The Underground Girls of Kabul Read online

  But why hadn’t Uncle ultimately reverted to her birth sex with the onset of puberty? How did she escape being married off? And did she appear pleased with this arrangement? Carol shrugs at my questions; she really doesn’t know. Uncle did not have a husband or children of her own, but she certainly enjoyed a higher status than the women. She was “an in-between figure.”

  That no one seems to have documented any historical or contemporary appearances of other “Uncles” or little girls dressing as boys is entirely understandable, in Carol’s view. Even if they should exist, little documentation has survived Kabul’s various wars and revolving-door regimes. Afghans are not particularly fond of being queried about their families either: Government officials and their institutions are at best regarded with suspicion.

  The closest thing to an Afghan national archive is, in fact, overseen by a longtime American resident in Kabul whom I had also consulted: expatriate Nancy Duprée, the quick-witted American historian in her eighties, affectionately known to many as the “grandmother of Afghanistan.” Celebrated for publishing several travel guides to the most remote parts of Afghanistan in the 1970s, she documented Afghanistan’s culture and history together with her late husband, archaeologist Louis Duprée. That said, Nancy had neither seen nor heard of girls who dressed as boys and could think of no documentation on the topic through all her time in Afghanistan, dating back to the country’s last king, who was ousted in 1973. But she was “not the least bit surprised” by my story of one little girl being brought up as a boy. Similar to Carol’s take on the subject, it made a certain sense to Nancy: “Segregation calls for creativity,” she had told me.

  Nancy also offered up an old photograph left in her care by the former Afghan royal court. In the yellowed black-and-white shot taken in the early years of the twentieth century, women dressed in men’s clothing stand guard in Habībullāh Khan’s harem. The harem could not be supervised by men because they posed a potential threat to the women’s chastity and the king’s bloodline. These women dressed as men solved the dilemma, indicating that such solutions may have been used historically in the highest echelons of Afghan society as well.

  But what goes on in the secluded lives of Afghan families may never have been open to much investigation by foreigners, Carol suggests. Especially not during this latest deluge of outsiders who want to change Afghanistan. Just like a longtime local who mourns the loss of a neighborhood’s soul, Carol describes what Kabul has become in recent years: a cement-gray fortress, where regular Afghans have been driven out of their own city due to an inflated war economy and skyrocketing rents that few but foreigners paid by international organizations can afford. They have created a place where the fear and rumors that drive expatriate communication circulate in a closed loop.

  “Most foreigners in Kabul live much like the most shielded Afghan women they are trying to liberate,” Carol sarcastically remarks.

  AFGHANISTAN HAS A culture of thousand-year-old customs and codes passed down through generations. The history of its women has been sparsely recorded. The history of many countries is often a history of their wars, only occasionally spearheaded by the rare queen. Most sociological research in Afghanistan has been done by foreigners—almost exclusively men—who rarely had access to women, and learned only what Afghan husbands, brothers, and fathers told them.

  In Afghanistan, there is no child protection agency to call, no reliable office that retains statistics, no established research university. No one can even say with much certainty how many people live in Afghanistan—figures ranging from twenty-three to twenty-nine million are thrown around by the large aid agencies.

  The first and only census in Afghanistan was conducted in 1979, and later attempts to actually count Afghans have been both controversial and riddled with difficulty. Three decades of constant war and the movement of large refugee populations make accuracy impossible. The task is further complicated by the complex ethnic makeup of Afghans and the ongoing debate over the exact location of the border with Pakistan.

  Those who try to be diplomatic often say that Afghanistan is made up of a collection of minorities, a visible legacy from the many conquerors who came in from different directions throughout history. The largest minority, roughly estimated to make up 40 percent of the population, is the mostly Sunni Islam Pashtun group, many of whom consider themselves to be ethnic Afghans. They dominate the south and the east. The second largest minority is the Tajiks, who are strongest in northern and central Afghanistan. The Hazara people are believed by many to be ancestors of Mongols and were ruthlessly persecuted during the Taliban era as followers of the Shia strain of Islam. Mostly up north, there are also Afghans of Uzbek, Turkoman, and Kyrgyz ethnicity. The country also has Kuchi nomads. While alliances have been formed and broken between groups of ethnicities, those within each group are often suspicious about other ethnicities. This is another reason that little voluntary information, for instance, about how many children are born in a certain area, or within one group, is offered, not least what sex they are.

  In Carol’s view, the West may also be more obsessed with children’s gender roles than what Afghans are. Although Afghan society is strictly built on the separation of sexes, gender in childhood in a way matters less here than in the West. “Here,” Carol says, “people are driven by something much more basic—sexuality. Everything before puberty is just preparation for procreation. That is the main purpose of life here.”

  And perhaps we need to set aside what we in the West think of as the order of things to even begin to understand Afghanistan. Where a long lineage of tribal organization is far more powerful than any form of government, where language is poetry and few can read or write but it is common for an illiterate person to have memorized the work of Pashto and Persian poets and to speak more than one language, parameters for established truths and knowledge are manifested in other ways than those outsiders easily recognize. In Carol’s words, in a nation of poets and storytellers, “what matters here are the shared fantasies.”

