmita wasn’t knowledgeable. He was gone.; identical to that; as she puzzled if the Taliban had carried out away along with his head for marrying a Hindu lady.
(*22*)”He left of his personal accord.”
Sushmita stayed behind within the province of Paktika, residing a nightmare, because the Taliban combed the streets and executed any lady who dared to defy orders.
That was a few years earlier than Indian lady Uzma Ahmed discovered herself residing an identical nightmare in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in Pakistan; and the story of whose escape is on the massive display within the John Abraham and Sadia Khateeb-starrer (*22*)The Diplomat this week.
Uzma known as herself fortunate to have gotten again to India.
For Sushmita, life performed out a little bit in a different way.
Kabuliwala’s Bengali Bride
Sushmita Banerjee shot to fame in 1995, when the memoir of her daring escape from the clutches of the Taliban made headlines in Bengal and the nation. In (*22*)Kabuliwala’s Bengali Bride ((*22*)Kabuliwala’s Bangali Bou, Bengali, 1995), Banerjee recounted intimately how her days within the mountains of Afghanistan have been measured out in screams and torture by her in-laws as soon as Jaambaz was gone. Khan would file audio cassettes from Kolkata and submit them to Banerjee each couple of months. “When the conflict is over, you’ll come to India,” was the chorus in them.
When Sushmita reached her husband’s dwelling, she discovered that he had a primary spouse, Gulgutti, whom he married 10 years earlier than her. Sushmita was surprised, however made peace with it.
“Gulgutti was very quiet, shy, and good. She used to name me Sahib Kamal,” Banerjee informed Rediff.com in 2003. In her ebook, she wrote that “Sahib Kamal” in all probability meant “Sahib ka Maal” (Sahib’s Object/Woman). Banerjee lived with Gulgutti, her three brothers-in-law and their wives, and her husband Jaambaz in Kharana until Khan left for India.
Issues quickly took a flip for the more severe because the Taliban’s powers and madness grew unchecked in Afghanistan. They made beards obligatory for males and made girls invisible save for with their males. Newspapers have been tossed, radio was banned, and books have been made bonfires of. Males needed to attend the mosque 5 instances a day. Ladies couldn’t go to the hospital lest a person touched them.
In Khan’s dwelling, Banerjee’s days have been all about “no sleep, hunger, and bodily assault”. The abuse by her brothers-in-law ranged from bodily to psychological. There was no finish to it. “They weren’t human,” wrote Banerjee in her memoir, “I am an unofficial prisoner right here. As a result of this complete nation is a jail.”
The Village Physician In The Eye Of The Taliban
Afghanistan barely had any girls medical doctors. This normally meant no remedy for ladies. In the event that they fell unwell, they needed to die at dwelling since hospitals meant male medical doctors and no lady was authorised by the Taliban to be touched by anybody besides her husband.
Sushmita had fundamental coaching in nursing. She had additionally learn up a couple of books on gynaecology that got here useful in these unreachable reaches of Afghanistan, the place girls relied on luck and limericks within the identify of remedy. The Taliban had shut down all faculties. Nobody might examine medication.
It was beneath these circumstances that Banerjee opened her clinic and beneath that cowl, spoke to girls to make them conscious of the injustice meted out to them. Her clinic was found by some males in Might 1995. They beat her lifeless… properly, virtually.
This assault on Banerjee prompted her to make up her thoughts about escaping Afghanistan and returning to Kolkata, the place her household lived.
She was planning an escape from the Taliban. It wasn’t going to be simple.
Escape From The Taliban
First Try: Sushmita, with the assistance of some well-wishers that she had within the village, received herself a Jeep that took her to Islamabad in Pakistan. She knocked on the doorways of the Indian Excessive Fee; however, a lot to her shock and agony, was “handed again to the Taliban”.
Second Try: Banerjee didn’t lose hope. She tried escaping the Taliban as soon as once more. “This time, I ran all night time,” Banerjee wrote in her ebook. She was arrested once more.
After her second try to flee, the Taliban determined they’d had sufficient of this lady. A fatwa was issued. She was to die on July 22, 1995.
Third Try: The village headman, Dranai chacha, appreciated Sushmita for her social work. This man’s son had been killed by the Taliban, so he had turned in opposition to them. On the day that Sushmita wished to flee the Taliban for the third time, she grabbed an AK-47 “and shot three Taliban males”, she recounted in her memoir. The headman helped her on to a Jeep and took her to Kabul.
“Near Kabul, I used to be arrested. A 15-member group of the Taliban interrogated me. A lot of them stated that since I had fled my husband’s dwelling, I ought to be executed. Nevertheless, I used to be capable of persuade them that since I used to be an Indian, I had each proper to return to my nation,” Banerjee wrote in an article for the (*22*)Outlook in 1998.
“The interrogation continued via the night time. The subsequent morning, I used to be taken to the Indian embassy, from the place I used to be given a secure passage,” she wrote.
She was handed a visa and passport, and he or she took off for Delhi.
It was raining when her flight landed within the Indian capital. From there, she left for Kolkata, the place she arrived on August 12, 1995. Lower than three months because the day she made up her thoughts to depart Afghanistan, she was in Kolkata.
“Again in Calcutta, I used to be re-united with my husband. I do not suppose he’ll ever be capable to return to his household,” wrote Banerjee.
Again To Afghanistan
For the following 18 years, Sushmita Banerjee lived in India together with her husband Jaambaz and labored on her books, a Bollywood movie that starred Manisha Koirala ((*22*)Escape From Taliban, 2003), and wished to do one thing for the ladies beneath the Taliban. She hoped her movie would make it to the United Nations and they’d intervene.
In 2013, Banerjee celebrated Eid for per week in Kolkata and went again to her husband’s dwelling in Afghanistan. Khan had moved again dwelling in Afghanistan and Banerjee wished to reside with him. She had additionally transformed to Islam by then and brought on a brand new identify, “Sayed Kamala”.
25 Bullets And A Silent Burial
After Banerjee’s return to Afghanistan, she resumed work as a well being employee within the Paktika province. She was additionally filming the lives of the native girls as a part of her work.
The Taliban received whiff of it. They confirmed up at Jaambaz’s household dwelling in Kharana, the provincial capital of Paktika on the night time of September 4, 2013, and certain him up. Sushmita was dragged out and shot lifeless. They pumped 25 bullets into her physique, as per a report, and dumped it close to a madrassa.
Banerjee’s in-laws in Afghanistan buried her physique as her brother in Kolkata puzzled, “Why did she should die like this?”
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