Afghan women making Olympic history

ATHENS - The two queens of Afghanistan sport - scarred by the past and eager for the future - hope the girls back home are watching. The ones who have televisions, anyway.

They have all seen horrors and know fear - those here, those there. What they have never, ever seen is an Afghan woman in the Olympics. And now there are two.

The sprinter is 17. Robina Muqimyar trains in Kabul Stadium where the Taliban executed its enemies and the bodies once hung from the goalposts at halftime of a soccer game.

And so what if her running track is really broken concrete, and her shoes are so old she sometimes runs barefoot, and she trains in long pants to be modest, and will surely finish last in her first heat Friday, or close to it?

``This is important. The women in Afghanistan will know they can do anything, if there is hope in the heart,'' she said. ``Standing on the track, I will feel like a winner.''

The judo athlete is 18. Friba Razayee was 9 when her family fled the Taliban to Pakistan, and what she remembers is the gunfire in the mountains as they walked at night.

They returned in 2002 when the Taliban fell. So what does it matter that she often trains by running constant circles inside a small room, too wary of going outside, and will likely not last long once the judo competition starts Wednesday?

``What this means is Afghan is peace. I am so proud,'' she said. ``Attending the Olympic Games is a gold medal for me.''

Can two demure teenagers be in the front line of a country's march forward? They intend to be, from a land where being a woman once met staying hidden in the burka, when she ventured outside at all.

``We were like female prisoners,'' Muqimyar said. ``That was just not my future, but the future of all Afghan women.''

That changed when the American-led attack - aimed at Al Qaida after 9/11 - drove out the Taliban. But at the time, as the bombs fell, she was a scared little girl. So when the fireworks went off at the Opening Ceremony, Robina Muqimyar's first instinct, honed by a childhood without safety, was to hide.

``I have bad memories,'' she said, ``of boom ... boom ... boom.''

One day, a group hoping to recruit young women to sport stopped by her school, asking if anyone wanted to run a race.

Robina was in sandals, long pants, a frock and black scarf. She took off her scarf, went to the starting line, and was ready.

``She wasn't that fast,'' said Stig Ingemar Traavik, a Norwegian who has helped build the Afghan Olympic team. ``But she came right away, and said `I am the best.'''

This is not ancient history. This is 11 months ago. Now she is in the Olympics, on a special invitation. Travaak said she has run a 13.76 100-meters in practice, which is still almost three seconds behind those she will face in Athens. But time is a relative to a young woman whose practices in Kabul have been among the ghosts of those hanged in the stadium.

``I have a happy feeling. It was an execution spot,'' she said. ``Now me, as an Afghan woman was just running in this place.''

Razayee became involved in sports in Pakistan, and brought that back when her family returned to a demolished home.

She was the only female boxer in Afghanistan, then changed to judo. Now she is here, representing a change in her country, if not all its attitudes.

``Some of them still don't want me to be here,'' she said. ``Some of them say to me, `You are a judo guy. You are in big danger. No one will marry you.'

``I tell them they don't know anything about sport. I will prove that being in Olympic Games is not bad. I will try to change their minds.''

But she will do it with anxious glances behind her. She won't train in the streets back home, worried someone might make her a target.

``When I finish my judo training, I take a taxi,'' she said. ``Sometimes I don't even change my judo clothes. I run.''

Muqimyar seems shy to strangers, Razayee quicker to smile. Both they do what they must, where they must, going where no Afghan woman has gone before. Their words are clear, and sometimes their eyes: Making history, where terror once thrived, is not easy work.