The Underground Girls of Kabul Read online

  It frustrates Azita that foreigners call on her to discuss “women’s issues,” but when it comes to other topics that matter as much to women as to men, such as how the state is actually run, neither Afghans nor foreigners show much interest in her opinions.

  “The foreigners think they are helping women in Afghanistan, but it is so corrupt,” she blurts out. “All this money coming in, but we still suffer. They think it’s all about the burka. I’m ready to wear two burkas if my government can provide security and rule of law. That’s okay with me. If that is the only freedom I have to give up, I am ready.”

  THE NEXT CALL is a threat, but not of the usual death variety. Instead, the anonymous caller warns that he intends to make sure everyone in Badghis knows that she’s a Communist, unless she withdraws from the race. Azita cuts him off and makes a quick call to her father, giving him the caller’s cell phone number as shown on her display.

  Being likened to or called a Communist is as grave an insult in Afghanistan as it once was, and may still be, in U.S. politics. The label “Communist” still today translates as “traitor,” from the war that killed one million Afghans. In current-day Afghanistan it also has a few added twists: “Communist” is a slur indicating someone is not a proper Muslim, but rather a suspicious, Westernized character who drinks wine and fails to pray. For a politician to be branded a Communist or rumored to have Communist sympathies must be avoided, even though several known former Afghan Communists sit in the current parliament. Their legacy is such that other powerful liaisons have the effect of declaring void the former Communist label.

  The default Communist-bashing has its contradictions, of course. In the occasional angry rants about Americans—“the new occupiers”—Afghans in Kabul can sometimes speak longingly of the Soviet era, when they say there was order, infrastructure improvements, and social programs that seemed to work better than those put in place by Amrican, which includes all foreign countries that make up the coalition. Also, the Russians may have been occupiers, but they are often described by Kabulis as the lesser evil compared to the destruction and mayhem that arrived with the mujahideen infighting. That same reluctant praise is rarely bestowed on the Taliban rule that followed, however, whom those in the capital almost uniformly seem to have detested when they were in government.

  Over the phone, Azita’s father assures her he will find out who the caller is and prevent any rumor from taking root. He has taken on the role of her adviser and stand-in campaign manager, mostly for his own sake. He enjoys his unofficial and self-imposed status as Azita’s local spokesperson, and having a daughter in parliament boosts his reputation as a wise old man who can give advice and resolve conflicts.

  It was Mourtaza who convinced Azita’s husband to let her run again. He was reluctant at first. Life in Kabul was stressful, he had complained to his father-in-law, and the constant stream of visitors had become taxing. He would prefer to support his own family back home in Badghis, rather than be what increasingly felt like a servant to his powerful wife in Kabul. But eventually he conceded to his father-in-law’s arguments that his and Azita’s standard of living in Kabul and the educational opportunities available to their children far surpassed what was offered in the province.

  Azita is grateful for her father’s support. She thinks of it as his way of compensating for the marriage he forced her into. He is a strict man, she says, and rarely shows any feelings toward her, but she hopes he is proud of her. Fortunately, people cannot complain his daughter is imperfect these days, with Mehran representing the requisite grandson in the family.

  Azita does not speak of it, but she is deeply anxious about the risk of not being reelected. She does not fear only her competitors’ larger, more costly campaigns, or the gossip attacks she knows will be launched. She also fears the system itself: The ballots have already been printed, and her name has been smudged onto another candidate’s number, which will add another layer of complexity for her mostly illiterate voters. She is particularly nervous about the counting of those ballots: It will take days for the boxes to travel back to Kabul, and they will pass through many hands on the way. But she absolutely needs to win—so that her life does not slide backward again.

  “I THOUGHT OF dying. But I never thought of divorce,” Azita says of her darkest years in the village. “If I had separated from my husband, I would have lost my children, and they would have had no rights. I am not one to quit.”

  In the Taliban years, both Azita and her parents could have been arrested had she left her husband. But instead, on three different occasions, her father called for a form of family counseling performed by older men. It was done according to tribal custom, and Azita was allowed to make her case only through her father, by standing outside the door where negotiations took place among the men. Each time, Azita brought up the abuse by her husband and her mother-in-law. And each time, her husband promised the elders and her father that he would do better.

  She could hardly hide the fighting with her husband from the children during the village years, either; they have all seen much more than Azita would have wished. But almost five years have passed since the family moved to Kabul, and she describes it as though something in their dynamic shifted, as her husband has not laid a hand on her since. Azita doesn’t think of herself as very forgiving—just that it is necessary to forgive for life to work: “My husband’s family is very poor. They do not think of a woman as an individual. He was under the control of his mother. He did not know better,” she explains.

  So did her status as a parliamentarian put him on a new track? Can a woman’s increased power and status also quell domestic violence?

