The Underground Girls of Kabul Read online

  Nader is trying to do just that, in her own small way, by building resistance among her group of tae kwon do students.

  It is a beginning, and we should do a lot more to help her expand that circle. Because throughout history, when European and American women disguised themselves as men to fight wars, pursue higher educations, and, for instance, become doctors—all of which were initially off-limits to women—it was eventually followed by a larger shift, where more areas slowly and painfully were pried open to women. Single acts of dressing like men did not cause that shift, but they were part of something bigger—an underground of women slowly coming to disregard what they had been told about their weaker gender by learning to imitate and disguise themselves as the other.

  Some may call that tragic—that women “are not allowed to be women,” to wear billowy skirts and flowers in their hair, and instead adopt the exterior and mien of men. But that is what most women, in most countries, have had to forgo in order to infiltrate male territory. Ask female executives, lawyers, and those who work on Wall Street how much femininity they can allow themselves to display on a daily basis. And who is to say that those embellishments are what make a woman?

  Afghanistan is a story of patriarchy, in a raw form. In that, it is also a story of Western history, with elements of the lives our foremothers and forefathers led. By learning about an ill-functioning system in Afghanistan, we can also begin to see how most of us—men and women, regardless of nationality and ethnicity—at times perpetuate a problematic culture of honor, where women and men are both trapped by traditional gender roles. Because we all prefer those roles—or maybe because it is how we were brought up and we know of nothing else.

  BACHA POSH ALSO provides clues for the larger question of when and how the strict patriarchal and patrilineal system can begin to disintegrate in Afghanistan. Westerners have sometimes attempted to teach Afghan women about gender, freedom, human rights, and how they might conjure up the confidence to speak for themselves. But dressing your daughter as a son, or walking out the door as a man, are only two of the creative ways Afghan women buck an impossible system. It tells us this: Being born with power, as a boy, doesn’t necessarily spur innovation. But being born entirely without it forces innovation in women, who must learn to survive almost from the moment they are born. Afghan women do not need much well-intentioned training on that.

  But as Azita says, the burkas, and any other ways of hiding, will disappear only once there is safety and rule of law in Afghanistan. Until then, nothing much will happen in terms of easing harsh social codes or opening up opportunities for women. Because most of all, and first of all, there needs to be peace.

  In times of war, the argument for pulling a teenage daughter out of school is simple to make—just as it’s easy to argue for marrying her off at a young age, or to use her to pay off a debt. In war, there are few dreams; the future may not exist and the prospect of reaching old age is abstract. War does away with ambition for change and even faith. The fear that the extreme insecurity of war creates fuels conservatism and closes minds, making families turn inward and trust no one. Alliances through marriage, in which women are used as trading chips, become even more important. To effect change on a larger, political scale—to defy society or one’s own family in a time of war—may be too much to ask of most.

  AFTER THAT, it is about following the money.

  The value of women in society can be fully realized and accepted—by men, women, and governments—only when they begin to achieve some economic parity. Increasing financial power makes possible political power—and political power is necessary to advocate for real change in family law, in banishing polygyny, in allowing women to get a divorce and sharing custody of children, and in prosecuting domestic abuse and sexualized violence. And only educated women, who can gain economic power, will be able to challenge flawed interpretations of religion and culture that prescribe segregation and certain behavior of one gender. It is not just a human rights argument, it is the Warren Buffett argument and the Christine Lagarde argument: Countries that want to develop their economies and standards of living cannot afford to shut out one-half of their population. And it is the Virginia Woolf argument: In order to create, a woman needs money and a room of her own.

  Conservatives and extremists in any society are extremely aware of this fact. Those who control life, and the bodies of women, control the money and hold the power. Women who are kept indoors, whether because of references to religion, culture, or honor, cannot make money and will not hold any power. Women who are married off and locked up, and raped by older husbands in order to produce male heirs, will never rule a country or explore its natural resources. Or go to war, for that matter. Women who never receive an education are not likely to demand their rightful inheritance. Women who do not have a say over their own bodies’ reproduction will never be able to challenge men on economic power. Those who hold the power to create life control the universe.

  MEN ARE THE key to infiltrating and subverting patriarchy.

  As the U.S.-led war ends, many will still say that Afghanistan’s treatment of women is due to its culture and religion. That the case for women’s rights in Afghanistan is a hopeless one. That Afghans are simply too conservative and too set in their thousand-year-old ways. But that is not true. I believe most Afghan men, on an individual level, are far from extremist or fundamentalist.

  Hope rests with those men, who control what happens to their daughters. Behind every discreetly ambitious young Afghan woman with budding plans to take on the world, there is an interesting father. And in every successful grown woman who has managed to break new ground and do something women usually do not, there is a determined father, who is redefining honor and society by promoting his daughter. There will always be a small group of elite women with wealthy parents who can choose to go abroad or to take high positions in politics. They will certainly inspire others, but in order for significant numbers of women to take advantage of higher education and participate in the economy on a larger scale, it will take powerful men educating many other men.

