Benafsha Hashimi is sitting on her father’s lap, stroking his beard, in Kabul, Afghanistan when an advisory message plays out on the television. “Don’t come to Australia illegally on boats”, a note for the many immigrant residents risking, often losing, their lives to get across. Little Benafsha thinks Australia is just on the other side of the big river in Kabul. “I shall go there, pedar (Father, in Dari language) one day, I have to just cross the river”. The father tells her she has to learn swimming first. “Don’t worry, I can go in a boat!” The father laughs but assures her that she can go the proper way one day but she has to study hard and grow up.
Nearly one-and-half decades later, in 2021, the 21 year old Hashimi has ended up in Canberra in Australia, escaping the clutches of Taliban, surviving the death of her father, an Afghan special forces soldier, in mysterious circumstances. But she also witnessed an aunt who bled to death, besides myriad shootings, before dragging her entire Afghan team of women along with her. All this when she was still a teenager, three years back. It’s a remarkable story of hope, will-power, selflessness, stubbornness, and a lot of cheekiness.
We meet at an outdoorsy cafe the morning after India’s warm-up game against the Prime Minister’s XI. Almost immediately, she excuses herself and hops off to play with a dog that was barking rather loudly and she laughs, a lovely full-throated aural memory that will stick in the mind, when the dog’s owner says ‘he likes his own voice’. When she plonks back on her chair, she announces, “I have a cat, Lilly. I love lilies and my Lilly. We talk a lot.” It’s probably the rare imagery of the morning when she reflects her age; the rest of the time, as she narrates her life story, immense inspiring maturity floats in the air.
It’s a story that’s difficult to decide where to start. At that moment, perhaps, when the Taliban had taken over the city, the 18-year old rushes to the bank to withdraw money for her family of 10 but instead hears the Taliban soldiers outside the bank, firing in the air. Or at the Checkpost at Pakistan border, when she is fleeing with the family in the middle of night ‘sadly like a pack of thieves” and is stopped by the Talibs, who bark at her brother Hamid to tell “this girl to stop talking, who has given a girl rights to talk, just stand aside.”
Benafsha Hashimi is living in Australia after escaping Taliban’s tyranny. (Express Photo)
Or the moment when her phone starts to ring, with a popular Farsi love song triggering outrage in the Taliban soldiers, and her brother muttering, ‘we are all going to die’ even as he tried to stop the call. It was her friend, a cricketing team-mate wanting to know her whereabouts.
It’s perhaps best to start with why that friend was reaching out. Not at that moment, but how Benafsha became the rallying group leader for the girls of her cricket team, and their families, to get to Australia in a move that’s bound to have positive repercussions for generations to come for those families. “No, no, it was a combined team effort, I couldn’t have done it without my friends,” she says but it’s clear that they couldn’t have even dared to dream this life without her.
She was the resourceful one, tirelessly pursuing opportunities outside, sending emails to all parts of the cricketing world and beyond to see a possible light at the end of the Taliban tunnel. The first three emails were her passport to survival and better life but unbelievably she chose to ignore them. The US authorities offered her escape due to her father’s past with them, Canada threw her a lifeline and so did Dubai, but she is adamant that she wants her team with her.
“My well-wishers who were trying to help me to escape all understandably called me an idiot. But I was stubborn. In weak moments when I would think perhaps I should take it, an inner voice would come loud and clear: ‘C’mon Benafsha, you are a team player. This is not what a good person does. You can’t abandon your friends and be selfish.” And so she even lies to her mother that she didn’t hear back from anyone. That they have to just wait and hope.
It’s when Mel Jones, an Australian woman cricketer of stature hears her story, and offers help. The Australian authorities get into the picture soon and are shocked to hear that she wants the entire team and families to escape. “You know, right, we can’t do that. It’s not easy, how can we take so many people out. You and your family come first.” Benafasha Hashimi listens to no one but her inner voice. “Even today when I speak to youngsters I tell them, my life motto is, “Listen to all, but don’t follow anyone. Only follow your heart, courage will come automatically.” Around us, the dog is now barking at a distance as the owners have just left, the sun is shining brightly, and the cafe lady offers coffee; Benafsha doesn’t want any.
“That dog is funny. I haven’t heard any other dog in this city bark as loudly as him. It’s not like Kabul, you know,” she says. Or India. But we plunge back to Kabul, before we can return to her escape, and to her father.
“He treated me like a little princess. Usually Afghan men prefer sons; he was different, distributing laddoos to everyone in the neighbourhood when I was born, his fourth child. He would keep telling me that I am a special one and can do whatever I want, live my dream but only that I have to be educated and work hard.”
Due to the nature of his work, he was often away. “And then one day, he came in a coffin. There he was laid out, outside our door and I was not even 10 then. I just sat there, staring at him. My younger sister kept repeating, “he is just sleeping, he will wake up.” It was their mother who took both aside to tell them that their father is no more and it’s okay to cry. “Don’t bottle it up, cry if you have to. This is what it is. We have to face reality.” The reality kept turning dark. “Some said he had a heart-attack, some said he was poisoned, we don’t know to this day.” Not long after that, more tragedy struck. Benafsha found herself pouring water on her aunt’s dead body to cleanse. “Only women are allowed in our tradition. She was shot in the hip and head, blood on her body when she was brought home.” A childhood shot to pieces, pushing her to grow up rather too quickly but luckily one remnant would remain.
