The Underground Girls of Kabul Page 5

  Dr. Fareiba asks a few questions of each patient, smiles, and then turns around to give me a matter-of-fact summary. Each contains a life story:

  “The husband left her after three of her babies died. Now married to her nephew, as his second wife. She is twenty-five, and pregnant again.”

  “Seventeen. First child. Married to her older uncle.”

  “Twenty-one. Three children. Her husband is a powerful man, with many wives.”

  Birth control is available for free at the hospital. The doctors urge patients to wait at least three months between pregnancies for a better chance of carrying a child to term. Whether patients actually use any form of contraception has less to do with ideology or a conservative husband and more with the practical circumstances of life here. Too much snow, heavy rain, or a mudslide in the spring may block the roads from a small village when time comes to refill a prescription or submit to another injection. Or there simply may be no car, or no gas for the car, or no one to drive it. That also contributes to eighteen thousand Afghan women dying each year of complications from childbirth; about fifty women per day, or one every half hour.

  In another room, three women from the same village are in various stages of pregnancy with complications, but the cost of a car ride could not be justified for just one, or even two of them. So the first two had to wait for the third to go into labor. Only then were they all three driven together, as fast as the car would go. Despite efforts to stem maternal mortality, Afghanistan still ranks among the world’s worst countries to give birth in, on par with the poorest and most war-torn nations in Africa. But the odds for survival at this clinic, in the middle of a battlefield, are better than at a home birth.

  “She is forty,” Dr. Fareiba says of a patient in a postdelivery room. The woman is lacking several front teeth, and has bracelets stacked up on each arm. “A miscarriage. But she has ten live children. Only girls. So she tries for a son, again and again.”

  When a new wife is blessed with two or three sons as her first children, she will not be pressured to have many more after that. If a few girls follow, that is fine, too. But at a streak of only “girl, girl, girl,” in the doctor’s words, most women will keep trying for a son. It’s a one-sentence explanation to the population question: A total of four or five children is perfectly acceptable to most parents in Afghanistan—but only if that number includes mostly boys. The life expectancy of a woman here is forty-four years, and she spends much of it being pregnant. Most couples know how to limit pregnancies if they want to, but the pressure to have another son often overrides any concern for a woman’s survival.

  Dr. Fareiba pokes into the blanket of a new mother, who lies on a bed facing the wall. She has been silent since her delivery. The doctor sweeps up the small bundle from her side and turns to the nurse trailing her every step. They nod at each other: Yes, it’s a girl.

  She is only a few hours old, and she does not have a name yet. Her eyes have been lined with kohl, “for magical luck,” and to protect her from the evil eye. The baby blinks a little, and her tiny mouth gasps a few times. She is perfect, down to her tiny, grasping fingers. Yet to many in Afghanistan, she is naqis-ul-aql, or “stupid by birth,” as a woman equals a creature lacking wisdom due to her weak brain. If she survives, she may often go hungry, because feeding a girl is secondary to feeding a son in the family, who will be given the best and most plentiful food. If, in her family, there is a chance of the children going to school, her brothers will have priority. Her husband will be chosen for her, often before she reaches puberty. As an adult, very few of life’s decisions will be her own.

  LOOKING AT THE revered Dr. Fareiba, though, it is hard to imagine that she would allow a man to rule any aspect of her existence. She herself has defied tradition by working under almost every form of government in the past twenty years, as well as no government at all, since there was always a need for female doctors. Dr. Fareiba has delivered “maybe one thousand babies,” by her own estimate.

  “But why do only sons count here? What is it that women cannot do?” I ask.

  Dr. Fareiba raises her hands in the air to express frustration. She already explained this: It is not about capability. Men and women just have different roles and different tasks. It is about how society is arranged and what works. It is about how it’s always been.

  The pressure for sons is not just perpetuated by men, either. Women need sons just as much, Dr. Fareiba says, using herself as the example. Her three sons are not only her proudest achievement; they are essential to the survival of her family. Who other than a son protects and cares for his parents, should they survive to old age? If the family needs to flee from yet another war? In case of a dispute, or a violent conflict, with another family? There is no social security, little health care, and virtually no rule of law in Afghanistan. There is just unemployment, poverty, and constant war. In this environment, the number of sons equals a family’s strength, both financially and socially. They are insurance. A 401(k). A bank. Dr. Fareiba’s sons will support and ensure not only her life but her family’s longevity and legacy.

  Dr. Fareiba has a daughter, too. But she will be married off to a man of her parents’ choice, and move away to live with her husband’s family. The ownership of an Afghan girl is literally passed on from one male—her father—to the one who becomes her husband. He will take over the ruling of her life, down to the smallest details if he is so inclined. Dr. Fareiba may not even see her daughter again, if her future son-in-law and his family decide to move far away. On the other hand, when her own sons marry, they will take their new brides back to Dr. Fareiba’s house to start new families there. More sons will hopefully be born, and her family will grow larger and stronger.

  “The daughter is never ours. But the son,” says Dr. Fareiba in a matter-of-fact tone, “will stay with us forever.”

