The Dressmaker of Khair Khana (4 page)

Kamila's neighbors began to leave Kabul as the crackdown grew more severe. But it was not just politics driving them out: it was the quickly collapsing economy. Money dried up and families found themselves forced to live on nearly nothing. The government now paid its tens of thousands of civil servants only occasionally, if at all, and families with working wives, sisters, and daughters had all lost at least one income. Long before the Taliban arrived many in Khair Khana had fled the indiscriminate killing and violence of the civil war. Those who stayed behind had sold almost everything they owned to survive the fighting, including the doors and windows of their houses, which could be turned into firewood. Now most of the dwindling middle class that still lived in Khair Khana and had the means to leave had decided to pack up and make the risky journey to Pakistan or Iran.

So it was no surprise when Najeeb arrived home from the market one evening to announce that his cousins and their family were leaving town. A tall boy with a handsome face and a young man's confidence, Najeeb spoke in a tone of barely concealed urgency.

“I've just been to see Uncle Shahid and he says they can't stay here any longer. The girls can't study and they're worried about what will happen to the boys.” Kamila had never seen her even-tempered brother so upset. Her cousins were also teenage boys who, like Najeeb, faced increasing danger on the streets of Kabul simply because they were Tajiks from the north. With each week the risks they faced got worse, not better, as their families had hoped at the beginning.

In different times Kamila's relatives would have come to tell her father their plans in person, over several glasses of home-brewed chai and a silver tray filled with almonds, pistachios, and toot, the dried berry snack. But today families were leaving the city quietly and quickly, while they could. They had no time to tell anyone, even those they loved and trusted most.

Kamila had overheard her parents discussing their options several days before, and she knew it was unlikely that Mr. Sidiqi would join her mother's family in Pakistan or Iran. It was simply too dangerous to risk the journey with five young girls in tow. To get to Pakistan they would have to travel from Kabul through Jalalabad to the Torkham border, then, if the crossing gate were closed, hire a man to smuggle them over the mountains. After that they would need to find a taxi or bus to take them into one of the cities, most likely Peshawar, where tens of thousands of Afghans had already settled, many in refugee camps. Bandits lined the narrow passes along the rugged terrain, and rumors abounded of girls being abducted along the way. Besides, who knew what would happen to the Khair Khana home Mr. Sidiqi had worked so hard to build if they abandoned it? Everyone knew it was impossible to get property back once you had left it. Within weeks some family that was desperate for shelter would move in and take both the house and the land, and when the family returned to Kabul Mr. Sidiqi would be stuck in court for years trying to get his home back. If he had to leave, that would be one thing, but whatever you could say about the Taliban, they had made the city safer. For the first time in years Kabulis could sleep with their doors open if they wished. As long as his five girls at home followed the rules of the new regime, they would be fine. And they would be in their own country.

But for the men in Kamila's family, the danger grew hard to ignore. It was no use insisting that Mr. Sidiqi was no longer in the military or was apolitical, or that he was clearly too old to be fighting for the opposition. The Taliban had begun combing neighborhoods house by house trying to uncover pockets of resistance that remained in the restive and now largely subdued capital. The young soldiers were searching for fighting-age men, a term broad enough to include any male who could potentially present a threat to the Taliban regime, beginning with teenagers. The Taliban accused men belonging to the Uzbek, Hazara, and Tajik ethnic minorities of backing their opposition, including Massoud, whose forces had now regrouped in the Panjshir Valley in hopes of drawing the Taliban northward to continue their fight on more favorable terrain. At seventeen, Najeeb and his cousins had become prey for mass detentions. Once they were picked up, the Taliban could press-gang them into service and ship them off to fight. Neighbors' sons had been questioned on the street by Talibs and forced to show their identification cards. If the young men hailed from the north they faced the threat of immediate detention in the Taliban jails that had sprung up all across Kabul.

Each time Najeeb left the house, Kamila's mother feared he wouldn't return. Every day now he came home with a story about some friend or neighbor who was heading abroad to find work, amid promises to send money home to the family as soon as he could. As able-bodied men poured out of Kabul it became more and more a city of women and children who had been left behind with no one to support them and no way to support themselves.

