ATHENS, Greece - In the stadium of death, a dream was born.
A young woman stood on the broken concrete of the track and thought of the countrymen who died there. There are those who will tell you there are ghosts in Kabul Stadium, that if you listen closely you can still hear the screams of the victims. She remembered the stories of the lost lives and the lost limbs, of how the men of darkness had turned the place into a slaughterhouse.
Robina Muqim Yaar thought about all of that. Then she did the most amazing thing:
She began to run.
Imagine the freedom of those first few steps for a woman who had spent much of her life hidden indoors. Imagine the way the wind flitted through hair usually covered by scarves. Imagine the warmth of the sunlight and the feeling of flying.
She moved around the track slowly, as if each footprint could grind out a tragedy. She ran past the area where the severed limbs had lain, past the goal posts where the bodies were hanged, around the grounds that had turned into a graveyard.
This, she thought, is a much better use for a stadium.
Today, a changed nation takes its wobbly first steps.
Today, the women of Afghanistan join the Olympics.
The teenagers sit on opposite ends of a long table, the judo competitor who is not particularly skilled and the sprinter who is not particularly fast. Together, they will be the first female athletes from their country.
Unveiled, Friba Razayee and Robina Muqim Yaar do not look like pioneers. Razayee, the 18-year-old judoist, has a face as round as a quarter and strong shoulders that hint she is an athlete. A ring of Olympic pins hangs from her neck. Yaar, a 17-year-old runner, has a slight overbite and large brown eyes, and looks about three years younger than she is. She wears a baseball cap and a T-shirt with the Greek flag on it.
Together, they are at the Olympics.
Together, they will try to change the world.
There are few nations that can match Afghanistan's horrible history of oppression against women. It is a country where illiteracy for women runs at 85 percent, where schools for girls have been burned, where women have been cloaked and kept indoors, lest they be beaten on the street.
The abuses of women by the Taliban led the Olympics to ban Afghanistan before the 2000 Games in Sydney. Women were forbidden to compete under the Taliban. For that matter, women were also forbidden to wear makeup, to wear the wrong-colored socks, to have shoes that squeaked, to call attention to themselves in any way. Women usually did not venture outside for fear they would incur the wrath of government officials.
Even now, however, there are those in Afghanistan who would stop Razayee and Yaar from competing. Even now, they must train carefully in primitive conditions. Still, they are here.
For now, that is enough.
"I don't care if I don't win a medal," said Razayee, who competes today against Cecila Blanco of Spain in the 70-kilogram (154-pound) weight class. "For me, the important thing is attending the Olympics. For me, that is the gold medal."
Yaar competes in the 100-meter heats starting Friday. She, too, is aware of her chances, and of her circumstances.
"I'm a symbol for women," she said. "I am here to represent Afghanistan and Afghan women. I don't want Afghan women to stay indoors. They must come out and participate in sports."
Yaar will run in long tights in deference to the protests against her competition. Still, she and Razayee both say they think their competing does not conflict with their religion. There is an old story that the prophet Mohammed once invited his wife Aisha to a foot race and was beaten soundly.
For both women, the journey to the Olympics began 11 months ago at the urging of a Norwegian, Stig Traavik, who had competed in the '92 Olympics in judo.
"At the time," Traavik said, "Afghanistan was a hellhole. There was no future. It was a dark place."
It was Traavik who persuaded Razayee to switch from boxing to judo, and Traavik who discovered Yaar while watching hundreds of young girls run.
Traavik remembers Yaar running in high-heeled sandals and a traditional schoolgirl's costume of baggy trousers, a long black cloak and a large scarf around her head. She removed the scarf to run.
"She wasn't the fastest that day, but she was the most eager," Traavik said. "Even though she lost, she told me, "I'm the best.' "
With proper training, with proper coaching, who knows how good she might be? For the Afghan women, that's the problem. Their equipment is lousy. Most of Razayee's judo training has come without a mat; Yaar has done most of her training in shabby shoes on a concrete track.
Even though the Taliban is no longer in control of Kabul, it remains risky for the women - required to wear veils in public in Afghanistan - to train. Neither is allowed to run, or bike, down the streets. Omid Malzban, a journalist from Afghanistan, estimates that opinion is "roughly 75 percent" against the women competing. Abdul Matin Mutasem Bilal, a mullah in Kubal, has censured her for running and flaunting her body to "thousands of foreigners."
"Some people say to me: "You are dangerous, woman. No one will marry with you,' " Razayee said. "They do not know sport."
According to Malzban, the women could indeed be affected by their competition in the days to come. "They have lost their chance to marry," he said. "Boys will not want to marry someone who participates in sports. It is the opposite of the rest of the world, where if you are famous, someone wants to marry you."
If the two tried to run through the streets of Kabul, Malzban said, it is likely spectators would laugh at them or throw things, perhaps grab and hinder them.
"It is changing day by day," Yaar said. "Islam says that healthy women make healthy mothers."
"Some people have bad minds," Razayee said. "I will try to change them."
Still, life is better than it was under the Taliban. Even now the athletes will talk of the day there was a soccer match at Kabul Stadium that ended with two accused bombers being hanged at halftime. They nod at each other's stories of the oppression.
"Under the Taliban, I didn't know what sport was," Yaar said. "If the Taliban was still in country, my country would be different. Women would still be treated like prisoners."
Yaar spent most of the Taliban years wearing a burqa. Razayee spent most of it in Pakistan, where her family fled when she was 9, watching Jackie Chan movies.
It was 11 months ago when Yaar ran outside for the first time, racing along Kabul Stadium, which for so long had housed the murder and mutilation of the Taliban.
With every stride Yaar ran that day, the stadium changed. Once again, it turned into a place of sport, of hope.
