The Underground Girls of Kabul Read online

  Her mother does not laugh. “He is educated, from a good family, just like you,” she says, addressing her daughter. “He has a good personality, and everybody was happy with him. So I think we did a good job for you.”

  Anita looks down. It’s true. “Nobody forced me. And I have refused others.”

  Siddiqua turns to me: “Lots of suitors came, several in one week even, from difference provinces. We are a well-known family here, and everybody knows about our daughters. All the others cried when we announced that she was engaged. And Anita said nothing when we asked if she would agree to this one.”

  When asked about a husband, silence means consent. It would be impolite of a daughter to address her parents directly with any objection.

  “What made you say yes?” I ask Anita.

  “We were both teachers in a college center. We got familiar with each other. I knew his family’s status is high.”

  “So you have actually spoken, then?” Setareh and I glance at each other. This sounds interesting.

  “We have greeted each other. But he seems like a good man.”

  He never told her he would propose, either. That would have made him a dishonorable man who “plays with girls.” Such matters are discussed with parents only. He is Tajik, so Anita is considered to be “marrying up” from her mixed lineage, as opposed to Azita, who married into one of Afghanistan’s smaller minorities.

  “Do you feel happy?”

  Embarrassed smile. “Yes.”

  “Do you think he will allow you to keep working?”

  Anita looks at her hands. “I don’t know. It will be the decision of my husband, and I will respect it.”

  Siddiqua has been fanning herself with a piece of plastic while listening to Anita. Now she breaks in: “They are a very good match.”

  She has been married for thirty-seven years herself.

  “Tell me,” I ask Siddiqua, “what is the secret to being married for so long?”

  She looks at me like I am clueless. “It’s very hard to get divorced here,” she says, throwing her hands up in a gesture of “What else did you imagine?”

  But what is important is loyalty, she adds after a pause, in an attempt to smooth over her statement. Mourtaza was chosen for her, and of course parents try hard to select the best husband for a daughter. Just like she is trying to do for her own. From that point, you work with what you have, she explains.

  I nod, to indicate that I understand. The conversation is going exactly where I want it to go.

  Siddiqua understands that too, and quickly volunteers her take on Azita’s marriage: “I did not agree. I had a very bad reaction to it. I was thinking she would become a doctor. I was shocked when my husband brought it up. It was very hard for me. In the end, I felt that I had to give up. I was unhappy, but I accepted it.”

  HIS SNOW-WHITE BEARD enters first. It is almost an entity of its own, floating freely around his face, reaching up to his white hair, water-combed flat just moments ago.

  Azita’s father places himself so he is looking directly at me, towering above all of us on the floor. It is as though he has been listening and just waiting for his moment to enter the conversation. He sits down before we have a chance to rise, and spits out his naswar, a strong green chewing tobacco, on a teacup saucer.

  Setareh, ever the professional, attempts to make an introduction, but he cuts her off. “I know who she is. And I know what she wants to talk about.”

  With his eyes still fixed on me, he begins to speak.

  “I am not a dark or close-minded man who will lock my girls in the house. I was a professor before. I like my children to be educated and go to school. I worked with Russian advisers during the Russian times.”

  It is not exactly a reference to Communism, but meant to underscore that he was at the pinnacle of society.

  “I am so proud of Azita,” he continues. “There are so few of her kind. The other woman politicians are with different groups and have their powerful backers. My girl is independent. She is very bright, a hard worker, and she knows what she is doing. She has come so far.”

  He looks pleased.

  “But this almost did not happen,” I say. “When you decided she should get married, how could she know she was even going to be able to work?”

  “I was forced to do so. There was civil war in Afghanistan. There were rebels here in Badghis. No rules. There was war. Everybody wanted to take your girls. It was a terrible time in my life. I was so worried all the time. ‘How can I protect my family?’ I thought. In Kabul, my girls were potential victims. I considered Pakistan and Tajikistan. Finally I settled on my ancestral place—Badghis. I came here for my family to live. Society was very unsafe for girls, and law and order had broken down completely. If anybody realized you had a beautiful girl or an educated girl in your house, they would just come and take her, to ‘have relations’ with her. And that would have ruined my family. I am not happy about it, but I was forced to give my daughter to my brother’s son. It was that or have my daughters end up in the mountains as brides of warlords. This is how it happened that I gave my daughter to an uneducated man. He was the best solution at a time of war.”

  Siddiqua objects: “But this was during the Taliban. There was no war.”

  Mourtaza flinches, a little startled by being cut off by his wife. “This was when the Taliban were forming. Some very powerful people came to me and asked for my girl. They would have taken her without hesitation. Marrying her off would close their eyes on her.”

  “What about the fact that he already had a wife? Was that a problem?” I ask.

  Siddiqua hisses, and her voice turns sharp. “Of course it was a problem that he had a wife already. I mean, how would you like it? Just imagine.”

  “Do you ever think you made a mistake, or did you make the right decision?”

  Mourtaza sighs.