  For that reason, to find anything out in Afghanistan, one must instead look to the informal structures. For example, those who know Afghan women most intimately are not foreigners, nor Afghan men, but other Afghan women—and the doctors, teachers, and midwives who witness firsthand the desperation for sons and what women will do in order to have them. And no secrets will be offered up immediately, Carol cautions. “You must listen to what they never say.”

  For effect, the restaurant generator gives up for the third time and we are in the dark again. I inhale deeply. In the darkness, Carol’s powerful scent of mandarin and black currant becomes more pronounced and I finally ask about the cloud of cologne that we are both ensconced in. My question delights her.

  “Ah, yes. There is this man in Peshawar … he deals in essences and oils. He told me they deliver to a French perfumer who makes something rather famous out of this one. That’s just talk, of course, but it is pleasant, no?”

  I nod, and cannot bring myself to tell Carol that her purveyor is telling the truth. It’s a scent I know quite well. As the lights come on I smile. I, too, am a completely free woman, and just as Carol once decided to do, I have time to go deeper.

  BUT COULD I even write about Azita’s family, to start? Over the course of a few months, she and I have several takes of the same conversation.

  “You told me that you have four daughters,” I began my first such call to her. “You also told me about the family’s son …”

  It was a chance just to take it all back and tell me never to return. I almost hoped she would take it. It was only later that I understood she had already made up her mind.

  “I think we should tell the reality.”

  “But this is your secret. Are you sure?”

  “I think so. It could be interesting for people. This is the reality of Afghanistan.”

  With that, I was invited back to her house. And into her family.

  CHAPTER THREE

  THE CH
OSEN ONE

  Azita

  AT FIVE A.M., she forces herself to rise from the pallet of long, bulky pillows on the floor of the dining room, which also serves as a bedroom.

  Before she makes the push to rally her children for the day, she flips through a carousel of images in her mind, aiming to remember five good minutes from the day before, to wake up her spirits with good thoughts. Perhaps she spoke without being interrupted by one of her fellow parliamentarians. Or maybe one of the girls showed her a new painting, and it was really quite accomplished.

  Only then does she walk across the hallway to wake her four daughters sleeping in their bunk beds under blue Winnie-the-Pooh covers. A small war over the bathroom usually ensues between Mehrangis and Mehran. The twins will eat some yogurt and naan bread left over from the day before. Mehran will likely refuse breakfast but agree to a roll or sugary cookies or an orange.

  The three eldest girls will dress in below-the-knee black dresses and white head scarves over shiny black ponytails. The youngest will don pants, a white shirt, and a red necktie. All four will grab one of the identical large nylon backpacks. Mehran’s is far too big for her, but she carries it with pride, just like her older siblings do. Their father will walk his children to the school bus, holding only Mehran’s hand.

  Azita has fifteen minutes left to get ready. But she is fast. In that time, she transforms herself. As soon as she steps out of the house, she will be upholding the honor of not only her husband and her family, but also her province and her country. Her appearance is a big part of that. She must dress carefully: to divert rather than to attract attention.

  Reputation is more than symbolic in Afghanistan; it is a commodity that is hard to restore once it has been damaged. Much like a credit score, it should constantly be preserved and ideally also improved upon, forcing both males and females to adhere to a web of strict social rules. In choosing each detail of her outfit, Azita considers the fundamentals of Afghanistan’s honor culture, where a woman’s purity is linked to the reputation of her family at all times. The Taliban no longer rules in Kabul, but the dress code for women is still very conservative. Carol le Duc clarified for me the informal but very real penalty system: “A woman who attracts improper attention to herself is inevitably a whore.”

  For a woman, being likened to a whore for dressing the wrong way or being seen speaking to a man who is not her husband can be of great consequence: Her neighbors will talk, her parents may be devastated, and shame will fall over her relatives and potentially tarnish their reputation and standing in society. For a female politician, this game is even more complicated, because politics by its nature requires some degree of visibility.

  In the eyes of conservatives, if an Afghan woman must work, she should, at most, be a teacher in an all-female class. Any profession in which a woman interacts with or can be observed by other men is more problematic, as it risks tarnishing her family’s reputation. Women who work with foreigners, with their different customs, are even more suspect. Sitting on the national assembly, in the burning glare of the public eye, Azita provokes reactions on many levels.

  Her work uniform consists of an Iranian-style full-length black abaya with a thin black head scarf, meant to exude authority and dignity. She hopes to display a sense of refinement as well as deep conservatism; no contour of her body must be evident as she moves. The black garment features a small gold trim; any further display of color would be out of the question. In another universe, in another life, Azita’s color of choice would be bright red–but that is an impossible color in Afghanistan. The color of fire is considered to be overtly sexual, meant to arrest the eyes of men. It is for someone who means to be flamboyant. Admired. Brightly colored dress was outright banned by the Taliban, but it still would be unthinkable, potentially even dangerous, in Afghanistan’s conservative culture. No respectable Kabul woman wears red outside the house, and Azita owns no red clothing.

