The Underground Girls of Kabul Read online

  But women who live like men can be found in Europe to this day.

  IN NORTHERN ALBANIA and Montenegro, the centuries-old practice of “sworn virgins” has been documented for a little over a century. There, British anthropologist Antonia Young tracked down women still living their lives as men in the early 2000s. Similar to Afghanistan, Albania has a tribal society with its ancient customs still preserved. Society is traditionally strictly patriarchal and patrilineal, where children are thought to stem directly from the blood of the father, and the woman is considered merely a carrier.

  The family structure is focused on producing sons, and exterior markers such as dress determine a person’s rights. Young girls move in with their husbands’ families when they marry. The men protect the family, ensure its status, and take care of elderly parents—even holding their souls after death, according to old beliefs. A man can also inherit property and avenge and settle blood feuds.

  But every family needs a leader, and women are sometimes allowed to assume that role in Albania. In some documented cases, women took on the role when all the other men in the family had died, but most often, they were designated boys at a young age, or even at birth, when parents were unfortunate enough to have only daughters. At the core of the sworn virgin construct was an absolute requirement to remain a virgin and never marry. They would be dressed like boys, with their names tweaked to male versions, and taught to shoot and hunt. As they entered puberty, they would master most exterior male traits and use them to compensate for anything girlish in their physical appearances.

  Similar to Zahra, Shukria, and Nader, in adolescence and young adulthood, the Albanian sworn virgins, called burrneshas, would develop fully realized male identities, in both mind and behavior—even physically. With late and irregular periods, small, shrunken chests, and deep voices, the sworn virgins would display traditionally male traits, smoke tobacco, swear, fight, and frequently dismiss women as the weaker gender.

  As Albania has become more modern and open to the outside world, the tradition of sworn virgins still exists but has diminished in recent years.

  Perhaps this decline speaks to how much women pretending to be men really is one of the clearest symptoms of a segregated society so dysfunctional that it inevitably must change. As the practical and financial need to be a man in Albania has lessened, with women able to inherit property and gaining rights to take part in everyday life outside the home, there is now a lesser need for women to disguise themselves as men. Albania’s centuries-old tradition of coping with suppression is now almost extinct, and the speed of its decline is indicative of how Afghanistan may change, too, if it were allowed a reprieve from constant war and was able to move out of the most severe poverty.

  The question of when and how the practice of sworn virgins in Albania first developed is debated among scholars. Albanian laws stemming from the fifteenth century mention sworn virgins, which would indicate that the tradition is at least that old. Some suggest that it is perhaps even older, predating Islamo-Christian civilization.

  Serbian historian and ethnologist Tatomir Vukanovic proposed that women who lived like men—and presumably boys who grew up as girls—may have been a worldwide phenomenon. That a very similar practice to bacha posh, where adult women live as socialized males, exists in current-day Albania—many countries away from Afghanistan—speaks to the universal and historical need for it in patriarchal societies.

  It also indicates that turning daughters into bacha posh may have been both practiced and well hidden throughout the history of women in other places, too.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  THE WARRIOR

  Shahed

  SETAREH IS CALLING for me. “Come! Now! Hurry.”

  As I half-sprint from the house across the courtyard from my guesthouse toward the outer gate, I see her blocking the guards with her body. Behind her stands another figure, much taller, all dressed in white.

  The guards look at Setareh in amazement as she waves her arms around in a most unfeminine manner and explains to them: Yes, she knows about the no-gun rule in the compound and yes, she is aware that all male visitors must be body-searched. It’s just that this guest is actually a woman and for that reason, they should not touch her. Must she say it again?

  Setareh holds out her arms to halt them from advancing on the guest in white. The guards look to me for confirmation; is it true what Setareh is saying? That this one is not really a man?

  They nod toward Shahed.

  “Yes, just let her go. She’s a woman. I guarantee it.”

  Shahed is a friend of Nader’s, and to the uninitiated, she looks like just another broad-shouldered, athletic male. She has arrived early for our lunch.

  The bearded guards do not move away, but turn toward each other. Finally one guard, the shorter of the two, turns around and disappears into the hut by the entrance. The other silently follows. Before the door closes some muted chuckles dribble out. It will be a story retold for weeks to come.

  Setareh enters Shahed’s name in the visitors’ log on the small table to spare her more embarrassment, since she does not read or write. Shahed appears unmoved, giving me a brief nod by way of greeting. It’s our compromise between a handshake and the cheek kissing I have learned not to try again. I nod with my head down and touch the left side of my chest in return, in a respectful greeting between men. She brushes off my apologies about the guards; I should not worry. It happens. As a member of an elite paramilitary police force, she knows better than to get worked up over small disputes that could lead to bigger ones.

  Shahed is usually undercover in more ways than one.

  The ID issued by her unit spells out her full name: Shaheda. And her birth date. Her mother could not even remember under which government Shahed had arrived, usually the most reliable calendar to determine age here. After unsuccessfully trying to determine her age, Shahed decided she was twenty-eight when she enrolled and that she had been born in winter. Over thirty seemed too old; too close to death. She could be older; the deep lines around her mouth indicate this is perhaps the case. But she has not always eaten so well, either.

