Amina’s Curtain—Khadija ABBASI

“In 1978, eighteen-year-old Amina was pregnant with her second child when she began embroidering a curtain. As the needle passed through the fabric, she thought of the highlands of Daykundi and her village, Qochangi in central Afghanistan, her home for sixteen years. She recalled her father, torn from her at such an early age and the pain of being separated from her siblings. Amina remembered her maternal grandmother, whom she had once believed to be her own mother. If her baby was a girl, she would name her after the mother she had never known.

Less than a year since Amina and her husband, Zamen Ali, both ethnically Hazara, fled to Iran, seeking refuge with their young son, they found shelter in a small room on an industrial dairy farm on the outskirts of Tehran. Here Amina stitched her memories and her pain into the fabric, a silent rebellion against forced displacement and of the longing for her family and homeland. Every thread transported her back to Qochangi—its cool springs, shade of almond trees, and distant mountains.

The curtain became a canvas for both grief and hope, the embroidery of flowers brought colour and life to her homelessness, that spoke of the life she had left behind and the one she was building in the face of uncertainty. On December 25th, Amina’s second child was born, a daughter. She named her Khadija, after her mother, whose love she carried deep within her. Unable to read or write Amina asked Zamen Ali to write the birthdate on the curtain for her which she embroidered into the fabric, offering a prayer for her daughter:

“May the owner of this [curtain] live long, may their heart be full of happiness, and their lips forever smile.” ” 

- - -