The Underground Girls of Kabul Read online

  According to Professor Nahid Pirnazar, a lecturer of Iranian studies at the University of California in Los Angeles, chapter 16 of the Avesta, the Zoroastrian collection of sacred scripture, is a primer for how boys and girls are conceived, respectively.

  It reads like a tutorial with Dr. Fareiba, detailing how elements of hot and cold in the body affect conception of either a male or a female child:

  The female seed is cold and moist, and its flow is from the loins, and the color is white, red, and yellow; and the male seed is hot and dry, its flow is from the brain of the head, and the color is white and mud-colored. All the seed of the females which issues beforehand, takes a place within the womb, and the seed of the males will remain above it, and will fill the space of the womb; whatever refrains therefrom becomes blood again, enters into the veins of the females, and at the time any one is born it becomes milk and nourishes him, as all milk arises from the seed of the males, and the blood is that of the females. These four things, they say, are male, and these female: the sky, metal, wind, and fire are male, and are never otherwise; the water, earth, plants, and fish are female, and are never otherwise; the remaining creation consists of male and female.

  The belief in magic trickery for conceiving sons is also illustrated by the legend of the rainbow in Afghanistan. The rainbow, a favorite element in every mythology from the Norse to the Navajo people, often symbolizes wish fulfillment. In Afghanistan, finding a rainbow promises a very special reward: It holds magical powers to turn an unborn child into a boy when a pregnant woman walks under it. Afghan girls are also told that they can become boys by walking under a rainbow, and many little girls have tried. As a child, Setareh did it too, she confesses when I probe her on it. All her girlfriends tried to find the rainbow so they could become boys.

  The name for the rainbow, Kaman-e-Rostam, is a reference to the mythical hero Rostam from the Persian epic Shahnameh, which tells the history of greater Persia from that time when Zoroastrianism was the dominant religion and Afghanistan was part of the empire. The Persian epic even has its own bacha posh: the warrior woman Gordafarid, an Amazon who disguises herself as a man to intervene in battle and defend her land. Interestingly, the same rainbow myth of gender-changing is told in parts of Eastern Europe, including Albania and Montenegro.

  WITH EVERY NEW conqueror—Alexander, the Parthians, and the Sassanids—the Zoroastrian faith was tweaked and expanded upon in Afghanistan. At the height of its reach, the faith had around fifty million followers across the empires. Zoroastrianism and its practices took hold in many places beyond Afghanistan, including Pakistan, India, Iran, parts of Iraq and Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Israel and Palestine, Jordan, Chechnya, Kuwait, Egypt, parts of Libya and Sudan, and the current-day -stans of the former Soviet Union. Parts of the Balkans—where the “sworn virgins” are found—were also influenced by the Sassanid Empire, with Zoroastrianism as its dominant religion.

  As Arabs, Mongols, and Turks arrived and introduced Islam, Zoroastrians were tolerated at first, but eventually temples were burned, priests were killed, and the defeated were forced to convert to Islam. Today, Zoroastrianism officially only has a few thousand followers in the United States, Canada, England, and the Gulf nations. The official number of Zoroastrians in Afghanistan today is zero.

  But it is more than coincidental that old myths and remnants of another religion appear in several different places on earth with both a history and some present-day occurrences of girls living as boys. Louis Duprée named the architectural site Surkh Kotal, where a gigantic Zoroastrian fire temple has been excavated in the Afghan province of Balkh, a meeting point between East and West. Greek script has been found on limestone blocks there, indicating Zoroastrian rituals may have spread in both directions from Afghanistan. It also shows how Zoroastrianism has parallels to other prehistoric faiths and cultures, including Norse mythology from the Middle Ages, which also happens to be riddled with women taking the roles of men.

  Sweden’s Viktor Rydberg, a scholar of comparative mythology, suggested that Zoroastrianism and Old Norse beliefs might have a common Indo-European origin. Zoroastrian scholar Mary Boyce also noted that the earliest recorded prayers of Zoroaster’s match Norse religious practices, pointing to an ancient connection between the two worlds.

  To those who want to exert absolute control through religion, remnants of other faiths were always a problem, and shreds of Zoroastrianism are a provocation. Religious leaders in Iran, for instance, attempted to abolish Nowruz, but reconsidered when Iranians mounted too much of a protest.

  More than just dress codes were enforced by the Taliban’s Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice; they worked hard to destroy ancient Zoroastrian and other archaeological sites in Afghanistan during their rule and banned “sorcery,” to make sure no “magic” was employed. Visiting shrines was not permitted, and the Nowruz holiday was abolished. As soon as the Taliban was driven from power, Nowruz was celebrated again.

  A certain yearly gathering at the UN General Assembly in New York also provides a snapshot of how difficult it is to kill an ancient faith and its traditional practices. Particularly, perhaps, when they contain creative elements for how to cope in hardline patriarchal societies.