  Those hundreds of “gender projects” funded by aid money might have been more effective if they had also included men. The fact that Westerners often came in intending to promote only women in a country where the majority are unemployed also contributed to the perception that the entire idea of human rights and gender equity was a stand against men.

  This is why visible young girls and women, supported by fathers, need to be cultivated and stand as indigenous examples of how promoting daughters leads to better economic prosperity. For all. Because she brings in much more as an educated young woman than as a bride, while not making her father any less of a man, but rather one with a bigger house. Through that, the idea of honor can be redefined by men to other men. What is honorable is not to beat a woman, to sell her, or to take another wife; it is to have an educated daughter. Men, too, suffer under the current system of honor, where they alone bear the burden of supporting and protecting their families.

  Just as the civil rights moment expanded to include those of any color, and as straight people joined the fight for gay people to marry, it is harder for conservatives to resist when a new economy takes hold and social norms around gender are moved by both women and men.

  We should strongly desire such a development in Afghanistan, not just out of the goodness of our hearts or any idealist notions, but because research overwhelmingly shows that countries with increased equality are much less violent and more economically stable. In terms of “national security” and foreign affairs, Afghan women, as well as women globally, should be everyone’s concern, up to and including the military.

  In Sex and World Peace, a study on the relationship between gender and violence, political science scholars conclude that violence on a micro level—for instance between a husband and wife—is directly reflected in how violent a society is. Both within its borders and against outsiders. Countries that suppress its women are mor
e likely to threaten their neighbors as well as other countries farther away. So the more progress for women Afghanistan sees, the less of a threat the country is to the rest of the world.

  Why, then, are women so often relegated to an “issue” and not standing at the top of every agenda on foreign policy?

  Women were never an “issue.” Afghanistan’s history in the last decades is one example of how women—and control over them—were always at the very core of conflict. The authors of the study, which, together with the work of Gerda Lerner, should be required reading for students everywhere, go as far as to suggest that the “clash of civilizations” of the future will be based not on ethnopolitical differences but on gender beliefs. From that perspective, what is mistakenly referred to as “women’s rights” is not even just about human rights. It’s about evolution and building peaceful civilizations.

  Gerda Lerner, after she had researched the origins of patriarchy, predicted that the construct would one day come to an end, since it is a human-made idea. There will perhaps always be sexism, just as there is racism today. But slavery is officially abolished in most places on earth. The journey toward freedom for Afghan women will continue for a long time yet. But it does not have to be endless.

  SOMEDAY IN OUR FUTURE it may be possible for women everywhere not to be restricted to those roles society deems natural, God-given, or appropriately feminine. A woman will not need to be disguised as a man to go outside, to climb a tree, or to make money. She will not need to make an effort to resemble a man, or to think like one. Instead, she can speak a language that men will want to understand. She will be free to wear a suit or a skirt or something entirely different. She will not count as three-quarters of a man, and her testimony will not be worth half of a man’s. She will be recognized as someone’s sister, mother, and daughter. And maybe, someday, her identity will not be confined to how she relates to a brother, a son, or a father. Instead, she will be recognized as an individual, whose life holds value only in itself.

  It will not be the end of the world, the nation-state, or sexuality. It will not solve all the world’s problems. But it is an exciting promise of how we might continue to evolve, through small bursts of individual greatness alongside a slow overhaul of our civilization.

  This possible future could only expand the human experience and be liberating to men and women alike. And it will be interesting to all. Because, maybe what Azita once said about why she was glad to have been born a girl holds some truth:

  “We know what it’s like to be men. But they know nothing about us.”

  VIERGE MODERNE

  I am no woman. I am a neuter.

  I am a child, a page-boy, and a bold decision,

  I am a laughing glimpse of a burning sun

  I am a net for all voracious fish,

  I am a toast to every woman’s honor,

  I am a step toward chance and disaster,

  I am a leap in freedom and the self

  I am the blood’s whisper in a man’s ear,

  I am the soul’s shiver, the flesh’s longing and denial,

  I am an entry sign to new paradises

  I am a flame, seeking and jolly,

  I am a water, deep, but daring up to the knees,

  I am fire and water, in sincere context, on free terms

  EDITH SÖDERGRAN

  Finland, 1916

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  AS SHE APPROACHED her tenth birthday, Mehran became a student, along with her older sisters, at an all-girls school in Kabul. She wears the uniform for girls. In the afternoons, she is allowed to switch into boys’ clothing at home and when she is out in the neighborhood. She keeps her hair short and is still considered to be the wildest member of the family.

  AZITA NEVER REENTERED parliament. In late 2011, along with dozens of other candidates, her victory was acknowledged as valid by a court appointed to resolve the political impasse from the fraught elections of the year before. But Afghanistan’s president Hamid Karzai ultimately agreed only to reinstate ten parliamentarians in the lower house, with the blessing of the United Nations. Azita was not among them. Instead, she helped form a new political party in opposition to the government and eventually got a job with a European aid organization. Her modest salary allowed her to keep the family in Kabul and her daughters in school. The family of eight moved to a smaller apartment and now shares three rooms. In the summer of 2013, she sought medical treatment due to blunt strokes to her neck and chest, which were photographed and copies were forwarded to me. In an interview in Kabul, her husband confirmed that their marriage had again come to include violence. In early 2014 Azita was let go from her job, as the funding for her organization was to expire.