  “It was not my desire or ambition to marry my girl to an uneducated person. But if you had been here then, you would have said I made the right decision. This was a question of life and death. I wanted her to survive. Not to die in some cave in a mountain with rebels. I wanted my daughters to go to the best schools and universities, and to marry educated men. That was my hope for all of them. But today I have all my girls. Alive. If I had had my desire, it would have been different. Completely different. My heart did not want to do it.”

  Azita had to be married not only for her own protection, but also for the sake of the entire family and its reputation, he explains again. In the society Mourtaza and everyone else here must live in, individual needs and achievement are secondary to those of the family, because they must be. One member cannot go off and plan his or her life alone, without regard for anyone else. It does not work that way—the entire family and its reputation always need to be taken into account.

  Mourtaza says he always had Azita’s best in mind, but he had to take into account his own interests, as well as those of his other children, and his family’s legacy. Perhaps someday, after years of peace and prosperity, social rules will loosen up and allow cultivation of individual choice and happiness. But for now, one’s family and its standing are the only possible constants between wars, and that needs to be carefully preserved. Mourtaza has even cut off his son for disobeying him on the question of marriage.

  As Azita’s father explains this, I recall Azita’s brother’s words: “What’s the difference between the mountain and the village he sent her to? We are a large tribe. We would have been protected. He could have picked someone educated.”

  But an educated man may not necessarily have been better, in Mourtaza’s view: “Azita is not in a bad situation today. Her husband will do what I advise. Yes, I forced her to marry him. Yes, he was a poor and uneducated man. But he didn’t stop her from working. At the time, there was no one else I could trust. What if she had married someone rich and educated, who did not allow her to go out of the house? At least he didn’t prevent her progress.”

  The way Azita�
��s father sees it, his daughter’s achievements are thanks to him. Surely she will have her seat in parliament back soon, and if she does not, she has still reached higher than anyone in their family ever has, by his doing. To her family, and to their province, she is considered a success. Yes, the union with her husband could have been better. But it could also have been a lot worse, in her father’s view. Azita has some freedoms that most women in Afghanistan do not have, as her husband allows her to work. Even though she and her husband are going through a hard time right now—and both parents are convinced it will pass—her life is still better than that of other Afghan women.

  MOURTAZA WINCES AGAIN when I bring up the abuse.

  It was the abuse of his daughter that made him cry on her doorstep as he was leaving many years ago. He remembers it today; he felt like he had beaten his own daughter by putting her inside the home of a man who did not even recognize it as a crime.

  Whatever the exact circumstances and motivations of Mourtaza’s decision to marry off Azita to her older cousin may have been, this visibly moves him. He takes a deep breath and bursts into a speech that may hint of the political convictions of his youth:

  “Afghanistan is not a developed country. It’s not an educated country. Even in educated families, people are immature. There are no rights for women here and most men feel like women should just obey them. This makes our society miserable. The violence … it’s so common here and it’s not even a matter of my daughter’s life. It happens to the wives of ministers. In Azita’s family, her mother-in-law and her sister-in-law … their level of understanding is low. They think they must discipline girls. This is not good. They give no rights to women. Violence against women is everywhere. Men want to talk, and for their wives to be quiet. Of course, I felt horrible when it happened. I talked to my son-in-law. But it’s not easy.”

  He shakes his head.

  Both he and his daughter are part of a system that he alone cannot change or even revolt against. Time has taught him that. But it’s still unbearable for him to think that anyone has laid a hand on his daughter. He has been tempted to strike back, to literally punch out his son-in-law to extract a promise that the abuse will stop. But once a daughter has been given away for marriage, her husband must be respected. Even by the father-in-law. Mourtaza knows this.

  “Afghan men are immature,” he repeats. “I am a man myself, but this is true. I can only advise my son-in-law. I cannot change society. We can’t hide anywhere. Our society is sick.”

  Throwing his hand out toward Siddiqua, who still wears her head scarf inside the house, he says: “I was always against girls wearing scarves and being kept inside. I don’t care if she wears a miniskirt.”

  Siddiqua looks a little taken aback. It was a long time ago that she wore a miniskirt. When they were both young and lived in Kabul.

  “I advocate freedom and awareness,” Mourtaza says. “That’s how I grew up. But my children have been brought up with these stupid, stupid rules imposed on them by society.”

  Siddiqua nods. Society. The greater evil.

  It takes the blame, and the responsibility, away from the individual. But realistically, how far can personal responsibility go in a time of war, when entire families are just trying to survive?

  Siddiqua appears upset, not so much from my questions, but from speaking about the abuse of her daughter. “This is what we have today, so we have to accept it,” she says, turning toward me.

  “I know my son-in-law now, and I know he is not a bad man. Even though my girl takes care of the family. This is common here—you have to fit yourself into the situation. She is doing well. We were so happy when she was born. It took four years for us to have a child. My husband never had any sisters. She got a lot of attention for three years, before my second child arrived. I loved to dress her up, in every color and every style. She was wild. Just like a boy. Very fast. Quick in the head. And she grew up in the best of situations, in the best of times. There was peace, she went to the best schools with the best facilities. They even had laboratories. She was singing.…”

  Siddiqua interrupts herself. “If there had not been war, everything would have been different for her. But Azita is the daughter of her father. She is strong. We are who we must be.”

