The Lovers (20 page)

That is not how Kim Motley sees it, and she had visited Gulnaz as recently as mid-2014. The young woman, now twenty-two or twenty-three years old, really is married to her former rapist and does not deny that is what he is. He treats her decently, she told Ms. Motley, does not beat her, and provides for her and their daughter. Kim said that after the controversy over the documentary erupted, she at one point had offers from a dozen Western countries to provide Gulnaz with asylum. At the time Gulnaz was staying in Mary Akrami’s shelter. “The minister of women’s affairs and the shelter were blocking me from taking her to get a passport,” she said. They saw reconciling with and marrying her rapist as the only solution
that was in her interest, and history just had to be rewritten to make that possible, Ms. Motley said. “She never once denied to me that her cousin was her rapist; she was fifteen when it happened. She was even tied up when she was raped. There was never any ambiguity about that. She did finally marry him, but that’s because the only way she could leave that fucking shelter was if she married this guy.”

The sorts of offers of asylum that Gulnaz initially got had dried up by 2014, as more Afghan women saw flight from the country as their only salvation, and Western countries began to worry that granting asylum in such cases would undermine their efforts to promote women’s rights within the country.

It was that attitude that had made an embassy rescue for Zakia and Ali increasingly unlikely, and all the more difficult for a couple with a criminal case against them. The conundrum raised by the criminal charges incensed Rabbi Shmuley. “That’s the biggest farce of all. You fall in love with someone and it’s a criminal case? I hope you will write something about these God-only-knows-how-many dead Americans and a trillion dollars in treasure so our government can respect a barbaric government. This is called the rule of law? I don’t even know how they can say that with a straight face. Shaming them in the media is the only thing that’s going to work. These people have to live like rats. Let’s get them out.”

Still, he couldn’t get Ali and Zakia out when they had no passports—nor any legal way to secure them. But he could save someone else—and his mystery benefactor was willing to finance it, the government of Rwanda was willing to make it happen, and, he said, they were ready. They would save Fatima Kazimi. Just one thing bothered him about that. So, he wanted me to tell him frankly, did Fatima Kazimi really have grounds to fear for her life? “I’m worried that maybe she’s just taking advantage of the situation and is now attempting to use this to get out of Afghanistan when we’re trying to focus on Zakia and Ali, who seem to be in far greater danger.” Yes, that sounded like Fatima all right, but I said nothing aloud. Answering him would put me in an ethically difficult position. If I had given him my unadorned, honest opinion, I would have said,
No, I really don’t think she is in danger.
If that ruined
the chance Shmuley was handing her to escape Afghanistan, what if she really was in danger? What right did I have to determine her fate and probably that of her family by expressing my opinion, particularly if I was wrong? I would get back to him, was the most I could say, and that was still kind of damning.

Up in Bamiyan even Fatima’s allies were dismissive of any danger to her life. “There isn’t any threat against her from other people, against her or her family. We would not let that happen,” said the Bamiyan police chief, General Khudayar Qudsi. When the attorney general’s office tried to interrogate her, he said, the police intervened to block it. “There was no basis, so we will not recognize such an action. The provincial attorney general based their request on accusations of Zakia’s family, but there was no proof of Fatima Kazimi’s involvement in the shelter escape,” Chief Qudsi said. As for risks to her from Zakia’s family? “It’s not true. She has her own personal bodyguards who will take care of her safety, police bodyguards. That is our job and our responsibility. I think it’s just an excuse so she can leave the country.”

It seemed clear that what Fatima Kazimi wanted, like many Afghans, was a better life, and she had despaired of ever finding one in Afghanistan. That, however, does not qualify as “a well-founded fear of persecution” or any of the other generally accepted grounds for granting asylum or refugee status.

I felt like I had no choice but to share this view with Shmuley. My reporting had made her out to be one of the heroes of the piece, and he was about to reward her for it. Before I could reach Shmuley, though, Fatima called to say she was leaving that day for India, where she would be picking up her Rwandan visa. She had just the night before tried to leave through Kabul International Airport with a visa from the Rwandan government issued online, but Afghan airline officials had never seen an e-visa before and turned her away.