  At the United Nations, ambassadors of countries divided by languages, cultures, wars, religions, and even nuclear threats, stand side by side, taking part in the Nowruz celebration stemming from when they were all part of a Persian Empire. At the event, the UN ambassadors of Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, India, Iran, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Turkey, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan line up on stage at the headquarters in New York. All wear their best spring outfits, recognizing for a brief moment that they at one time had something in common.

  And still do, since girls continue to be born in many places where they are not always welcomed.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  THE DEFEATED

  Azita

  She eats.

  When she is told a number of ballot boxes from her province are invalid, she eats. When the landlord of the family’s apartment gives her a week’s notice to move out and find somewhere else to live, she eats. When her husband announces that his first wife and daughter are to come and live with them again in Kabul—and that his decision is final—she eats.

  Azita rips through the soft naan bread, she reaches for the rest of Mehran’s cookies, she scrapes spoonfuls of rice from pots before doing the dishes.

  It’s embarrassing, and she cannot stop.

  For a woman to become fat, in Afghanistan too, is seen as a sign of weak character; of someone who is no longer in control. But there is no other drug available, and it’s not like she can choose to fall apart now. She tries to quell the anxiety as best she can and she overdoses on what is closest and most accessible to her. She eats furiously and she eats mindlessly; she stops only when she is full to the point of feeling ill, allowing nausea to trump worry for a few moments, when blood has left the brain and heads for the stomach, when the sugar spews into every vein and dims the mind.

  Azita is no longer the lawmaker for whom people rise to their feet when she walks into a room. In the spring of 2011, almost a year after her failed reelection bid, she is without a salary, invitations from foreign dignitaries, or invitations to attend events abroad. There is not even a gun allowance. She never found the gun they gave her, but it does not matter now. Most of the diplomats and the international organizations have forgotten she even existed.

  To them, Azita is not even marginally important anymore.

  AT FIRST SHE won. Or at least she thought she had won.

  The campaign had sucked the marrow right out of her, with the relentless Ramadan campaigning through desert lands of Badghis wearing a full-length chador and having an empty stomach between dawn and dusk, distributing her tapes and making speeches. Just as in other provinces, Taliban-affiliated groups had managed to retake some districts, which then became off-limits to her. Still, she spent three mo
nths knocking on doors, making her pitch to villagers, and feeding hundreds of prospective voters who showed up at her house in Badghis every day for a meal and to get a look at her.

  Some of the competition had offered gifts, too, for supporters to show up at rallies, such as clothing, gas for motorbikes, or cash labeled “travel support.” Azita wished she could have afforded to give more, but she had only the tapes and her stern-looking posters.

  After election day, in one of the primary election counts, she collected the most votes to again secure a seat in the “people’s house.” The count seemed certain, so victory was declared. She felt excitement paired with relief at the notion of returning to Kabul for a second term. She threw a large party in Badghis, basking in the glow from her proud parents and relatives. But a week later, in a very Afghan twist of politics, at a secondary election count declared even more valid than the first, Azita had suddenly and mysteriously fallen behind. As it turned out, the elections were riddled with fraud, and around the country nearly a fourth of the ballots cast were eventually declared invalid without much examination.

  The victory declared then retracted left Azita feeling embarrassed at first. Then she felt numb. She had given the campaign her all; she had no plan B. Her job and her position were her identity, her self-respect, her emotional stability, and her income. It had made possible a somewhat functioning relationship with her husband. And it had promised her daughters a future. She did not know under what guise to step out next. Or if she could reinvent herself. The small expressions of respect her position had afforded her, being greeted by men and sometimes called by her name; these were privileges that would be no more.

  Ashamed, she stayed inside the house in Badghis.

  When she reluctantly turned her cell phone back on, messages had piled up from supporters, urging her not to throw in the towel. “Everyone” knew there had been foul play, they said. And they knew her not as a quitter who would buckle under corrupt Afghan politics but as a leader who stood for something—was that not exactly what she had told her constituents so many times over? They had gone to the polls for her and would not accept her just folding in the face of some blanket wipeout of votes due to the alleged fraud of others. Of course she had been cheated of her seat; more of the clean votes belonged to her. Unlike many of the others, she had not even been accused of fraud herself. Or did she in fact mean to tell her supporters that their votes were now suddenly worth nothing?

  Slowly, Azita came around.

  “It’s the right of the people who voted for me to see me fight for this. It’s a competition, and I won fairly,” she told herself.

  The image of her daughters back in a Badghis mud house also filled her with determination. They were Kabul girls now, who could make something of their lives. She would not do to them what was once done to her: Invite them to a better life and then exile them back to a province with little prospect of a decent education or a chance to escape an early marriage to a villager. Besides, Azita thought, she had run a clean campaign, so how hard could it be to prove that those additional votes were rightfully hers?

  Together with hundreds of other candidates who disputed the election results, she decided to go into battle.

  In all, a third of the country’s original candidates became embroiled in a heated national conflict, either as contested winners or as runners-up, claiming more votes should be counted toward their own results, or fewer to that of others’ results. In the meantime, Afghanistan was left with a frozen, inactive parliament and a crisis for the fragile, untested democracy.

