The Underground Girls of Kabul Read online

  IN A WESTERN context what may constitute such a disorder is not far from clear-cut, either.

  The children brought to Dr. Robert Garofalo, director of the Center for Gender, Sexuality and HIV Prevention at Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago, can be as young as three or four when expressing a feeling of having been born in the wrong body. Among those at the forefront in the world of understanding how gender is formed in children, Dr. Garofalo receives one or two referrals per week, often from parents who have at times lived in fear and shame because their children do not fall into expected gender roles.

  In 2013, the American Psychiatric Association removed “gender identity disorder” from its list of mental health illnesses. Dr. Garofalo prefers not to pin a specific term on the children he works with, as he tries not to get stuck on a binary view of gender and the idea that a person always needs to be one or the other and possess absolute feminine or masculine traits only. In his view, what goes on with these children is “part of a natural spectrum of the human being—not an -ism or thing or condition that requires fixing.”

  No one knows today exactly why some children identify with a gender that is different from their anatomic sex. Multiple factors such as genetics, hormones, and social structures are all thought to play a role. Treatments for advancing one gender or the other in children who fall in the middle of the gender spectrum are currently still experimental and controversial.

  “There is plasticity in children,” says Dr. Garofalo, who believes that what he calls a nonconforming gender identity could probably be created in a child over time, such as the case with Zahra seems to be.

  But one would also need to consider what part of Zahra’s desire to be a boy is directly related to the experience of being a woman in Afghanistan. Would she really want to be a man in another environment, where most people did not care whether she wore a head scarf or a pair of pants, and where women had more opportunities?

  Maybe Zahra could be seen as healthier than most. Or does the desire to wear pants and not to get married actually need a cure? Maybe it is something else that should be defined as sick. Zahra’s situation could even prompt a whole new category in the World Health Organization’s index: “Gender identity disorder due to severe and longtime segregation.”

  When one gender is so unwanted, so despised, and so suppressed, in a place where daughters are expressly unwanted, perhaps both the body and the mind of a growing human can be expected to revolt against becoming a woman. And thus, perhaps, alter someone for good.

  ZAHRA SITS CROSS-LEGGED on a carpet, her eyes fixed on the small television set on the floor. The title of the Indian drama translates as “story of love,” and Zahra has been following it for a while. It is a Bollywood take on the Twilight series: The main character is from a vampire family, but one day he falls for a non-vampire girl. From that, a complicated romance unfolds.

  I ask if she’s ever been in love. She smiles faintly. “No. I don’t want to be. I’m not crazy like that.”

  “What will you do if they force you to get married?”

  “I will refuse to get married. My no is a no! When I grow up, I will go to the West, where nobody gets involved in your business. My will is very strong, and I will refuse my parents. Nobody can force me to do anything.”

  “Would you dress like ‘a woman’ in the West?”

  She shakes her head at me in disbelief. “Don’t you understand? I am not a girl.”

  I hand her our parting gift from one of the Kabul stores that sells torn T-shirts and jeans, supplying the trash-rock look popular among the city’s teenage boys. It is a gray felt fedora. I explain that I have seen both men and women wear it in New York. Zahra beams with excitement and jumps up to try it on in the mirror, adjusting the brim to give it the perfect angle, casting a shadow over her eyes.

  “It’s beautiful,” she says.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  THE SISTERHOOD

  THE BRIDE COULD be crying because she is only a year older than Zahra. Or because the husband her parents have chosen is twice her age. Or because she does not know him at all. She could be crying because her husband asked for the hand of her sister, known by reputation to be the more beautiful of the two. And because her parents then decided that her sister could probably do better than this older man of moderate means; so for her, it would be wise to hold out for a bigger offer.

  None of that matters. Tears are both expected and required here.

  To look happy would be disrespectful to her parents. There should always be some histrionics about leaving the family home. This event is where only a proper girl ends up, and this is what Zahra fears. The bride executes her performance with precision.

  It has taken about five hours at one of Kabul’s many beauty parlors to have the virgin bride’s hair perfected into stiff, sprayed curls, her nails painted red, and her face a white-powdered death mask with crimson lips. Her thick, dark eyebrows have been threaded off entirely and replaced by thin blackbird wings. They are the proud mark of a married woman, signaling that she is now taken. Her husband-to-be’s family has spent more than a hundred dollars on this important preparation for the wedding. Beauty parlors were closed under the Taliban, and the stories of their reopenings filled American women’s magazines after 2001, as evidence of how liberty had finally reached Afghan women.

  It is a relative of Setareh’s who is getting married this evening, in what stands to be a rather low-key affair for Kabul. If it had been a ceremony for one of the city’s wealthier families, a Las Vegas–style wedding hall would have been taken over, with thousands invited and fed for an entire day, at a cost of tens of thousands of dollars to the husband’s family. A wedding is an event of a lifetime, often paid for with borrowed money that will be paid back over that same lifetime. Afghans often complain about the money, but everyone knows that a lavish wedding display is an important way for families to demonstrate as much power and prestige as they can muster.