  It takes her seconds to draw thick lines with black kohl around her eyes and dust herself with a beige powder. There are usually cameras in parliament, and she knows by now that matte skin photographs better. As she leaves the house, she puts on a pair of gold-ornamented dark sunglasses. A friend bought them for her in Dubai. She allows herself a few more special effects: two Arabic rose-gold rings and a knockoff designer handbag. Gold is not so much decoration as a display of portable cash, signifying a woman’s status as a good wife and mother. He who has a good, respectable, and fertile wife will honor her with gold for all to see. Azita has paid for her own rings, but this no one needs to know.

  AFTER SHE IS settled in the backseat, her car is soon absorbed into Kabul’s dense morning mash of wheels and dented bumpers. The usual fifteen-minute drive to the national assembly in Karte Seh takes at least one hour in the mornings. White Toyota Corollas patiently pop in and out of large potholes, navigating labyrinths of roadblocks and stretches of no road at all. Spring, or the beginning of fighting season, as it’s called here—when Taliban and “insurgents” will spring into more aggressive battle—is still a few months away. The hard, icy ground is not yet covered with dust, and red pomegranates from Kandahar are still being cracked open in stalls by the roadside.

  Azita’s driver avoids getting too close to Afghan police transports, the green Ford Ranger pickup trucks crammed with blue-clad police officers, their assault rifles poking out in every direction. Afghan police are among the most popular targets for suicide bombers and improvised explosive devices known as IEDs. Officers patrolling Kabul are killed at twice the rate of military men, who are harder to get close to. In the eyes of insurgents, both are considered traitors working for the foreign-backed government. Early mornings—when the conviction of martyrdom and the prospect of virgins waiting in paradise is still fresh—are a favorite time for suicide bombers to attack, since dense traffic promises the reward of a high death count.

  Azita subscribes to the regular Afghan argument: When your time is up, it’s up. God decides when that may be. She cannot spend every morning ride to work thinking of whether the moment has arrived. Azita and her driver have missed explosions by seconds before. Each day, she takes a risk just by stepping out of her house. She logs about two anonymous death threats a week at her office or at home, when she is warned to quit parliament. Or else. To avoid the threats and the inconvenience, she regularly buys new SIM cards for her mobile phone to get a new number, but they keep calling. Her transgressions are clear: She is a woman who dares to serve in parliament and she is a prominent symbol of a controversial, Western-supported government. The threats have become routine. Sometimes she argues with the caller, lecturing him on how the Koran does not condone murder. And it is always a he. “We know you don’t care about your own life, but think of your children,” they once said. That time, the threat was accompanied by the sound of gunfire. The one time Azita attempted to report threats to the police, they advised her “not to worry.” After all, they added, there is little they can do.

  There have been direct attempts on her life: A year earlier, two men on a motorbike attempted to throw a hand grenade into the yard of her Badghis house. It exploded against the outside stone wall. When Azita ran out from the kitchen, she found her daughters hiding in a corner of the small garden.

  Wealthier politicians travel by armored car, surrounded by gunmen with shortwave radios. Those with investments in the illegal yet flourishing poppy trade—Afghanistan is the world’s largest producer of opium—usually have a follow car as well, to better the odds in case of a kidnap attempt. Azita cannot afford much more than her Toyota Corolla with a driver, who has taped a small glass bottle onto the dashboard—holy water from Mecca. It helps him focus; not even those who make sudden U-turns or drive toward him in the wrong direction merit a honk of his horn.

  Azita did employ a bodyguard when she first started, as several colleagues told her it would look unseemly to always arrive without a male escort. But the bodyguard had a tendency to fall asleep as soon as he sat down, so she
fired him. Along with all the other members of parliament, Azita has been issued a handgun for her own protection. With no intention of ever using it, she hid it somewhere in her apartment. She often reminds herself that she must find it before the children do.

  In the car, she takes out her phone and attempts to bring up CNN’s website on the small display, but she does not get far on the spotty Afghan networks.

  She looks out the window instead, on the merchants who slowly push their carts toward the marketplace and the motorbikes with at least two and often three or four people clinging on, their faces protected against Kabul’s beige-colored air with wraparound scarves. Pairs of Afghan ladies, wearing sandals with socks, hold hands and jump over open sewers. Not much is really white here, and few things are crisp, except for brand-new Land Rovers shipped in for foreigners and rich Afghans. Sooner rather than later, most things turn a shade of mud or khaki. Khaki and cement are the primary colors of Kabul, the monotony broken only by the poppy-funded houses that are painted a cream-infused red, a warm pink, or even green, with glimpses of tasseled pastel curtains—the deceptively cheery narcotecture of Kabul.

  Chlorophyll is in short supply here; most trees have either died from pollution or have been burned for fuel by the indigent. A splash of matte red sometimes also filters through the Kabul gray, in an old mural or another Cold War–reminder of those who tried to control the capital before both the Taliban and the Americans.

  TO AZITA, “THE Russian time,” as she refers to it, was not the protracted and brutal struggle painted by English-language memoirs of what Afghans call “the Soviet war” of the 1980s. To her, it was the backdrop of a reasonably charmed childhood.