  She laughs at my idealized suggestion. Perhaps. But she likes to take a more profound view of how she believes her husband has actually changed and become a better person: He realized he was wrong. Several factors contributed, she believes. In Kabul, his status as her husband improved. With his children growing up in a more urban context, where they were learning to read and write, he wanted to present an image of himself as a more modern man. Azita had always hoped that, with time, she and her husband would grow more alike and could become partners instead of adversaries. She prefers not to dwell on thoughts of what may happen if she loses the reelection. But she concedes that she has several reasons for wanting to stay in parliament. The opportunity to somewhat affect her country is only one of them.

  Azita glances over to her husband, who is transfixed by a wrestling game on cable television. “Some people tell him to take a third wife.”

  The family’s youngest daughter is important in Azita’s fragile house of cards. With Mehran playing the role of a son, her husband has stopped pushing her to get pregnant again and, at least not out loud, thinking of taking another wife. The prophet Muhammad had several wives; in Afghanistan, a man is allowed up to four wives, whereas a woman can have only one husband. It is a display of wealth and prestige for a man in Afghanistan to have several wives; he is seen as someone who can afford to multiply his chances of male offspring. Many of Azita’s male colleagues in parliament, especially those with extravagant security arrangements and many guns, have more than one wife. In her own family, it is hard enough that there are two already.

  During Azita’s first year in parliament, the first wife—as Azita always refers to her—lived with them in Kabul with her daughter. Inside the family’s small apartment and with the designation as the family’s breadwinner with a high official status, Azita set many of the rules, and their relationship deteriorated from an initial friendship to loud fights. Eventually, the first wife moved back to Badghis. Now Azita’s husband travels to Badghis every other month to stay with his first wife and daughter. It is a bit of an embarrassment for him, as he can be suspected of having left one wife behind. He frequently complains to Azita that they should all be reunited as a family soon. But for now, with Mehran, Azita exerts some influence over the household as the mother of its only son. Just as in politics, she is a pragmatist at home: �
�We are fighting for human rights and democracy here. But I cannot change my husband.”

  AS AZITA WINDS down one evening and is soon to begin her nightly ritual of covering her face in cold cream, I challenge her on Mehran. I tell her about Zahra, and how hard she seems to resist her birth sex. What will time do to Mehran as she grows older? When will you change her? I ask. And what if that just won’t work?

  “I don’t think it will be a problem,” Azita responds. “I don’t think that society will give her any problems. I have seen this many times, and I have so much experience from seeing it. These girls are just normal girls when they change back. I have not seen any bad examples.”

  “How can it not be difficult for her when, later on, she has to become more limited, as a woman? How can you be so sure?”

  Azita leans forward, smiling. “Should I share something with you, honestly? For some years, I have also been a boy.”

  Of course. I should have guessed it.

  In Azita’s case, it was a practical matter. During her childhood in Kabul, she was the eldest daughter in a family of all girls for several years before a baby brother arrived. Business had picked up in the family’s small store and her father needed help in the afternoons. Who could be more trusted than family?

  But it needed to be a boy.

  Azita’s parents approached her together to ask if she would be willing to do it. They already called her “the little manager” at home and wondered if she would take on some more work. How could she say no? The way ten-year-old Azita saw it, this was the chance to be her parents’ “best son and best daughter” in one. She put on pants, a shirt, and a pair of sneakers and went to work.

  Her two long, dark braids had been her pride, but as soon as they were gone, she did not miss them. Her new short hair was mostly hidden under a baseball cap in the afternoons. She wore it with the brim in the back; that seemed cooler and resembled characters in Western films she had seen. In the store, she became the assistant runner, fetching goods and assisting customers. There was no name for her; Mourtaza just referred to her as the bacha, or his boy, while ordering her around before the customers. The store stayed open until one in the morning, since most people shopped in the evenings. Among the big sellers were her mother’s homemade yogurt, bread, pastry, cheese, and imported tea.

  Azita likes to think her time in the store built character. In school, she had been told she was beautiful and was maybe a little bit too proud, but working taught her resilience. Already chosen to be captain of the girls’ volleyball team at school, she was strong and tall, which worked well, both in the store and when she joined the boys outside on the street.

  She enjoyed feeling less monitored; there was no need to watch how she dressed or spoke at all times. It was relaxing not to be defined by her body. While there was moderate progress for urban women during “the Russian time,” girls still needed to closely watch their behavior and dress in public, as social codes remained the same.

  Above all, masquerading as a boy gave Azita access. She could approach any situation or group of men or boys without being scrutinized or considering how to behave appropriately. Her clothing, her very being, was never a hindrance. It seemed as though she was a more natural fit everywhere in society, and she was always welcome. She felt special, and she didn’t need to avoid anyone. Women and girls would shy away on the street, giving way to her. It was a magical high.

  She once observed a boy her own age, about thirteen, lurking around the store and then suddenly tucking a biscuit under his shirt. As the male guardian of the store, Azita reacted instinctively—launching herself at him, grabbing him by the arm, and pulling him out of the store, onto the street outside. With a firm grip still around his arm, she punched him in the stomach. The boy folded and sunk to his knees. Out of the corner of her eye, Azita saw another group of boys running toward her, and knew she must quickly retreat. She leaned in and whispered to the boy: “I am a girl. But I think I’m stronger than you are. And I will beat you even more when you come back.” Then she let go of her grip and ran back into the store, feeling a rush she would never forget. She saw the boy a few times after that, always on his bicycle, but he never attempted to come into the store again.