It was only a matter of time before security fears forced the Sidiqi men to follow their friends and neighbors out of Kabul. They halfheartedly made plans for Eid ul-Fitr, the festival that celebrated the end of the holy month of Ramadan, but by the end of the sixth week of Taliban rule, the decision could no longer be delayed: the family would have to separate. Otherwise, the men could end up in prison or on the front lines.

Sitting in the pale hurricane lamp light of the living room, Mr. Sidiqi shared his plan with his seven children. He would leave immediately for Gulbahar, his hometown forty-five miles north in Parwan. Growing up, the older children had regularly made the two-hour trip to see relatives and enjoy family picnics near the Panjshir River, whose cool waters ran just behind the Sidiqis' house on fertile land that Kamila's grandfather had farmed. They had passed many summer Fridays playing by the water and running about in the sprawling outdoors that was greener and more vast than anything they ever knew in Kabul. These idyllic family outings ended with the arrival of the Russians in Afghanistan and the war of resistance that took hold in the north. In eight successive offensives the Soviet tanks had destroyed much of the region's farmland and its way of life, but they would never make lasting gains here in Massoud's stronghold. Massoud's forces were far more determined to protect their homeland than the Russians ever were to conquer it, and his fighters used guerrilla tactics and Parwan's treacherous terrain to maintain their advantage. Once the Soviets withdrew and the Mujahideen took power in 1992, the younger Sidiqi children got to know Gulbahar's mud huts, clear streams, and lush fields. Though much had been destroyed in the fighting, all the children had come to love their village's leafy quiet and its stunning views of the distant Hindu Kush mountains. Now, with yet another war under way, Kamila wondered how much more Gulbahar would have to endure.

Even though the fighting had moved north from Kabul into Parwan province, Mr. Sidiqi believed he would be safer there than in the capital. He would send for Kamila's mother once he had settled in and assessed the situation. Meanwhile Najeeb would look after the women until the family could decide on the young man's next move. Kamila and her sisters didn't have to ask why they couldn't accompany their father to the north, for they already knew why he would refuse: it was too dangerous to travel with five young women through Taliban and then Northern Alliance territory. But Mr. Sidiqi had another, unspoken, reason: he worried that in the north his girls would be besieged by wedding proposals, which would be awkward to continually rebuff. Kamila's father didn't intend to be inhospitable to would-be suitors, and he was by no means against marriage for his daughters, but he wanted them first to have the chance to complete their studies and then work if they chose to. For this they were much better off in Kabul. The girls must now find a way to read and learn as much as they could, and be ready to return to school once the Taliban eased their rules.

The night before he left, the girls worked with their mother to prepare food for his journey, stuffing plastic shopping bags with thick piles of naan bread and dried fruit. When they had finished, and the younger girls had settled down to read by lamplight, Kamila sat with her father in a corner of the living room. His lean figure towered over her, as he commanded her, quietly, solemnly, to be strong and to help her mother. “They all need you, the girls especially, and I am counting on you to guide them, and to be their example.” Kamila held back her tears. “I don't think this will be over soon; it may even take years. But I am sure you will be a good leader for your sisters. And I know you will make me proud, just as you always have.”

All night long Kamila thought of his words. He was counting on her. And so were her sisters. She had to find a way to take care of her family.

Kamila did not weep as she bid her father good-bye the next morning. Neither did her mother, who had been up most of the night readying his things. The family had already seen so much fighting and war in the past decade; even the little ones knew better than to wish things were otherwise. The Taliban were settling into the city for the long run, establishing a government, holding press conferences, and demanding permission to take the country's seat at the United Nations. All Kamila and her sisters could do now was learn to make their way under the new order.

Stitching the Future Back Together

“What are you reading?” Kamila asked, looking over her shoulder at her sister Saaman, who had stretched out across the deep red woven carpet on the living room floor. Khair Khana had had no power for several days, and shadows from the hurricane lamp fluttered against the room's bare walls.