  The Americans who arrived in Kabul to train her never asked too many probing questions on age or gender. They were really good people, actually. Shahed knew it when she saw their women. The female instructors looked a lot like she did. With their broad shoulders, weathered skin, and baseball hats, they were no-nonsense. Not a single female trainer came in wearing a head scarf or skirt. They never brought up any of the usual woman talk either, about marriage or romance. They just taught Shahed how to shoot properly and how to run faster and longer than she thought she was capable of.

  She admired their sunglasses and their shiny tracksuits and appreciated how they would joke, too, sometimes using a few words of Dari for encouragement, patting her on the back when she did well at training. The men shied away from the back patting by female trainers, but it made Shahed feel good. One time, she got to borrow a pair of Oakley sunglasses from one of them, and another snapped a picture of her wearing them. It was the sharpest she had ever looked—even better than when her entire team got thick, oversize sweatshirts with the letters “DEA,” just like the ones some of the Americans wore. Shahed keeps hers stashed away at home, next to a box of photos where she’s posing with foreigners in uniform, at lunch, with arms around each other’s shoulders. Always grinning, always holding up fingers in a “V” for victory.

  The Americans did not probe, either, on why she had chosen to be in the paramilitary unit; a job far more demanding than regular police duty. Female officers were usually placed as security guards at the ministries to search female visitors. There was a constant need for that type of service, but the work seemed far too uninteresting to Shahed, with little chance of advancement. But mostly, it was about the money.

  When she first enrolled in the Afghan national police force, she was picked to train on the foreigner compound for an antinarcotics unit. It meant another $70 per month, in
addition to her regular $250. Shahed was grateful; it seemed like a plum job with which to feed her extended family of twelve. It was maybe even enough for an after-prayer picnic some Friday, she imagined—a luxury her family had often talked about for a future where things would get better. Bread, chicken, and sodas for all of them in a garden. Years into her employment, she is still hoping for the picnic. It symbolizes the ultimate treat to her—something that the rich can afford. But the money doesn’t stretch that far yet.

  The promotion, and a higher salary, could still happen, she imagines. If God allows her to live. Her way with the Glock, the Makarov, and the Kalashnikov has earned her a designation of number two sharpshooter in the unit. She knows how to use a knife, too. Out in the field, she keeps one tucked into her belt and another strapped to her leg, just above the desert boots, over camouflage pants. Her helmet and goggles cover her face almost entirely, and when they gear up as a unit, there is no way to distinguish her from the other, male, members. In height, Shahed falls somewhere in the middle when they all line up, and the contours of her muscles match those of the others.

  When her eyes are hidden behind those goggles, people listen when she speaks, in her low, dark voice. They even move out of the way for her. Some raise their hands in the air to signal defeat. They almost never run. Most just kneel down when she asks, their hands behind their backs, accepting the plastic cuffs.

  Shahed’s unit always arrives unannounced, often in the dark. A man cried at her feet once, pleading with her not to kill him. It made her uncomfortable. She asked him to stand up, so he could be a man again.

  She knows how humiliation feels. She knows it from the days when her salary is spent and she cannot afford bus fare and must walk home by foot—a journey of an hour and a half alongside one of the mountains that surround Kabul, where mud houses are scattered on the steep slopes and threaten to slide down at every heavy rainfall. No electricity, no heat, and very little cell phone coverage exist up here, and every horizontal layer of earth delineates a division of class. The higher up, the more unattractive the land and the poorer its residents. It is where the first snow lands in the winter and where the most unrelenting heat of summer lingers longest.

  Whoever settles that high above the city makes their own roads, finds their own water, and—if they can afford it—makes their own power from Soviet-era rechargeable batteries. It is just a few steps above the permanent refugee camps on the outskirts of Kabul, where a decade into one of the greatest foreign aid efforts of a generation, children still freeze to death in the winters.

  FOR OUR LUNCH, we unpack three large bags of foil-wrapped kebabs and minced-meat-filled manto from the restaurant next door to the guesthouse after learning that Nader will join us much later. Shahed grows slightly laconic sitting on the shimmering-green chintz couch. Only after we move to the floor where we sit cross-legged and I am instructed by Setareh to for once shut up (“With Afghans, you either talk or you eat”) does a hint of softness appear around Shahed’s eyes. She eats quietly. Then she asks for a cigarette. Any kind will do, but she likes the American brands Kabul vendors call “Smoking Kills” as the cartons dictate. She smells it and then licks it sideways before lighting it, to make it burn slower, then inspects it after each drag to see how much remains to be had. Ashes form slowly at the end, which she flicks down into the thick rug from Pakistan.

  Meeting at a restaurant would be more complicated for her than coming to my small rented room. The guard incident earlier could escalate to the point at which she may not have been able to keep her cool. She likes to carry a little something with her—usually a knife—for protection at all times. Men with guns are a given everywhere, but women with guns are a provocation and both a public and social danger. It doesn’t matter that she is a police officer—it only adds to the insult. For her to bear arms confuses the entire concept of honor, where it is women who require protecting.