  As explained by Carol le Duc, this is the moment when daughters are most visibly the cards played by Afghan fathers: “Men make alliances, and not necessarily in the best interests of their daughters. These alliances are related to the social prestige and honor of the family. But it may also be opportunism. They want to marry up to create more security—financial or physical—for the family in a time of need. Freedom of choice is a modern thing, relatively speaking. That is not always practical in terms of how Afghan families measure assets for survival.”

  Marriage is a core component of the patriarchal system.

  According to Gerda Lerner’s research on ancient societies, a woman could achieve at least some status, and with that, better treatment and privileges, through preserving her only capital—her virginity—and eventually offering it to just one man. That idea evolved into the marriage contract, where a woman vowed to remain sexually exclusive to one man, with the expectation that it would bring him heirs to preserve a lineage of land and capital. Any woman suspected of not being a virgin posed the risk of carrying someone else’s child, which disqualified her as a potential bride.

  No group can be truly suppressed until its members are trained and convinced to suppress one another. To hold the system of patriarchy in place, a woman could always further prove herself a chaste and proper person by shaming those who fell short of the mark, Lerner explained. In other words, by calling out other women as suspected whores, as women commonly do to this day.

  In Afghanistan, young women are largely removed from this major event of their own lives. Through the khastegari process, one family will court another for their daughter. It revolves mainly around money, when the equivalent of a bride price, the toyana, is determined. Negotiations between parents take into account how much “wedding gold” will be hung on the bride at the wedding ceremony as literal proof of the wealth of her marriage. The actual ceremony, or nekah, is often performed in a small setting with just a mullah and two witnesses. They will visit the bride and ask who she has chosen to speak for h
er, as she herself is expected to remain mute. Seated or standing behind a piece of fabric that is held up for discretion’s sake, she will designate a brother or her father as her intermediary. The groom then accepts the marriage by uttering the words “I accept it in the present and I accept it in the future” to the mullah, and then when the bride’s male representative agrees three times, the verbal contract is sealed. Rarely will there be a written document of a marriage. By law, the bride should also receive a mahr as security, an amount of money or property for her personal use, from her husband. But that detail is usually ignored.

  At this wedding, the nekah has been completed and the bride is placed on a chair atop a foil-clad stage, homecoming queen–style, so the guests—all females—can take a good look at her dark green, richly embroidered gown and frozen face.

  Her dress exhibits a plunging neckline on a flat chest, and her thin, bare arms are covered in gold bangles, stacked so high she cannot even raise her arm to pluck a drink off the many soda-can pyramids on the tables. The female guests sit packed next to one another on the floor as plates of rice and chicken are passed around. The men are next door celebrating in a larger space. The windows are closed and the stale air has little oxygen. If there was a fire, we would likely not all get out safely through the one small door. But any such perceived risk is less of a concern than that of having men peek in from the outside and catch a glimpse of any dark hair flowing as the guests dance wildly in circles, always with one woman in the middle and the others around her. The makeup is heavy, and everyone is in their best outfits. Even the small children are decked out in tulle and sequins. They fall asleep, one after the other, on the floor. One teenage girl is wrapped in Kermit-like green, like a small elf, with matching green nail polish, eye shadow, and high heels. The gold is on full display, too. Those with the heaviest load on their chests and arms sit a little more regally overlooking the others, knowing they qualify as the richest, most prominent guests with a proven record of fertility, as proved by the gifts from their pleased husbands.

  SMALL GROUPS OF girls form alongside one wall. These are the proper girls, on the track that Zahra is veering away from. Tonight, they are giddy.

  They know gossip is deadly, but their voices are drenched in music and they don’t care. This is a rare opportunity to sit out of earshot of their mothers, who otherwise guard their movements carefully to ensure they are never alone with boys. Which is exactly what their conversation revolves around tonight.

  The teenage years leading up to marriage can be some of the most romantic these girls will ever have—not knowing what awaits and who their parents will pick for them. It affords plenty of time for daydreaming of romance. All the girls keep diaries, where they sometimes write down fantasies fueled by saucy, often thinly veiled homoerotic Persian poetry, with its tales of doomed lovers prepared to die violent deaths for each other. And just as fast-drawing heroes of American Western films usually fall for pure and innocent women, the girls’ favorite Bollywood dramas feature dark, passionate, and often violent strangers who abduct coy Indian actresses. In a common narrative, the stranger hardly needs to utter a word before the female decides she is madly in love with him and delighted to go against her family’s wishes. The film Titanic is the perfect Afghan tale, where impossible love ends with death. All the girls have seen grainy, pirated versions of it more than once.

  It’s the universally efficient concept of unrequited romance: Never actually speaking to boys makes for endless musings on what they are really like and how to get closer to them. At this wedding, tricks and tips are shared. One girl admits she’s locked eyes with a boy twice, and now they have a bond. Another is more daring: She has accepted a postcard with an Indian actor on it from an admirer. Nothing is written on the card, but the act of delivery, through a wall outside school, sealed the romance. Girls with cell phones or laptops at home or in school have an advantage, as secret Facebook profiles adorned with pictures of flowers and rainbows in place of a headshot can be used for exchanging messages.