Saaman was lost in thought. Her book of poems lay open in front of her, but she had long ago abandoned it; she was far too distracted to concentrate. The sound of Kamila's voice jolted her back to the quiet evening. A pretty teenager with fine features and a perfectly symmetrical face, Saaman was more serious and more reserved than her gregarious older sister. She possessed a quiet grace that manifested itself as shyness when she met someone for the first time.

“Some of your Maulana Jalalludin,” replied Saaman. After a moment she sighed: “Again.”

She rolled onto the other side of her pillow, adjusted her ponytail, and tried to focus on her poetry once more.

Only months before, Saaman had passed the competitive college entrance exams, known in Afghanistan by their French name, concours, and had won a coveted seat at Kabul University. Her parents had been immensely proud of their sixth-born daughter, who would be the first in the family to enter the country's oldest and most respected university. She had just begun her first semester of study in the science department and was reveling in university life. Then the Taliban took Kabul. Saaman was trying to bear the abrupt end to her education with composure, but she found it difficult to accept being forced to trade her classroom for a living room filled with half a dozen restless girls.

She was hardly the only young woman in Kabul trying to fill her days. Across the capital, women of all ages and backgrounds were learning to make do in a city run by men who wanted them to disappear. The Taliban had dug in for the winter and perhaps much longer; no one dared to guess. Meanwhile, fighting ground on between the new regime and Massoud's forces, and the United Nations pecked away at a peace process that lacked even the energy to stall.

Months had passed since the Taliban's arrival, and the girls in Kamila's house no longer spoke of a swift end to their home detention. Instead they watched helplessly as the nine men of the Taliban High Court issued edicts that strengthened the rules of their banishment and regulated ever smaller details of their everyday lives. Walking in the middle of the street was now prohibited, as was wearing high-heeled shoes. Clothing must be baggy and loose-fitting “to prevent the seditious limbs from being noticed,” and chadri could not be made from any lightweight material through which arms or legs might be seen. Mixing with strangers and going out without a mahram, or male relative, had been outlawed.

Kamila and her sisters banded together to seek relief from the creeping despair that threatened to suffocate them. And they began to think about possible solutions. “We should ask Habiba Jan to bring some of her books over,” Kamila said to Saaman one morning while they finished cleaning the kitchen after a breakfast of hot chai and toasted naan. Habiba's family lived only two houses down the road, making visits fairly safe, even with the current restrictions.

“I'm so sick of reading the same thing over and over again. Maybe we could share some books with our friends.” She was on a roll.

“Yes, yes, what a great idea,” Saaman replied as she dried her hands on a rag. “We should also talk to Razia. She reads a lot, though I'm not sure what kinds of books she likes. We have the poetry covered; maybe she can bring some of those great Persian detective stories--I think she's addicted to them.” Saaman felt energized for the first time in weeks.

With that conversation began the girls' semiregular neighborhood book swap. Every few days a handful of girls from the northeast section of Khair Khana would stop by the Sidiqi home to drop off books they had finished and pick up new ones. Everyone was excited by the hunt for new volumes to share with the group, and as they cycled through their own small libraries they reached out to borrow from family collections. Kamila's sitting room became an informal trading floor, with books lined up along the wall, spines out and organized alphabetically by author in neat rows for easy browsing. Girls from the neighborhood came by every day, and they all sat together in a circle, snacking on chai and pistachios and sharing their passion for the authors they loved, egging each other on to read their favorites.

Both Kamila and Saaman loved the famous Persian poets. A copy of Maulana Jalalludin Mohammad Balkhi-Rumi's classic Divani Shamsi Tabrizi, an epic poem of forty-five thousand Dari verses, floated constantly between the sitting room and the girls' sleeping chambers down the hall. The thirteenth-century poet, a native of the northeastern province of Balkh and known to most Westerners simply as Rumi, defined the Islamic mystical Sufi tradition in which meditations on music and poetry bring man nearer to God and the presence of the divine. Another writer who deeply moved the girls was the lyric poet Hafez, born in 1315 in the southern Iranian city of Shiraz. Hafez wrote ghazals, or odes, that chronicled human loss and sought comfort in the immense beauty of God's divine love and creation. The girls took turns reading the stanzas aloud:

from POEMS FROM THE DIVAN OF HAFIZtranslated by Gertrude Lowthian BellThe breath of Dawn's musk-strewing wind shall blow,The ancient world shall turn to youth again,And other wines from out Spring's chalice flow;Wine-red, the judas-tree shall set beforeThe pure white jessamine a brimming cup,And wind flowers lift their scarlet chalice upFor the star-pale narcissus to adore.The long-drawn tyranny of grief shall pass,Parting shall end in meeting, the lamentOf the sad bird that sang “Alas, alas!”Shall reach the rose in her red-curtained tent.. . . Dear is the rose--now, now her sweets proclaim,While yet the purple petals blush and blow;Hither adown the path of Spring she came,And by the path of Autumn she will go.Now, while we listen, Minstrel, tune thy lay!Thyself hast said: “The Present steals away;The Future comes, and bringing--what? Dost know?”

The lines from their treasured Persian literary heritage took the girls far away from the Taliban's rigid idea of Islam, which grew out of a different tradition, the Deobandi, which strenuously opposed mysticism and rejected music and dance as corrupting influences. The Deobandi tradition began in northern India as a reaction to the injustices of colonial rule and evolved over time to embrace only the most literal and puritanical interpretations of Islam.

The book swap distracted the girls for several weeks, but as much as she enjoyed reading and sharing paperbacks with her friends, Kamila found herself growing more and more restless. Even the new supply of books was becoming dull, as she devoured each one, then read it again. How long can I just sit here? she thought. She knew there were women who had found ways to work; she had heard rumors about a few teachers who were running schools in their houses, for example, but the political situation remained so unpredictable that most women thought it wiser to stay indoors until something changed.

And things would have to change. There were too many widows who needed to support themselves and their families, and too many girls who were hungry for education. Frustration was growing as the economy imploded under a yoke of mismanagement, war, and neglect. Foreign aid, in the form of subsidized wheat distributions, had become critical to helping Kabul feed itself. The whole city now qualified as “vulnerable” in the aid vernacular. The situation was quickly becoming unbearable.

Kamila's family was fortunate. Her father had stashed away some savings from his army salary and rent he received each month for a nearby apartment he owned. The money would not support the large family at home indefinitely, but it had been enough to hold them over until Mr. Sidiqi could figure out another option.

If Kamila's mother was worried about their situation, she didn't show it; nor did she share her concerns with her oldest daughter. But Kamila watched with great anxiety as the large family's resources grew thinner. Her brothers, Rahim and Najeeb, went shopping less frequently and brought home fewer groceries and supplies at one time. Meat had become an even greater luxury. Kamila wondered how long the money that remained could last, given how many of them it had to feed.

To make matters worse, the family had heard nothing from Mr. Sidiqi since he left Kabul weeks earlier. Few homes had telephones. There was no national mail system--illiteracy ran rampant in the largely rural country--and the ongoing fighting had badly damaged the makeshift communications systems that had managed to survive the Soviet invasion. A thriving network of family and friends stepped in to fill this vacuum; scores of people who regularly traveled back and forth between Kabul and the north served as impromptu postmen, transmitting messages between loved ones and sharing news with those who had been left behind. Kamila's mother tried not to worry and comforted herself with the knowledge that her husband had survived two of his country's wars already. But she felt uneasy being so far from him at such a precarious time. They had shared three decades and eleven children, and his safe arrival in Parwan was her only wish. She planned to join him there as soon as he sent word that the situation was secure enough for her to come.

The Taliban, meanwhile, had taken their fight to the north. They followed Massoud to his stronghold in the Panjshir Valley and attacked General Abdul Rashid Dostum's forces in the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif, home of the legendary Blue Mosque. They were determined to eliminate their remaining opponents and consolidate control over the entire country. Then the world would have no choice but to recognize the Taliban as Afghanistan's rightful and legitimate government and bestow upon the men from Kandahar all the benefits of nationhood, including foreign aid and the United Nations seat that they so desperately coveted.