Shmuley had moved quickly. I called him back later that day, and he was in a celebratory mood. “Fatima arrived in Delhi. She’s out of Afghanistan, thank God, and I hope we gave them security. They’re on their way to Rwanda. Thank you for everything.”

I told him I had belatedly come to the conclusion she was scamming everyone. Looking back, I figured she had probably planned this from the day of that first e-mail.

“We feel a sense of satisfaction,” Shmuley said. “We got her out of there, thank God. Some people may not believe they are in danger, but we did the right thing.” Shmuley reminded me a bit of the photographer Diego when he’d just found a beam of light coming through the ceiling and couldn’t hear anything else anyone said.

In addition to the right to settle in Rwanda—and quite possibly becoming the first Afghans there in history—Fatima and her husband and four children would be given housing by President Kagame, and Rabbi Shmuley’s benefactor was going to provide them with a twenty-thousand-dollar stipend to live on for the year, more than adequate for Rwanda. “We want to avoid an unhealthy dependency,” he said.

He was finally ready to tell me who the benefactor was. “She is prepared to be named, with one caveat: so long as it does not endanger the couple.” It was Miriam Adelson, the wife of casino magnate and multibillionaire Sheldon Adelson.

Ms. Adelson did not want credit as a Jewish person for saving a Muslim couple from their backward society. She was just moved by their case and wanted to help them, and anyone affected by their story as well. There was no other agenda here; Miriam’s motives were purely humanitarian, he said. “The real hero of the story is not me, it was Miriam Adelson, who got me interested in their case. After a while, I became personally involved. I now really cared which direction this was going.”

Fatima spent a couple of days in India, which coincided with a gala that Rabbi Shmuley’s World Values Network put on in New Jersey with a variety of A-list celebrities and politicians, including Sean Penn, Governor Rick Perry of Texas, Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey, and Elie Wiesel.
¹⁷
Shmuley’s aides organized a video hookup to New Delhi so Fatima could thank Miriam and President Kagame for rescuing her. Miriam might have had no particular agenda, but Paul Kagame did. Once seen as a hero in the West for pulling his country through the Rwandan genocide, Mr.
Kagame was lately in need of some good press, having been accused of murdering opponents, stifling dissent, and turning Rwanda, once Africa’s bright black hope, into an autocratic state run by yet another African Big Man.
¹⁸
Like Shmuley, Miriam Adelson was a staunch supporter and defender of Israel, and Israel in turn was a staunch ally of Rwanda. The two countries’ backers would see the shared experience of genocide as their bond; their critics would see governments with similarly appalling human-rights records fighting against a growing status as pariah states, despite their ennobling pasts.

The next day Fatima and her family were on the long flights from Delhi to Dubai and Dubai to Kigali.

The next time we spoke to Ali, in this case by phone, we told him that Fatima had escaped to Africa, after telling the people who wanted to help him that she, too, needed to be saved. He was astonished.

“Fatima went to Africa?” He laughed for a couple of minutes, then regained his composure. It was, he said, one more reason not to consider Africa as a way out. He and Zakia didn’t want to be someplace where the only other person in the country who spoke their language was Fatima Kazimi.

His vehemence surprised me, and I asked why he felt that way. “She didn’t help us at all,” he said. “She didn’t help me, she didn’t help Zakia escape, she didn’t do anything for us. One day we will run into each other and talk.” It was an emotional outburst.

I said it was pretty undeniable that Fatima had prevented Zakia’s family from taking her out of court that day and probably killing her. “That was all she did, and I respect that, but besides that she didn’t do anything for us.” That was underselling Fatima quite a bit, whether or not she had used the couple’s situation to her own benefit. I didn’t understand his attitude and would not for some time to come.