  That their youngest granddaughter is growing up as a boy is just another concession to their own society. Over the years, they have made many.

  WE ARE STUCK. I have promised Setareh’s family to take her back to Kabul soon, and my own visa is about to expire. But after saying good-bye to Azita’s family, we soon realize we may actually not get very far.

  Our Afghan military friends are busy elsewhere, and the United Nations is not flying into the remote province at all, due to the current “security situation,” the details of which are not shared. It’s either the road or we stay put, hoping the United Nations will change its policy. When I tell Setareh this, she looks about as crestfallen as I feel, faced with the prospect of several more weeks in the now 104-degree heat of Badghis.

  As we stare at each other, I realize that of course there is one, and only one, air service that runs reliably in Afghanistan. The American one.

  We do not have enough clout to work our way into the U.S. military’s infrastructure, nor do we really want to, having successfully avoided any entanglement with them so far. But the U.S. Agency for International Development routinely charters small private planes manned by tan Western pilots in white, short-sleeved epaulet shirts for every impossible-to-get- to corner of this country. However I am well aware, as I am often told by Americans, that “Sweden doesn’t matter.” In this particular situation, my humble and presumed neutral Swedish passport will not necessarily get us anywhere at all.

  Time has come to fully shape-shift into my studied American immigrant persona again, honed for a decade among impossibly assertive New Yorkers. I finagle the number for the lone USAID officer, who controls both agricultural policy and flight manifests for the entire province.

  And whether it is my best attempt to sound confident with a thick American accent, or a dose of Afghan magic, the generous State Department employee on the phone offers us two leather-clad seats on one of their scheduled flights out of Badghis, courtesy of American taxpayers—one for me, and one for my “Afghan partner,” as I have just dubbed Setareh in a poor attempt at official-speak. There is no request for any kind of security vetting or discussion about her ethnicity or her father’s clan: a small miracle of its own. I exclaim a mimed “God Bless America” to Setareh, who offers a silent high five in return.

  LATER, WITH OUR departure sorted, on our final night in Badghis, Setareh has a request. “Do you know how to couple dance?”

  It’s when a man and a woman dance together, she clarifies when I look puzzled. She has seen pictures of it online—two people hold on to each other while moving across the floor. Setareh has only ever danced by herself, or with other women, corralled in the bride’s area at weddings. So could I teach her this other way of dancing, please?

  After checking to make sure the staircase is empty and that no one seems to be coming, I place my arm around her waist and her hand on my shoulder.

  Our soundtrack is a Viennese waltz, hummed by me, as we go over the steps. One-two-three, one-two-three. Anything more modern than a waltz would require more brainpower on my part, and the waltz seems fitting—it is how I was taught to dance for my first formal dinner party in Stockholm when I was sixteen.

  As I lead Setareh out in a barefoot swirl on the carpets of the governor’s guesthouse in northern Afghanistan, we tell each other about our big gowns with flowing trains. Or maybe I am in tails, with slicked-back hair and shiny patent leather shoes.

  After a few staggering rounds, we move smoothly through the thick dark air streaming through tattered mosquito nets. Setareh bends her back outward against my hand, letting her uncovered waist-length black hair fall toward the floor.

  She has been my bodyguard and my negotiator and my researcher and my
buddy, whom I in return have taught things no proper woman should speak of. She is all woman, all the time, of a certain, very confident kind. But just like several of the bacha posh, she has a trusting and progressive father, who has allowed her to work and travel with me, into the unknown. She has risked her life for me, and I will always guard her secrets.

  If Afghanistan again takes a more fundamentalist turn, all the Setarehs, all the Mehrans, all the Azitas, and all the refuser girls will go first. Whatever they wear and regardless of the gender they display, they will once again risk being locked behind closed doors, in darkness; their education, wisdom, and spunk wasted. These women who have sprouted up in the past decade will disappear from a magical place full of secrets, bristling with power and promise, that they could have helped run.

  As we waltz in our sweat-drenched pants and tunics with a touch of Swedish bug repellent, most certainly ridiculed by Afghan mosquitoes, I think about how I should dance more when I return to my world.

  EPILOGUE

  ONE OF THE BOYS

  THE WAY I have come to see it now is that bacha posh is a missing piece in the history of women.

  We have an idea of how patriarchy was formed. But back then, a resistance was also born. Bacha posh is both historical and present-day rejection of patriarchy by those who refuse to accept the ruling order for themselves and their daughters. Most bacha posh, including Zahra, Shukria, Shahed, Nader, and Mehran, have paid dearly for living as boys, and their circumstances were rarely chosen. But once they found themselves on the other side, they fought back. And it was noted. So can a story of concession and resistance, of tragedy and hope, exist at the same time?

  For women, it always has.

  Despite Afghans’ awareness of the practice, individual bacha posh are often isolated, and left alone to ponder their notions of gender. But each older bacha posh I have come to know has at one point turned to me and asked if there are others like her. Some have been stunned to learn that there are—not only in Afghanistan, but also in other countries. How can we speak to them? they have asked. How can we meet? Or, as Shahed once asked me, how could they build a village where they would all live together?