Letters to My Daughters (19 page)

That is something I wanted to change for you. When it's either of your birthdays we take weeks to plan your party. You have balloons and cake. You even get the privilege of sending the family car to pick up your friends. I love being able to do this for you because I want you to love celebrations. I want you to celebrate the big things and the small things.

Know this: whatever our circumstances there is always something to celebrate about life.

With love,
Your mother

· · TWELVE · ·
A Taliban Wedding

{
1997
}

EVERY GIRL DREAMS of her wedding day, and I was no exception.

I always think life is simply a series of important moments. Moments that define us as the individuals we are. And we cherish the best moments all our lives, whether an enjoyable party, the smell of fresh grass after the rain, picnicking by a river, an evening spent laughing and talking with loved ones, the birth of a precious child or graduation from university.

The day a bride goes to choose her wedding dress should be one of those moments. But as I put on my coat to go to the bazaar that morning, I felt like a walking ghost.

Because I was the youngest daughter, my sisters and my mother had always taken great delight in discussing what kind of wedding I would eventually have. Over the years, they had gossiped and giggled about it all, from what I might wear to how my hair would look to what food we'd serve. In those pre-war days, we were a relatively rich family, so the assumption was always that I would have a big wedding, with people coming from far and wide to see me. When I was a little girl, I had never liked this idea, but now that I was finally getting married I so very much wanted that dream day. I wanted to hear my mother talk about her plans again more than anything in the world. The loss of her was still a dull, constant ache.

I had also never imagined that the most important day of my life would take place under the rule of the Taliban. Because of their rules, the wedding would have no music, no video and no dancing. All the restaurants and wedding halls were closed, and joyous ceremonies were now prohibited. I think any woman—wherever she lives in the world—wants her wedding day to be perfect. I know it sounds girlish and silly, but most nights before the wedding I cried myself to sleep. I cried both for my mother and for my lost opportunity to shine as a beautiful bride.

Despite the wearing of the burka now being compulsory by law, I still hadn't been able to bring myself to buy one. When I did have to go outside, I had taken to wearing my mother's old one. Her burka was far more beautiful than the cheap, mass-produced blue nylon ones designed in Pakistan that are so common today. In my mother's era, women saw the burka as a sign of status, and my mother had one befitting her rank as the wife of a powerful, rich man. It was made of dark blue silk with soft folds that rustled gently as she walked, the face covering lightly embroidered with a fine silver mesh over the eye panel. When it got dirty, she took it to a specialist cleaner who steamed and pressed each individual fold into place. For her, it was an object of great pride. For me, wearing it felt shameful. Even after my marriage, I continued to wear my mother's burka: if I had to wear one, then at least it should be one that reminded me of her.

The day we went shopping, my fiancé accompanied us. It was the first time I had seen him in months. The last time I had seen his face properly was my last day at university before the Taliban came to power. The day he came to visit us in Puli Khumri when my brother had finally agreed to our marriage, I had glimpsed only the back of his head as I hid behind the curtain. That day at university, the Mujahideen had been in control and he had sported a neatly trimmed small beard. But under Taliban rule, his hair and beard were longer, and he didn't look nearly as handsome. Through the hated burka, I kept sneaking sideways glances at his beard, thinking how much I disliked the look of it on his face. Once again, I had that overpowering feeling that Afghanistan was slipping back in time. There was no more progress, only the darkness of the uneducated men who now ruled our land.

The Taliban had introduced another new regulation: any woman who went out of the family home, for whatever reason, must have a
muharram
, a male blood relative, with her. This, like so many of the Taliban's rules, was more akin to Arab culture than to our own Afghan culture. In my grandmother's day, women didn't go out alone but with each new generation these things had changed in Afghanistan, as is the natural progression of any culture. Now, the Taliban were plunging us back in time.

If they stopped your car at one of the many Taliban checkpoints that had sprung up all over the city, they would interrogate you, demanding your family name, your father's name and the relative's name, asking endless questions until they were satisfied that the man and woman were blood relatives, not just friends. The Vice and Virtue Department was responsible for enforcing these policies—with a special predilection for beating women. In the wedding bazaar, they were beating women who were, like me, trying to shop for bridal gowns. One poor girl was wearing banned white trousers. Perhaps this girl didn't know about the ban, maybe she was uneducated and poor or maybe she had been too scared to leave the house until today. Whatever the reason, I heard a voice yell at her in Arabic (by now many Arab fighters had come to join the Taliban and live in Kabul). The men took a rubber cable and held her down on the ground while they beat her legs with it. She yelped in pain. I turned away, biting so hard on my lip it bled. I was consumed with anger at the injustice of it and at my failure to stop it.

The sound of the Vice and Virtue car is one I will never forget. It was usually a Hilux pickup truck. It would drive through the streets, always with prayers from the Holy Koran blasting from loudspeakers on the top. When they heard the sound of the car, women caught outside would rush to hide themselves. Even for the tiniest mistake or misdemeanour they would start beating you. Sometimes, they would just look at you and beat you for no reason with the cable. One day, I saw a young girl getting beaten and watched as her mother and sister threw themselves on top of her to try to protect her. The Taliban just continued to beat all three of them. It was truly madness.

On this day, there was a group of us: my sister-in-law, my fiancé and his sister. Fortunately, the Taliban ignored us. We bought the wedding rings, at least creating one small but happy memory from that. I knew Hamid could tell through the mesh of the burka that I was smiling broadly as I watched him pay for the rings. With weddings now under such strict rule, most of the clothing shops in the bazaar hadn't bothered to buy new stock. So little was available that I struggled to find anything I liked. I had always wanted a puff-sleeved wedding dress, but bare arms were now banned.