  As in any largely illiterate country, cell phones sold in Afghanistan feature a variety of animals and cartoon avatars as an option to typing a name on the speed-dial function. Still, the girls routinely erase messages and call lists, as mothers tend to check cell phones at least once a day. To actually meet a boy in person is the gutsiest move of all, since it carries the highest risk. Their imagined boyfriends are perfect, bold, heroic, and willing to die for impossible love. But the greatest crime an Afghan girl can commit is to actually fall in love and act on it. The girls all know a tale of a distant someone who has gone mad from love and tried to kill herself, or who was actually killed by her family. Fantasies about boys are as far as these girls dare take it. At least they can glimpse one another in the city—in the villages, tales of romances will have to be spun from under burkas and by just looking out the window.

  Their future marriages consume much psychic energy, as there is so much to ponder: Who is the most beautiful of them? Who among them will marry first? What will they wear? They all agree that the bride onstage is only of average beauty—that is why she has been matched with such an old husband. Every girl is highly aware of her own ranking, and in this group, those with crooked teeth or scars from cooking oil speak less often than the more obviously stunning girls who know they will bring a big reward for their fathers. Still, they all share the dream of being the center of attention, of sitting on the tinfoil-clad stage, made up like a movie star. Leaving the isolation of a house with parents and siblings for a new family is for now spun like a romantic adventure.

  Some of the girls have career ambitions; others do not. What they all know is that it takes more than looks to marry, and that reputation is key. Without that, no prince will appear. Hopefully that future husband will at least have some of his hair left, they joke, as they take turns on the dance floor, generating even more heat in the shuttered room.

  The dancing looks like a joyous celebration of womanhood in explosive color, but it has a distinct purpose. A wedding is actually no time to relax among friends—it is a pivotal event, and one’s performance must be flawless. A secondary purpose of a wedding is to generate more weddings in the future. The girls are even filmed on cell phones for discreet distribution to families who get to see them without scarves. Those who take the floor are well aware that they are dancing on a stage before judges in a very serious, high-stakes auction.

  ON THE OPPOSITE wall of the crowded room, the older women sit in a line, one next to another, wearing more demure dresses in darker colors. Some have kept their head scarves on. They observe the dancing mostly in silence, sometimes exchanging a few words with serious expressions. Chinese whisper games will start, where one woman will nod at a young dancing girl, asking a question that is passed down the row from one woman to another, before a response comes back up the line in the same manner. These women are in the business of finding wives for their sons and they offer up occasional commentary on the performance before them.

  “Not so pretty. Her sister is better.”

  “That poor one will have a hard time, yes. The dark skin—she is already an old woman. She will have to wait, yes.”

  Information about the girl’s family’s honor, purity, and place in society is also exchanged:

  “Her mother works, you know.”

  “Really?”

  Translation: Too progressive. The girl could become a problem.

  It all comes down to whether the subject of their observation really is a proper girl: “She seems made of fire, that one. Look at her dancing.”

  “Yes. Best to be careful. And too much cake in that belly!”

  Another woman disagrees: “A little more on the bones will give her husband many children.”

  Every now and then, a teenage girl is called forward, always through an intermediary, for a more thorough interview.

  “Do you pray?”

  “How often?”

  “What dishes can you cook?”


  It can be a life-changing exchange. This version of Miss Universe takes place every day in Afghanistan, where a girl’s looks, character, and body fat percentage are assessed in short, determined sentences, as women enforce and perpetuate their own subjugation.

  To Setareh, who like any other unmarried girl has often been scrutinized by other women, it is a familiar routine. “They spy on us and look at how we dress and how we move. The other women will tell her all the gossip about you—if you have a bad reputation or if you are proper. If it is not a relative, they will ask someone for your address. Then they will spy around the house, and maybe the boy will go to get a look at the girl. If he likes her, his parents go to the girl’s father. But the boy will not be allowed to choose if the mother and father have already found a good girl and decided for him.”

  Once these young girls are picked for marriage, their mothers-in-law will control them in their new homes, just as Azita’s once controlled her. In Afghanistan, as in so many other places, abuse teaches abuse, and older women pass on their own horrors to those who come after. Stories of torture or an honor killing will regularly surface from around the country, and commonly, perpetrators are not the men in the family, but the women. Mothers-in-law do not just condone but also commit acts of violence against daughters-in-law who do not obey. Afghan women have very little tolerance for acts of transgression by other women, particularly those who are younger. As in any suppressed group, one person’s attempt at freedom can be a grave affront to the suffering of others.

  Still, both men and women sometimes cultivate the idea that there is a sisterhood among women—a loyalty that exists between those who belong to the softer, kinder, and warmer gender. That they look out for one another in some sort of universal solidarity. Yet Afghan prosecutor Maria Bashir, who has been heralded as a women’s rights champion by international NGOs as well as the U.S. Department of State, has a long record of relentlessly prosecuting women who flee from abusive husbands or parents who want to force them into a marriage. Those women are often prosecuted on adultery charges, to clearly mark them as whores in society.