  Her stint on the other side came to an end when her father dismissed her early one afternoon when she was almost fourteen. Azita had begun to grow quickly; she was up two sizes in clothing in just a matter of months, and the day came when she complained of stomach pains. Too afraid to ask her mother, she learned the next day from a classmate what had happened. Neither of her parents said anything, but it was apparent that they knew of the event that had turned her into a woman of childbearing age. Her father made it clear that she would no longer work at the store and that it was not a good idea for her to run around outside anymore, either.

  Azita protested her father’s decision, but it was firm. To encourage his daughter to think positively about womanhood, he brought home a full-length bright blue dress for her. Azita remembers it as a “beautiful, expensive and pretty kind of fairy-tale dress.” She hated it. At first, she struggled to walk in it. She fell twice when the heavy fabric snarled in her long legs, but she soon learned to take shorter strides. She wasn’t walking very far anyway, since she was now mostly confined to the house in the afternoons, like other proper Afghan girls. The improvised volleyball tournament she had set up with a few friends went on without her. She would watch the other children play from her window in the evenings. She would not wear her baseball cap again, or her jeans.

  “Do YOU EVER wish you had been born a boy?” I ask, as we sit in a corner on the floor, with the silence of a thick Kabul night outside only occasionally interrupted by distant bursts of gunfire.

  “Never. It’s the men who create all our conflicts here.”

  But she is sure of this: It certainly did her no harm to spend some time as one among them. The way she sees it, her boy years have helped her all her life: They made her more energetic. They made her strong. For almost five years, she could sit and talk to men openly. “I was not afraid of them,” she says. And she never feared them much after that. Those short years are some of the best she can remember. “I have had their experience, too, so I am never embarrassed to speak to men. Now no men will ignore my power. Nobody will ignore my talent.”

  “Are you saying this is an experience for Mehran that you want her to have?”

  “Yes. An experience.”

  “Or is it more of an experiment?”

  Her eyes dart back and forth a few times, and she nods, slowly.

  “I don’t disagree with you. I will prepare my daughter very carefully for turning back to a girl. I was a boy part-time, and she is a boy full-time. It’s different. I know.”

  Her voice fades slightly.

  “Is it necessary to do this or not? I don’t know. I couldn’t tell you. We have tried it now for more than a year, and the gossip has stopped. Most people believe I have a son. So now, at least for me, it has become better. I am giving my youngest a taste of the whole life, you know? I have seen her change. She is much more active now, much more alive. She is not afraid of anything. And my guests now respect my family and my husband.”

  “So what do you know that other Afghan women do not?”

  That’s an easy one. “Most of my voters are men. Society is dominated by men. All the leaders are men. And I have to talk and communicate with them. Of course, I talk to women, too, at gatherings and in families. But all the decisions are still in the hands of men. Of the elders. With the male shura councils, in the villages. So I have to talk more to them. Even when I want to talk to women, I have to go through the men to get their permission. And I know their language; I know how to approach them and how to get them to listen to me. Even when I make speeches to voters, I know I have to speak the men’s language even when I talk about women, so they will tell their wives to vote for me.”

  The language of men, she says, is calm, direct, and uncompromising. Not too many words,
never too much of an explanation. Whatever she says needs to exude authority and ideally lack emotion. Female communication, on the other hand, is all nuance and detail. To men, that can be confusing, she has found.

  “What if Mehran came to you tomorrow and said she wanted to be a girl?”

  Azita looks up to the ceiling in a silent inshallah: Whatever God wants.

  “I would not force her. We asked her if she wanted to be a boy, and she said ‘Wow, let’s go.’ But if she said, ‘I would like to be a girl again,’ I would accept it.”

  To Azita, bacha posh is less about a preference for sons and more a symptom of how poorly her society works. But, as in politics, she works with the reality she’s been dealt. And sometimes, she argues, you have to think of temporary solutions while you try to slowly change something bigger. She resents the fact that boys are the preferred children here. But she has a long way to go before she can make the argument in a convincing way that girls are of equal value in Afghanistan. She believes her decision for Mehran, at its core, is also deeply subversive, since it will make her daughter into another kind of woman one day—one who can push society even further. It seems a slightly idealized version of reality, but her best argument lies in her own journey from Badghis back to Kabul.

  Azita is fully aware that others may disagree with her mothering choices. At the same time she is defiant: “Yes, this is not normal for you. And I know it’s very hard for you to believe why one mother is doing these things to her youngest daughter. But I want to say to you, some things are happening in Afghanistan that really are not imaginable for you as a Western people.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  THE PASHTUN TEA PARTY

  ON THE OTHER side of town, in a more upscale neighborhood, a regal-looking woman in an emerald-green Punjabi-style dress, her arms heavy with gold bangles, fully agrees. Being a bacha posh should not be seen as anything other than a useful and character-strengthening education.