  It is how things always worked in this country, where tribal law and strict patrilineal tradition have historically offered a higher degree of stability than most governments. In Afghanistan, not much is for certain other than an open sky and eventual death. In between the two is family.

  Dr. Fareiba leaves it at that.

  But the patriarchal system, with the idea that women should be subordinate to men, and that sons are more valuable than daughters, was in fact never a “natural” nor a God-given order that always existed. It can be traced back to entirely human-created historical events.

  When American scholar Gerda Lerner pioneered the study of women’s history in the 1980s, her research provided both evidence and an explanation for how patriarchy originally began to form. It was not until around the dawn of agriculture, when humans transitioned from being hunters and gatherers to becoming herders and farmers, in the fourth to second millennium BC, that notions of personal property and ownership also created the need to control reproduction. Specifically that meant the wombs of women, since those with the most children gained an advantage. Both children, who could be used for labor, and women, who could produce the children, became resources that could be bought and sold to create alliances and thereby expand upon personal ownership. Land as well as capital was passed down solely through male heirs, creating an absolute need for sons to preserve wealth and build legacies. Many societies grew out of this raw version of the patriarchal system, which is still very much in place in the world’s most conservative countries, and has visible remnants in most other societies.

  In addition to Gerda Lerner’s historical explanations of the origins of patriarchy, one may inch closer to an understanding of Afghanistan’s honor culture and the standing of women by considering the struggles of women in Western societies only a few generations ago. A tried-and-true reporter’s strategy is also useful: to follow the money, and observe how those who control it will use every worldly and otherworldly argument for not sharing it.

  BUT HOW DOES someone like Dr. Fareiba come to exist in this environment, where most Afghan women—and men, for that matter—have seen little divers
ion from the original version of patriarchy?

  In reality, almost every truth about Afghanistan can be easily contradicted, and almost every rule can be bent—when it is practical. There have always been fathers with more liberal minds who had daughters and urged them to take on the world outside. Dr. Fareiba is one of those daughters, having been born into a well-off Pashtun family, which allowed her to complete most of her education during the Communist period. Her father, also a doctor, her four brothers, and her seven sisters all graduated from university. Their family could afford it and saw no reason to differentiate between the education of sons and daughters. Dr. Fareiba’s husband is also a physician, carefully chosen by her parents because he would allow their daughter to work.

  Still, she must respect the rules of life here, even those she finds frustrating, and she cuts me off when I question the system of male inheritance and forced marriages. “This is our society. Our culture.”

  It’s typical. Even though an Afghan may privately declare that something is illogical, illegal, silly, or just plain wrong, he or she can at the same time make an argument for why it must be adhered to: Society demands it; society is not ready to accept any diversion. This is the meaning of the frustrated shrug, the “I wish it would be different, but …” explanation.

  The punishment for going “against society” is “gossip” and with it the threat of losing one’s good reputation and family honor. Too much gossip makes life complicated and dangerous. The disapproval of neighbors, friends, and even one’s own family can make accomplishing basic things for a man—getting a job, marrying a daughter into a good family, or borrowing money to build a bigger house—almost impossible. In a place where the state hardly exists and few institutions function, reputation is one of few valid currencies, and preserving it must always take priority. With the consequence that sons must be had at all costs.

  “THEY CALL ME the maker of sons,” says Dr. Fareiba as we sit down for tea at a later time, unwrapping dusty caramels from a glass tray. She will put one behind her front teeth and suck her tea through it to make it sweet, the way many Afghans do.

  Making sons is a specialty, and one she says she shares with some other Afghan doctors, who are known to offer it as a service on the side. It costs a little extra. Dr. Fareiba is well aware that the male sperm decides the sex of the fetus, but she still believes that “changing conditions” inside a woman’s body can make the environment more or less favorable for the “right” sperm—those carrying the male chromosome combination. The man needs no special treatment, however. His body is already complete and ready to produce sons.

  Dr. Fareiba makes a reference to her own sister, who has a university degree and a husband who is an engineer. But they were pitied as they didn’t have a son, only four daughters. So she came to Dr. Fareiba.

  “She asked me: ‘Why don’t you get any girls—you get boys? What is the problem with me?’ And I treated them one year ago, and now thanks God she has a son.”

  Dr. Fareiba beams. Her nephew, now seven months old, was conceived after his mother was put on Dr. Fareiba’s special regimen of certain foods, homemade potions, and sexual positions. “I made him for you,” she is fond of telling her sister.

  Those tried-and-tested methods for creating sons have been passed down to her from female relatives through generations and finessed through experimentation and by trading tips with fellow Afghan doctors.

  “Hot foods make boys,” Dr. Fareiba explains, citing the various dishes, black tea, and dried fruits she prescribes for the woman who needs a son. Eating yogurt, melon, and green tea, on the other hand, count as “cold” foods, and are more likely to result in girls. Creams and powders can also help. Dr. Fareiba makes most of them at home and trades them with other doctors. Her female patients are instructed to insert the potions into their vaginas, meant to help along those sperms carrying the male-determining Y chromosome.