“Cricket saved my life,” she says with a chirpiness, and adding solemnly, “Cricket is my life.”
***
Her mother never liked her playing cricket. Especially in the streets with the boys, once she grew up a little. The coaches at the official academy didn’t take a liking to her because she was a “street cricketer” and not someone who grew up in the system. Her memories of playing in the streets still remain very special to her. “The empty oil tin cans were our stumps and I must say I terrorised the boys by hitting!” It was her eldest brother Hamid who kept fighting with their mother to allow her to play cricket and things turned a bit when she won a scholarship to a cricket talent programme. Things kept escalating positively and she was named alongside 25 girls, officially contracted by the Afghanistan Cricket board in 2021. The lights would go out soon, though.
She remembers that day at the bank just days after the Taliban took over. “When I heard the shootings I froze in fear. I huddled behind other women, not knowing what would happen.” But it wasn’t the bullets that was her worst moment, but the vulgar gaze of a male Taliban soldier. “He gave me this look – a dirty look that I can’t describe but I knew what it was. He told the others to stop shooting and told me that the bank is shut today, but write your name now in this paper. And come to meet me tomorrow. I shall take you inside. I nodded and ran from there, shivering. That look is my worst memory from those days at Kabul. It made me doubly determined that I should leave Afghanistan. There was no option left.”
Afghanistan women cricketer Benafsha Hashimi. (Express Photo)
But as we know even when the opportunities came, she didn’t take them as she wanted her team also to be safe. “I am the one doing all the paperwork, emailing, talking in my broken English; what would happen to them if I left?” And so she pressed the Australian authorities to somehow pull off the miracle for her. They buckled under her sweet emotional pressure, and promised her they would. That they will process the paperwork, get the required permission, but the evacuation can’t be en-masse. First her and her family. “I managed to get two more families along with me, of course,” she smiles.
And it’s to that night in September 2021 she returns to. “Many in our group were happy, but me and my sister Safia, who is two years younger and also in our team, were sad. We love Afghanistan, we loved our days in Kabul. We didn’t want to leave …” There were numerous checkpoints, where they would all insist that they were off to a wedding. It was at one such post where her phone rang with Farsi love tune drifting in the air. “The talibs were so angry, screaming that it’s blasphemy and that we shall be whiplashed. Somehow we got through.” They were in Pakistan, first, for a week before they flew to Australia.
They say it takes a village to rear a child, it takes people from different countries to flee that village in distress. Walwala and Toba in Afghanistan cricketing circuit, unnamed Australian authorities, Mel Jones, and Catherine Ordway, a lawyer, academic, and sports integrity expert who has been part of tribunals. Catherine, who had helped her through the process, was at hand to receive her in Australia, and very soon would be referred to as “mum” by Benafsha. “ I remember the moment when we emotionally bonded. They had taken us, not long after arrival in Canberra, to the river. It was a man-made waterbody and was black in colour. I have never seen black waters before and even as I was talking to her, I held her hand. My friends whispered to me not to do it, and so I asked her if she minded. She had this bright smile when she said no, and gave me this hug. I call her mum, these days.”
She plays for two clubs in Australia, she also played for Sydney University team briefly, and travelled to Fiji to play cricket with the organisation ‘Cricket without Borders’. In January, she will represent Afghan Women XI that will play against Cricket without Borders at MCG in Melbourne. “We shall get there early January and there will be selection trials. I would absolutely love it if I were the captain!”
Not everything is hunky dory. The past has a way to cling on, leaving its residues in the soul. Benafsha often wakes up screaming at nights, calling out for her mother. “I would have different nightmares that also include me being about to be killed.” Seeing the alarmed face, she explains in a gentle voice as if speaking to a kid. “Don’t worry, it’s normal. In the most depressive times when one is in a place of great trouble, as I was in Kabul, nothing spills out. Your determination, your need to be positive and look ahead gets you through. Often, when you reach a safe place, with the troubles seemingly behind you, it’s when the trauma hits.” She is taking counselling and is all set to pursue her sports management course, that has psychology in the syllabus, at the Canberra University from February next year.
She then cues up an awww moment with her own mother, who had worried about her playing cricket, worried about her straying outside on the streets, worried about her studying in Kabul – again her brother had insisted she must as it was the father’s dream and she was the brightest kid in the family. “One day here, she said, “Benafsha, without you, none of this would have been possible. I dread to think what would have happened to us in Kabul.” There is this look on Benafsha’s face as she recalls that – not a face of pride, surprisingly, but of love. And as he gets up to leave, ignoring protests that she has not even eaten anything and whether she needs a lift, Benafsha, which means ‘violet’ and whose nickname is ‘Choti Shaitaan (Little Devil), beams this bright smile and says, “Don’t worry Janaab, I know my way, this is my country now!”