  At first, through chaotic official hearings and in the backroom negotiations Azita attended, she was told her chances of a favorable recount were good. They would increase, however, if she paid a fee of $60,000 to certain officials who handled the process. That could even reinstate her without any further queries, she learned. Several colleagues confirmed to her it was indeed the going rate; some even advised her to consider it. It was a small fee to pay to get her job back, suggested one of the officials when she argued that her higher vote count was indeed valid to begin with. She would soon make that kind of money–and more–in her salaried position of power, and by charging those who wanted to pay for the right decisions a little on the side.

  “If I even had that money I would give it to the widows,” Azita shot back at him before storming out of his office.

  At another visit with an official, he suggested she could sign a debt letter toward future income or assets. Several others had done just that, she was told. Surely she, or perhaps her father, had some land that she could put up as collateral? When Azita declined, she was called “a very silly woman.” After that, several officials advised her to “just forget about it.” Without an “investment” and some good faith money, she was informed it would be difficult to enter parliament again.

  Spurred on by the resistance from officials searching to enrich themselves in the political turmoil, Azita put even more energy into tracing her votes and trying to prove their legitimacy. That promise of a new country that had appeared on the horizon when the Taliban first left still resonated deeply with her a decade later. She had not already spent five years in parliament just to sidestep the courts and the official justice system. And regardless of any respect for democracy, she simply did not have the money either.

  But now, she was without an income and an office. With little savings, keeping the family afloat in Kabul was becoming harder by the week. Eventually her husband weighed in: This struggle to get back into parliament did not seem to be very fruitful, and it was taking too long. It was time to let go, he argued. They should move back to Badghis, or at least to Herat, where they could live like a normal family again.

  It was unthinkable for Azita, who despite her setbacks had grown absolutely certain she should be reinstated as a Badghis representative to Kabul.

  Again, she turned to her father and asked him to broker an agreement with her husband; she needed another few months to battle the election commission. Her husband agreed to extend their stay in Kabul, to await the final decision from officials on the makeup of parliament. In return, Azita said she would get a temporary job to support the family while she saw the legal process through.

  She would continue, however, to spend almost every day immersed in meetings with election officials, carrying her ragged paper dossier between the ministries, courts, and informal gatherings with colleagues, while telling her family and friends “I am my own lawyer. But I have my supporters. The first is Allah. The second is my people.”

  FINDING A JOB also proved harder than she had thought. It had become an issue of appearance. A public, high-paying job would potentially make people think she had given up on reentering parliament. A low-paying job would make her seem like a definite loser, which would not work to her advantage in her legal skirmishes either. Regardless, most of her energy went into the legal struggle, and it was not as though anyone were clamoring for her to work for them, either.

  As the first months of 2011 went by, her savings ran out. She began to take small loans where she could—from her father, her brother, and from a few friends in politics. She made them promise not to talk about it with others.

  The last of her saved money had gone to resettling the family in Golden City, a Pashtun-dominated development at the outskirts of Kabul. The Dubai-inspired houses rose up during Kabul’s development mania that followed a massive influx of money in the past decade. At first the buildings had been painted a luxuriously golden yellow that blazed toward the main road leading into the neighborhood. But a few years of desert winds soon sandpapered them into a more matte exterior and now paint was chipping away from the hallways inside.

  Golden City has no playground and no football field. There are no trees, or even a patch of green anywhere to be seen. Not that there is a need, either: Children of the mostly conservative Pashtun families who live here are not allowed outside to play much. Azita’s husband has decided that their children—including Mehran
—must stay inside after school. It’s not safe to go out anymore, even for an hour here and there. The children do not have many friends in the new place either, and they left their old ones behind in Macroyan.

  Now, every day except Friday consists of the same routine for them: School starts at 7 a.m.; return by midday to do homework, napping, dinner, and then bed. Any play takes place on the apartment’s small balcony, but mostly, the children just watch cable television or pirated DVDs, from which the twins can quote most lines by now. Fights flare up more often during the hot summer months, when they circle one another like caged animals in and out of the apartment’s small rooms.

  But Azita tries to be upbeat and is eager to show off everything that is new when I meet her in the new apartment for the first time, after she has spent months in Badghis and I have been out of the country.

  There are wall-to-wall Oriental carpets and thick yellow curtains in every room. There’s a dishwasher, an electric oven, and a microwave in the kitchen. A pink porcelain bathroom. Not one but two television sets in the living room. The two wives each have a bedroom. As before, the children share a bedroom. Azita has installed a modern weight-training machine in the children’s room. She is planning to lose the weight soon.

  A few more of her French-manicured fingers now glimmer with Saudi gold. Her wrists are wrapped in twisted yellow bands, and heavy pearl earrings weigh down her earlobes. That, too, is from the borrowed money. The added bling and the apartment are a careful investment effort, she explains. Around Kabul, appearance is everything, and no one will trust someone who looks like she is on the way out. Visitors still come to their home, and they need to be assured she is still a player. She needs to come off as worldly and sophisticated and confident; as someone who has a rightful place in the national parliament. And, in truth, buying things helps stave off anxiety, she has discovered.