  But Shahed knows what one of the Swedish diplomats has already taught me: The best way to enter any Kabul establishment armed is to just pass through the metal detector. When the beep sounds, one acts appropriately surprised and apologetic, and immediately hands over a gun, knife, or cell phone. After a nod of appreciation and understanding from the guard, one then walks away with a second weapon stashed somewhere on the body. Very rarely is a visitor asked to walk back through the arch again or to submit to a manual pat-down. Even then, a small knife is easily tucked inside the pants in the small of one’s back, as the hands of security guards—male or female—usually do not go there.

  By the time Nader arrives to join us for tea, Shahed has gone through the entire tutorial, using the small army knife in my wash bag. Her own knives—the one at her back, the other strapped to a hairy leg—she rarely removes.

  Unlike Zahra and Shukria, who are both isolated in their respective environments as somewhat male in female bodies, Nader and Shahed have navigated much of their adulthood together in the past few years. It has helped them figure out who they are. Both devout Muslims, they each sought advice from a religious leader on how to relate to God, worrying that God was angry with them for living as men. But the religious man told them each in turn that God was on their side and that there was hardly anything unusual about it. To prove his point, he introduced them to each other.

  Before that, Nader and Shahed had both wavered on faith. But now, together, they decided that at least in God’s eyes, they are not outcasts, but rather, his creation. Nader, who has just arrived to our gathering, agrees when Shahed explains what they have both come to believe: “It was God who decided our destiny. It’s his decision we are like this. He did not create us as men, but he gave us all the abilities and strengths of men.”

  It makes sense to them both: God is practical and generous, and he wants someone to take care of the family. When there are no suitable men around, God may leave that responsibility to a woman. Nader, who has a degree in Islamic studies from Kabul University, concludes: “We can never make ourselves into complete men, or complete women. But we try the best we can to be good humans before God.”

  THEIR FRIENDSHIP IS an unlikely one: Nader is upper class, and Shahed, although she holds a job, is closer to the bottom of society. Neither initially chose to be a man, but now it is all they know. As a child, Shahed volunteered to work with her father, who took day jobs painting people’s houses. The Taliban was in control, and it was simpler and certainly less life threatening if she accompanied her father as a son. But she rarely made any friends. For poor children there are not many opportunities to play outside or roam. For Shahed, being a boy was mostly about work. As she became a teenager, boys came to fear her and girls shied away from her. She has spent most of her adult life sharing a house with her mother and sisters. Her brothers abandoned the family long ago, unable to find work or being able to afford to marry anyone. “Poverty made me like this,” she says, running her hands down from her cheeks and over her body.

  As a woman, as a man, her looks display an androgynous beauty that defies a traditional gender, with unlikely green eyes and the occasional smile. When she curls her upper lip slightly Shahed looks as though she can hear what I am thinking: “If my family had been rich, I would have been a woman,” she says. “With five or six children.” She pauses and looks at Nader, who immediately gets the joke. “Or maybe more like ten or twelve.”

  They both laugh at the idea. Children are not for them. If womanhood culminates with becoming a mother, they are very removed from it. Nader, too, used to be asked when she would change back. She always gave the same one-word response: Never.

  Those around her used to argue that biology would overtake her one day, when she married and had children. She would agree, just to make them stop talking, knowing it would not happen. Both Nader and Shahed believe what others, too, have expressed: Once you have gone through the early teenage years as a man there is no turning back. When you go against nature, nature will follow, adjusting the body to the mind. They are slightly unsure abou
t what they are, and they do not define themselves as one definitive gender.

  It was a survival strategy that with time grew into an identity. Shahed offers an idea of what she has become, echoing a long history of women before her: “They say men are braver, stronger, and more powerful than women. But some women are braver and stronger than men. I am a warrior.”

  She measures herself against other warriors, in both endurance and strength, during all the weightlifting and the explosive runs they practice. When thoughts of fatigue take hold in her mind, she fails sooner. When she pushes them away, she can keep going for longer. The Americans who trained her said a soldier needs a good mind more than a strong body. Her mother will sometimes worry, telling her it is not good for a woman to use her body in the ways she does. But Shahed ignores her. Showing fatigue should be avoided. A warrior must keep her focus and, beyond that, it doesn’t matter if the warrior has the body of a woman. Shahed looks to me for confirmation: In the West, everyone knows this, right?

  MAYBE. THE TRADITIONAL narrative of war and gender is present throughout Western societies as well, even though the idea that women possess something inherently good and peaceful has proven to be flawed many times. And despite a legacy of female warriors, women are still traditionally seen as those who should be protected. Just like the range for acceptable sexual behavior shrunk in the past centuries, the definition of how a woman should act and what she is capable of has also narrowed. Dead or wounded soldiers were always a potential political problem. Dead or wounded women—mothers and daughters—are even harder to explain and justify. In the past few hundred years, leaders of many societies have demanded women stay behind as men fight the battles. Excluding women from battle has even been brought forward as a measure of a country’s degree of civilization—presuming, of course, that war is at all part of a civilized society.