8

THE IRRECONCILABLES

Hope is not much of a plan, but it was about the only plan they had. “This world is sprung with our hopes, the past is built on our hopes, you spend your life with hopes,” Ali said in his dreamy way on one of the few times in May when we were able to reach him, “and I’m just hoping now that God will help us.” When Ali did choose to answer his phone, either he would barely listen to us or he would suddenly appeal to us to make the couple’s decisions for them. The worst thing was that Ali was unwilling to come down to earth and get serious about their safety. Given the number of sightings of Zakia’s male relatives not far from the Chindawul area of Kabul where the couple was hiding with his aunt, it was clear that place was no longer safe. Since the aunt was Anwar’s sister, it wouldn’t be hard for Zakia’s family to find out where she lived, at least the general area, and then stake it out until Ali or Zakia came along. That might well have been what was already happening with the near misses. Ali always agreed with us when we lectured him about this, but we could have been talking to a wall.

One day Jawad and I sat down and wrote out a list of talking points for the next time we had Ali on the telephone and he was in
half a mood to listen or if we were able to meet with him when he was on leave from his army post:

•  They can’t just stay in hiding forever. Sooner or later they will be caught. That’s what everyone who works on these family disputes says.

•  If they’re caught, they’ll both be taken to jail. That could well mean that Zakia would be sexually abused in custody, which happens routinely. Jail for a woman is much worse than a shelter, which is at least run by other women.

•  They should think about at least talking to the people who run the Women for Afghan Women shelter. They don’t have to do what they say, just hear them out.

•  The WAW lawyers are very good, and recently they won a case similar to Zakia and Ali’s, and while the case was in court, the woman had to stay in their shelter for only a month.

•  The lawyers say their case is a strong one and they’re certain they can prevail legally. They cannot do that, however, unless Zakia is no longer a fugitive and is somewhere so they can produce her in court. She could come into the shelter while Ali can stay in hiding.

•  The head of WAW, Manizha Naderi, is happy to talk to Ali, and although she is in the United States now, she will call him in the evening, and this is the number she will be calling from.

•  The WAW shelter is nothing like the one in Bamiyan. If they decide to go to the shelter to discuss their case with the lawyers there, we can go with them and guarantee that they can leave if they want to do so.

•  If they ever change their minds and decide to leave Afghanistan, they’re going to need to have passports, and they’re not going to be able to get them safely while there are criminal charges against them. They need to get the legal case settled. The only countries they could go to without passports are Iran, which is dangerous, and Pakistan, which is difficult.

We drilled away on these talking points every time Jawad got Ali on the phone, and with his father and brothers as well, but he would not even agree to go to the shelter and hear what the lawyers said, let alone agree to Zakia’s checking into the shelter so their case could go to court. When we spoke to Zakia, she deferred to Ali.

A week or more went by with no answer, just an out-of-service message on his number, and then finally came one of the familiar ringtones, from the blind Iranian singer Moein and his song “Past”:

Have no grief about the past,

For the past has passed.

Grief can never remake the past.

Think of the future, of life, of joy.

And if thirst should find no river,

Just drink one drop, and be satisfied.
¹

This time Jawad made some headway, and Ali agreed to meet with us that Friday; his commander had given him a three-day leave. “He was scared,” Jawad said. “I told him, ‘Look, we haven’t done anything to you. We’ve been to your house, been to your father, we could have turned you in anytime. You just have to trust us.’”

“Even today I didn’t tell my wife I was going to see you, because she might have said no,” Ali said. “The last time you came to see us”—when Zakia’s brother was spotted near the Pamir Cinema—“. . . well, she’s very nervous about me. She doesn’t want me to go out at all. She thinks I’ll be arrested, so she’ll be in big trouble.”

Again, we suggested, all the more reason to consider the shelter for her until their legal case was finished. Manizha Naderi of WAW had offered to make that more palatable for Ali by giving him a job as a security guard at the shelter, guarding the outside wall; he would not be allowed inside, since the shelters were female-only spaces, but he’d know Zakia was safe, and they could have chaperoned meetings from time to time. Nothing persuaded him.