While they were fighting their own countrymen, the Taliban were also battling for control of the economic resources of the agriculturally fertile and mineral-rich north, which would give them the industrial base they lacked in the south. Nearly two decades earlier, the Soviets had spent millions of dollars developing the region's vast energy resources for their own benefit. Crude oil, iron reserves, and coal could all be found in abundance in the northern territories, which had for years received Kabul aid dollars as a reward for being easier to govern than the restive south.

Back in Kabul, the economy worsened, and families slipped from poor to truly destitute. The Taliban pushed back against the international aid community's focus on what the men from Kandahar called the “two percent of women” who worked in Kabul's offices. They issued more edicts, cloaked in the language of diplomacy:

“We kindly request all our Afghan sisters to not apply for any job in foreign agencies and they also should not go there. Otherwise, if they were chased, threatened, and investigated by us, the responsibility will be on them. We declare to all foreign agencies to respect the issued regulation of Islamic State of Afghanistan and strictly avoid employment of Afghan female staff.”

They continued to beat women in the streets, including beggars who extended their worn, cracked hands to passersby in hope of a handout. Taliban soldiers thrashed them with their shaloqs and berated them for being outside without a mahram. They ignored the fact that a shortage of men at home was the reason most of these women were forced onto the streets in the first place. Stories were spreading of those who had turned to prostitution to support their children, a situation that carried both great shame and danger for the women and their families. But for many there was no alternative. If caught, they faced public execution.

Kamila heard about everything that was happening outside on the streets from her brothers, who faithfully served as her eyes and ears, but she saw little of it for herself. She ventured out only rarely, and when she did leave the safety of her house, she remained strictly within the limits of Khair Khana. The farthest she had dared to go were the shops of the nearby Lycee Myriam bazaar--named for its proximity to Lycee Myriam high school--where she could find everything from food to fabric, including the required and now-ubiquitous chadri. None of the women Kamila saw moving through Lycee Myriam's narrow maze of stalls and stores were begging; they were simply buying what they needed as quickly as possible while trying to avoid the roaming caravans of the Amr bil-Maroof, who would punish them simply for talking too loudly or wearing clothing that rustled. Even if women hadn't felt so nervous and harried by the ever-present Taliban soldiers, there was no point in lingering to browse since they couldn't see much of anything through the rectangular mesh of their chadri. Laughing in public was also prohibited, but there seemed little risk of breaking that rule these days. In Kabul, all the joy had gone out of shopping as well.

Interaction between male shopkeepers and their female customers was closely monitored. Women kept their conversation to a minimum as they picked out and paid for their goods. Even asking after family, as polite Afghan society demanded, could create suspicion and attract Taliban attention. Male tailors could no longer measure women for dresses, since this could lead to immoral thoughts and was a violation of the Taliban's complete segregation of men and women who were unrelated by family or marriage.

Walking through the Lycee Myriam bazaar, Kamila noticed other changes in her favorite stores. Gone was the cheerful music and the pictures of Indian film stars. Even the catalog photos of smiling women modeling pricey Pakistani dresses had vanished from the walls of the tailoring shops. And hardly any fancy dresses remained in the boutiques; with the economy imploding, women hiding in their homes, and wealthy Kabulis fleeing by the hour, the market for expensive and elaborate imported frocks had simply dried up.

Kabul was now a different city. The problems of the Mujahideen period had been grave, but the city had never been so abandoned and stripped of hope.

As winter set in, the city's plight worsened. Costs for staples such as flour and oil climbed higher each month, and for most families just getting by was becoming more and more of a challenge. Kamila's mother made sure her seven children had all the basics of food and clothing, but like everyone around them, their household was only barely functioning. Kamila felt the tremendous pressure that weighed on her family, and she spent hours each day trying to think of ways she could help. She felt certain that things could not continue this way, with eight people depending on the small income from the rental apartment and their dwindling savings. Along with food, they needed books and school supplies for Rahim, the only one of the children who could still attend class. They also had to buy wood for the squat bukhari stove that heated the sitting room and oil for the hurricane lamps. Najeeb, the older of the two boys, was in the best position to help the family, but as things worsened his safety was more and more at risk. And besides, there were no jobs left in Kabul.