Reading Abdul Salam Zaeef: My Life with the Taliban:

In the summer of 1975, my father died in Rangrezan. He got up in the middle of the night, earlier than was his habit. Later, when it was time for the night prayer, I woke up and lay still, listening to my father in the moonlit darkness. I could only make out parts of the words he was whispering, and I saw tears running down his face.

He was praying for us children, asking God for our safety, for our futures and for our health. I had never heard him pray like that before, but I did not think much of it at the time. He left the house early to pray eshraq at the mosque.

When he returned, he seemed to be in pain. I could see tears in his eyes when he looked at us, but he said nothing, turned away, and went into his room. I was scared. An hour passed before he called for my sister. He asked her to go and get the neighbours. Neither I nor my sister understood what was happening. I looked at my father lying on his bed, his face moist with tears and strained with pain. The neighbours came, an old woman and a man. We knew them well and often played with their children.

The man went straight to my father and took his pulse at his wrist. Immediately he started to recite Surat Yasin Sharif.

He turned to us and told us to leave the room. After a short while the old woman came out of my father’s room. Her face was pale when she walked over to my sister and I. Stroking our heads all the while, she burst out in tears, and cried out loud. Then all of a sudden she fainted and collapsed on the floor.

We were shocked and ran to my father’s room to tell him what had happened. We called out to him: “Father! Father! Come quick, look what happened to the aunt!” But my father did not answer. When we looked at him we saw that the neighbour had bound his lower jaw to his head with a white strip of cloth as is the custom once someone dies. We shouted again: “Father! Father!” But it was only his body that was lying on the bed. He had died a few moments earlier.