  Conventional medicine does acknowledge that male sperm swim faster and tire sooner, while the female-chromosome-carrying sperm are slower but have more stamina and stay alive longer in the uterus.

  Dr. Fareiba also advises her female patients to lie flat after intercourse, to allow the precious male sperm every advantage without gravity derailing things. According to conventional medicine, however, there is only one way to ensure conception of a specific sex: to remove the egg and vet the sperm in advance before implanting a fertilized embryo back into a woman’s womb. When I tell Dr. Fareiba this, she just smiles. She has too successful a track record, and her science is ancient: “Tell me,” she says. “What do you believe?”

  I will remember her question. In Afghanistan, as Carol first suggested, believing can be more important than anything else, and mythos counts as much as logos.

  But even Dr. Fareiba concedes that failure must sometimes be declared. After she and other experts have done all they can, parents do resort to other solutions.

  Yes, she says, there may be other girls like Mehran, who masquerade as boys. Simply because everybody knows that a made-up son is better than none at all. Dr. Fareiba lowers her voice when she speaks of a certain type of family. As a physician, she has attended several births where an infant girl is announced as a son. The child is then presumably brought back to the village and reared as a boy for as long as the lie will hold, or as long as the community goes along with it, knowing that it is merely an honorary boy. Dr. Fareiba and her colleagues have also learned not to ask too many questions when young boys have been brought to the hospital’s emergency room, only for the doctor on call to make a startling discovery when examining the child. They all keep face, in a silent agreement with the parents.

  Children’s rights are a concept unacknowledged in Afghanistan. If parents want a girl to look like a boy, then it is within the right of the parents to make that happen, Dr. Fareiba believes. This temporarily experimental condition will right itself later on. Children, just as Carol le Duc mentioned, take a predetermined path in life. For girls, that means marrying and having children of their own. For boys, it means supporting a family.

  Dr. Fareiba does not imagine there is any documentation about what she refers to as the private circumstances of each family. Nor is she keen on offering referrals to anyone who might know more about it. The creation of such a son would be the parents’ decision, and their choice should be respected. And what does it matter, anyway? These girls are hidden, and that is exactly the point. To everyone on the outside, they are just bachas.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  THE POLITICIAN

  Azita

  IT WAS TEMPORARY, she was told.

  As the oldest sister, Azita was immediately put to work when she arrived at her grandparents’ house in Badghis in 1995. For laundry to be done, a wood fire first had to be kindled and tended to. Fresh water then had to be hauled from a long walk away with two heavy buckets. Homemade lye was extracted by pouring ashes in salt water. The lye took the dirt out of fabric—and the skin from hands. The student from an elite school in Kabul found herself in what is still today one of the country’s most rural and undeveloped provinces. Close to Iran and bordering on Turkmenistan, Badghis is named after the strong winds that come across the mountains and blow across its deserts and scattered pistachio forests. Most residents are farmers. Few can read or write.

  Without functioning schools to go to, there was not much to do, and Azita’s parents insisted that when the war was over, they would return to the capital and resume a normal life. Azita would become a doctor and she would travel abroad. All according to plan.

  But the eighteen-year-old’s prospects gradually turned darker. Badghis is dominated by Tajik tribes and has a Pashtun minority, and the Taliban was closing in, ferociously fighting to take full control of the province. At the house, where Azita spent most of her time, the windows had to be covered, so no passersby could see her shadow. When she left the house, always with a male escort, she viewed the outside world through the thick grid of a burka that made quick turns
of the head disorienting and breathing more difficult. It had taken a week of burka training at the house before she mastered pulling the fabric tight over her face so that she could navigate past what little she saw while walking. She learned to move more slowly, making sure she did not flash her ankles.

  While local rulers in Badghis in peacetime had not taken a very liberal view of women, nor did the warlords who followed, the Taliban who eventually came to control most of Afghanistan had a particular hatred for half the population.

  In his book Taliban, Pakistani author Ahmed Rashid describes those who fought for the Taliban: Many were orphaned young men, mostly between fourteen and twenty-four, educated in an extremist version of Islam by illiterate mullahs in Pakistan, and having no sense of their own history. They were Afghan refugees who had grown up in camps and knew very little about a regular society and how to run it, having been taught that women were an unnecessary and, at most, tempting distraction. For that reason, there was no need to include them in decision making and other important matters. The Taliban leadership also argued for sexual abstinence and maintained that contact between men and women in society should be avoided, as it would only serve to weaken warriors.

  Controlling and diminishing women became a twisted symbol of manhood in the Taliban’s culture of war, where men were increasingly segregated from women and had no families of their own. Taliban policies toward women were so harsh that even an Iranian ayatollah protested and said they were defaming Islam. And once again, the role and treatment of women became a critical conflict, both in a monetary sense and in an ideological one, as Afghanistan’s leadership became increasingly isolated from the rest of the world. To them, when Western powers criticized the Taliban view of women, it confirmed that it was correct to segregate the sexes, since any Western idea, invention, or opinion was decidedly un-Islamic. That designation, of course, excluded advanced weaponry and other modern perks exclusive to the male leadership.