  AT SEVENTEEN, ZAHRA adopted a new hairstyle that she says is an attempt to replicate Justin Bieber’s. She still wears male clothing. She has dropped out of school; she could no longer bear exhortations by her Pashto teacher to dress like a woman. Her mother still insists she should get married. Her father says he will never force her. Zahra refuses to go to weddings, fearing she may be spotted by a future mother-in-law. She holds on to a dream of immigrating to another country, where there are more of her kind.

  SHUKRIA LIVES WITH her three children in Kabul. She continues to work full-time as a nurse and is studying to become a doctor.

  NADER STILL DRIVES her car around Kabul and teaches tae kwon do in a basement.

  IN A FAILED attempt to flee Afghanistan through Tajikistan, Shahed had all her savings stolen by a smuggler.

  FINALLY, A NOTE on Setareh: She is the only character in the book who in reality is a construct of several people. I worked with several translators who, for an extra layer of protection and according to their wishes, I have called by a single name. For each character interviewed, and for different occasions, my translator needed to possess different skills and knowledge of different ethnicities, neighborhoods, and cities. So “Setareh” is Pashtun and she is Tajik and she is Hazara. She speaks several dialects of Dari, as well as Pashto, Urdu, and English. She has a degree in literature, in law, and in political science, and she is a very clever street kid. She is a poet, a teacher, an aspiring lawyer, and a budding businesswoman. She is upper class and middle class and she is a refugee. She is a student. She wears a full hijab and a sloppy head scarf; she prays five times a day and not at all. And within each young woman who took the role of Setareh for me, there are many more who are constantly shape-shifting and adapting to whatever circumstances they are thrown into. The way Afghans always do.

  New York, February 2014

  @nordbergj

  bachaposh.com

  NOTES

  1 “But Not an Afghan Woman” First published by the U.S. nonprofit Afghan Women’s Writing Project (awwproject.​org) in 2010. AWWP was founded by American journalist and author Masha Hamilton. The organization serves as a platform for and offers training to young female writers in Afghanistan.

  PROLOGUE

  1 announced that U.S. troops would begin to withdraw In “Remarks by the President in Address to the Nation on the Way Forward in Afghanistan and Pakistan,” December 1, 2009, whitehouse.​gov, the president discussed his policy for withdrawing U.S. soldiers from Afghanistan after the surge: “And as Commander-in-Chief, I have determined that it is in our vital national interest to send an additional 30,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan. After 18 months, our troops will begin to come home.”

  In 2011, the president reiterated his commitment to troop withdrawal. See “Remarks by the President on the Way Forward in Afghanistan,” June 22, 2011, whitehouse.​gov, where he says: “By 2014, this process of transition will be complete, and the Afghan people will be responsible for their own security.” In 2014, the president announced that U.S. troop withdrawal would be completed by 2016.

  CHAPTER 1: THE REBEL MOTHER

  1 Elected to the Wolesi Jirga For more background on the Wolesi Jirga, see Martine van Bijlert and Sari Kouvo, eds., Snapshots of an Intervention, The Unlearned Lessons of Afg
hanistan’s Decade of Assistance (2001–11) (Kabul: Afghanistan Analysts Network [AAN], 2012).

  2 heavily populated with drug kingpins and warlords See Declan Walsh, “Warlords and Women Take Seats in Afghan Parliament,” The Guardian, December 18, 2005, theguardian.​com.

  3 more girls are enrolled in school The World Bank’s arm for helping the poorest countries, International Development Association, worldbank.​org, cites the following figures: “Enrollment in grades 1–12 increased from 3.9 million in 2004 to 6.2 million in 2008. Girls’ enrollment skyrocketed from 839,000 to more than 2.2 million, and boys’ from 2.6 million to 3.9 million—the highest enrollment in the history of Afghanistan.”

  4 The majority of marriages are still forced UNIFEM Afghanistan Mission, “UNIFEM Afghanistan Fact Sheet 2007,” unifem.​org. This states: “70 to 80% of women face forced marriages in Afghanistan.”

  5 honor killings are not unusual Human Rights, United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan Kabul, Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Geneva, Harmful Traditional Practices and Implementation of the Law on Elimination of Violence against Women in Afghanistan, December 9, 2010, unama.​unmissions.​org. The report cites one of several harmful traditional practices: “So-called ‘honour’ killings recognize a man’s right to kill a woman with impunity because of the damage that her immoral actions have caused to family honour. It is a killing of a family member by one or several relatives who believe the victim has brought shame upon the family.”

  6 involvement of the justice system in a rape case Human Rights, United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan Kabul, Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Geneva, Silence Is Violence: End the Abuse of Women in Afghanistan, Kabul, July 8, 2009. This report discusses the high incidence of rape in Afghanistan, as well as why victims are reluctant to report it or to seek redress. In particular, it notes: “Shame is attached to rape victims rather than to the perpetrator. Victims often find themselves being prosecuted for the offence of zina (adultery) and are denied access to justice.”