Diana, whom should I console for your death? Queen Elizabeth, the wealthiest woman in the world? The British royal family? Those who did not love you and wanted to see you separated from Prince Charles? Your sons? I saw their indifferent smiles and affected sorrow during your funeral. None of the members of the royal family seemed to be truly grieving, but millions of people in England and elsewhere were mourning your death. The only thing that stirred me was their sincere tears. Maybe they were grieving because they thought that you, like themselves, were the easy victim of the ruling system -- and not because of all the ceremonious coverage by the media who, for as long as you were alive, used you, regardless of how much you despised them, to give a human face to a bloody system that bears only the name of "democracy" and "human rights"; and now that you are not here anymore, they put a show on your grave to divert the attention of the poor, the hungry, and the oppressed from their struggles and the gruesome facts of this world.

Diana, I regret your death, but my heart and soul would suffer even more, in addition to the pain caused by the myriad of crimes of the fundamentalists, if I knew that you would not want to be a mere toy in the hands of your government and others who want to cover their oppression and contempt for other nations by praising your charity works.

Diana, you were not left alone. They used you; they sent you to the mine fields in Bosnia because it is in Europe, but I wish you had paid some attention to my country where Russians and their cronies and fundamentalists planted the largest number of anti-personnel mines in every village and every city. You even came to Pakistan, but you forgot the inferno that our refugees burn in. They sent you to Africa to hold the sick and hungry children in your arms, but they kept you away from this plagued land and its millions of refugees who are living under Nazi-style camps in Iran and Pakistan. They kept you away from all this because it is their own agents and fundamentalist puppets who turned our country into the most gruesome graveyard -- and have not yet concluded the dog-fight they started.

Diana, did you not know that the Thatcher government also helped the criminal fundamentalist gangs with guns, missiles, money, and political backing as much as it could, and now it is the same out-of-control monsters that, blinded by their thirst for power and carrying the flag of Islam and faith, have turned Afghanistan into an unparalleled hell? I wish you had protested to Mrs. Thatcher and asked the current government to apologize to the people of Afghanistan for helping the medieval-style criminal gangs and to use all of its and its allies' influence to prevent the fundamentalist criminals from receiving any more weapons. I wish you had asked Mr. Clinton, who named you the "global American ambassador," to do with his Afghan Noriegas what they did to the Panamanian Noriega. I wish you had scorned the US government for its billions of dollars of aid to the most savage traitors of our country and asked it not to send any more weapon and money to its puppets, if not apologizing to our people. I wish you knew that our people, and especially our women, who have been forced to take every possible torture and misery are the most oppressed and humiliated people in the world -- and they see it coming from the hands of the American and British governments and their allies who helped the executioners.

Diana, I am not afflicted by extreme patriotism or closed-mindedness. The truth of the crime and betrayal of the fundamentalists in my country is so evident that even Palestinian and Kashmiri women have told me that the hell that Afghan people are suffering in is unmatched.

Diana, I wish you had stayed alive and we could see how far you would have gone to break free from the chains of the royal Britain. Would you have abandoned the royalty you belonged to until the very last moment? They called you "people's princess" and "the queen of hearts," but you did not even utter a few words to bring the attention of the world to the likes of Hitler and Franco in my country. You did not have anything to say about the fundamentalists and their masters in Iran, Algeria, Turkey, Afghanistan, and elsewhere. Weren't you the queen and princess of the people of Palestine, Kashmir, Iran, Kurdistan, Africa, and Latin America? Maybe, but you did not become the princess of my people. You did not find a place in the broken hearts of my tormented people.

The Taliban imprisoned my brother because he shaved his face; they stoned to death a woman and her son had to check whether she was still alive or not; they flogged my mother because she did not cover herself head to toe according to the faith; they are set to destroy the largest historical Buddha statue in the world; they killed more than one hundred people only in one village...

Diana, these news rip my soul off. I doubt if you had even heard the name of my turned-into-a-hell land or if you known where it is and what is going on there.

I regret your fatal incident, but it is great that you don't see that the most savage enemies of freedom and women, who are shackling my mothers and sisters, have kneeled down in front of your picture and sign your memorial book; and in doing this they are insulting your memory in the worst possible way. These are the same thugs who see it as their duty to preserve their "dignity" and "honor" by measuring the size of the beards of our men and flogging our ill-fated women.

When your coffin was passing with such glory and grandeur in front of the eyes of millions of people, I could not help thinking of hundreds of thousands of innocent and forgotten women and children who died a lonely and destitute death in the hands of the Taliban and their Jihadi comrades.

Diana, you left this world with your loved one, but they murdered my love eight years ago for being a freedom-lover, and it has been five years that I am experiencing grief and humiliation, and I don't know how longer I will burn the Taliban inferno. Diana, what vast distance is separating my life and death from yours! I don't lie to you. These news don't leave any room in my bleeding heart to mourn your untimely demise. If you knew the situation of my country and the savagery of its rulers, you might understand my cries -- perhaps.

Diana, excuse me, for my soul is too injured by the mean-spirited fundamentalists to speak with you any further.

Shakeba,
Islamabad
December 1997

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