Exiled, but not silenced: Zakie’s story

When the Taliban found out about their faith, Zakie and her husband had no choice but to flee Afghanistan. Though exiled from her community, Zakie turned her experiences into a source of hope for others. Now, she teaches other women about the God who gave her new life.

Before she came to faith in Jesus, Zakie’s* life was rigidly structured around a long list of rules within the Muslim household where she grew up. Understandably, the impression she gained of Allah was that he would condemn her for the slightest mistake. Every righteous act mattered.

“In Islam, they always instilled a fear of God,” Zakie explains. “They said if you don’t pray, for example, you cannot go to heaven. If you don’t fast, you are not pure in Islam, not a proper Muslim. When you wake up, the sun shouldn’t be up yet when you pray. If the sun was up, they would say the prayer is not valid. At bedtime, we had to pray at a proper time. If it wasn’t at the proper time, we would be humiliated by our father.”

Beyond times of prayer and fasting, everything that Zakie and women like her in Afghanistan wore was dictated by Islamic law. “Our heads had to be covered, our faces had to be covered, we had to wear large clothes, our hands had to be covered, and our bodies had to be covered all the way to the feet.”

Zakie points to the beliefs behind such rules: “A woman is always seen as inferior. They don’t give women rights and privileges. They use a woman as a slave, as a sexual slave.”

Every moment of her life was organised for her, including her marriage. Once married off to a Muslim man, Zakie merely exchanged one male authority for another. Her silence continued, hope for freedom a foreign thought.

Until transformation took place within the walls of her own home.

Rebirth

Zakie’s husband was much like most of the men in her community: harsh and dismissive of women. However, Zakie started to notice small changes in his behaviour – his anger diminished, he began to show affection for her and he would forgive others.

All because he had encountered Jesus and started to follow Him.

“I saw my husband had come to faith,” Zakie says. “He became humble, he had forgiveness and he showed us so much love. In the past, it wasn’t like this. In the past, he would get angry a lot, had no forgiveness and there was no love in the house.”

Eventually, he revealed his secret – he had become a Christian. Following his lead was not a difficult choice for Zakie.

“When I saw the changes in my husband’s life, I also came to faith,” Zakie recalls. “He shared John 3:16, that ‘God so loved the world that He sent His only Son, so that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.’ This encouraged me even more, and I came to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.”

The idea that Zakie had of God was transformed by the powerful truth of His love shown in Jesus.

From fear to faith

Zakie and her husband’s new faith began to seep into every part of their lives.

“In the past, if someone wronged us, we would not forgive them,” she says. “Not at all. That unforgiveness and the problems that came our way felt like a very heavy weight on our shoulders. When we came to faith, this weight and these problems were lifted; they went away. We became light. As God says, ‘Love your God and love your neighbour as yourself.’ This had a great impact on our lives.”

The difference between her new life and her previous routines was stark. “When I came to faith through my husband, thank God, I was freed from the chains and bonds of my past faith,” Zakie testifies. “I can worship my God at any time, without a schedule. At any time, we can praise our God, worship Him and glorify His name.”

All the uncertainty and dread Zakie felt when thinking about her status before God fell away like scales from her eyes. She says with bold assurance, “Peace came into my life. I have a place in the Kingdom of God, and I have obtained eternal salvation.”

However, along with this deep peace inevitably came the persecution which would put it to the test.

Outsiders

Very quickly, their faith was found out by their tightly knit community. Along with its discovery came swift, ruthless rejection. “Some people would insult me saying, ‘This woman is a kafir [infidel]. Don’t eat with her from the same dish. Don’t sit at the same table with her,’” Zakie says.

She was even excluded from family gatherings. When her relative died, she was forbidden from attending the funeral. Even children in the village looked at her with disgust.

The pain of their rejection, from people who had been Zakie’s family and home for her whole life, sunk deeply into her. In Afghanistan, women’s lives are intensely domestic – she had no escape from this ostracism. Yet each time, she found the strength to forgive them.

“I always sat separately by myself and prayed to God. I prayed for them that God would forgive their sins,” she shares. “Because God Himself always forgives and always shows us love, I showed them love, and I still forgave them. They were both my family and my relatives; I couldn’t be distant and separate from them.”

Zakie remembers a friend who was also a believer. They would secretly attend church together, but when her friend’s husband found out, he forbade her from seeing Zakie.

“He had told her, ‘You must not talk with Zakie. You must not message her. You shouldn’t even greet her when you see her on the street. If I see you with Zakie again, talking together, I will cut off your ears and nose and throw you out of the house, and I will take the children away.’”

Her friend had no choice but to obey, but she never renounced her faith – even through humiliation and physical abuse.

Exiles and foreigners

Zakie and her family continued to endure their community’s rejection. Soon, however, the situation reached breaking point – villagers had reported the believers to the Taliban.

“They took my husband twice, tortured him, and we even thought they had killed him,” Zakie says. “They wanted to eliminate us. We couldn’t even stay in our own home for one night. We were always going from one house to another, out of fear that they would kill us and take our daughters from us.”

On one occasion, Zakie’s husband was shot by a motorcyclist and had to go to hospital. They had to make their decision: exile or death.

“That same night we fled from Afghanistan,” she remembers.

From trials to testimony

From their home, the family fled to a country in Central Asia. Now, Zakie cares for refugee women who have suffered through similar experiences. “I do discipleship with women because there are women who have experienced much trauma. I share the Word of God and the love of God with them,” she explains.

Though her status as a refugee makes her vulnerable, she perseveres in her ministry and faith. “For me, Jesus is Lord, Saviour, and Healer. Jesus is everything to me,” says Zakie. “What gives me hope is that I have found the living God, that the living God has taken a place in my heart and that I have eternal life. In every situation, God is with me. This is my joy and peace.”

*Name changed for security reasons