Afghan brides wear three or four different dresses in succession for their marriage ceremony, each one a different colour and representing something different. For my henna night, I chose a light green shade. For
nikah
, the first part of the ceremony, people often have dark green, but I wanted something unusual. I went for pink. It was a beautiful rosy pink and it felt like a shot of pure joy against all the misery of the Taliban. Just looking at that dress cheered me up. After
nikah
, the bride changes again for the reception party. Normally this is a white wedding dress and veil, similar to the styles worn by brides in the West.

In normal times, my wedding would have been as huge as is customary. Family and friends would have been invited as well as political allies, supporters and villagers from Badakhshan. In our culture, and particularly in a political family like mine, a wedding becomes a big networking affair. But because the wedding halls were closed, we had nowhere to host a large party. In our reduced financial circumstances, I doubt we could have paid for it anyway. Even so, my family invited over one thousand people for my ceremony. In the end, closer to fifteen hundred turned up.

Afghan weddings are also normally segregated, women and children on one side and men on the other. In a wedding hall, that usually means either a separate room for each gender or a large curtain dividing the room down the middle. Our solution was to have the wedding in two houses—one in my brother's house and one in his neighbour's. The men went to the neighbour's and the women to ours. The night before the wedding, we have a traditional henna ceremony in which the bride has her hands decorated with henna ink. For that we went to a beauty parlour. Normally, I loved a trip to a salon, but now it didn't cheer me up. Nothing about this wedding—the quality of the dresses or even my hairstyle—was my choice or how I would have wanted it to be. I'd done my best, but deep down it all felt so cheap and make-do.

The henna ceremony lasts most of the night. Usually it's done a few days before the actual wedding so the bride can rest before the big day, but we had no choice but to do it the night before. The whole night long a circle of women played the daira, a drum-type instrument, and sang songs. In the morning, I was exhausted. But in truth, even if the henna night had been a whole week earlier, I would not have slept the night before the wedding.

MY WEDDING was bittersweet. My mother was dead and my living sisters, who were still scattered across the country, couldn't come. My mother, who at my birth had wanted me to die, had then worked so hard for me to have a future. My mother, who had effectively picked out my husband for me on her deathbed, could not be there. Preparing for my ceremony without her there to hold my hand and whisper words of encouragement was as painful as walking on burning needles.

At 6 A.M., the hairdresser put the rollers in my hair. She tutted at me, telling me I looked terrible and needed more sleep. I nodded off in the chair. I slept there until about 10:30, and then she started to do my makeup. She was still tutting at the state of me. I looked in the mirror and realized that she was right, I did look awful, with red-rimmed eyes and a spotty face. By the time we entered the house, I was feeling really blue. The other big disappointment was that I had wanted to have the wedding secretly filmed with a video camera or a proper photographer. The Taliban had banned video but some of the video operators still worked anyway; they just charged triple to compensate for the risk. But my brother wouldn't allow it. Some of my brother's old friends were now working in low-level government jobs, and he was worried they would report us to the Taliban authorities. I have no souvenirs of my wedding, except for a few grainy snapshots friends managed to take with their personal cameras.

I didn't know many of the people at the wedding. The guests were my brother's friends and their wives or his work colleagues. I started to feel a bit angry, wondering if they had come just for the free food. It certainly didn't feel like they were there for me.

For the actual religious part of the marriage—conducted by a mullah—Hamid and I and our two witnesses were taken to a separate room. That was when I cried for the first, but not the last, time that day. And of course, all my makeup, the only thing making me look in any way attractive, started to run down my cheeks. I wiped my eyes then forgot myself as I inadvertently wiped mascara over my pretty pink dress. Fortunately, after the ceremony it was time to change into the white gown, and in its lacy sleeves and long veil I like to think I looked a little bit more beautiful.

Later in the evening, the tradition is that the elder of the family, either a father or brother, takes a cloth containing some sweets and fabric, and ties it to the bride's wrist. It is a symbol that the new bride is being sent to her husband's home. It's a very moving and personal scene. When Mirshakay took the braid and began tying it on my wrist, I started to cry. He started to cry too. We were hugging each other and both crying our eyes out. I think it was more than the moment that had got to us. We were crying because of all the people who weren't there: my mother, my brother Muqim, my father. We cried for all the family we had lost, as well as our status, our homes and our way of life. In those private few minutes, my brother and I hugged and cried in silence, both of us understanding the enormity of loss, the joy of moving forward and the pain of change. Eventually, he gathered himself and with a stern “Come now, Fawzia jan,” he gently touched the tip of my nose, smiled and led me out of the room.

Dear Shuhra and Shaharzad,

Your father was the love of my life. He was more than enough for this “poor girl.” In marrying him, I was a lucky girl indeed.

Marriage is an important rite in a woman's life, but I truly believe marriage should not prevent her from living her dreams. Rather, her dreams should become those of her husband, and her husband's dreams should become part of hers. This new couple should stand together and make the world theirs and theirs alone.

Sometimes, I long to see the day you will get married, but other times I don't want it to happen because I know that on that day you will stop being my little girls and become grown women. I don't want that to happen too fast.

But of course, I hope you will find love one day. Love is important. But not everyone thinks so. Many people believe duty, respect, religion and rules are more important than love.

But I do not think these things have to be separate. Love can exist alongside duty. Love thrives on duty. And on respect.

With love,
Your mother

Photographs