The Underground Girls of Kabul (22 page)

They know gossip is deadly, but their voices are drenched in music and they don’t care. This is a rare opportunity to sit out of earshot of their mothers, who otherwise guard their movements carefully to ensure they are never alone with boys. Which is exactly what their conversation revolves around tonight.

The teenage years leading up to marriage can be some of the most romantic these girls will ever have—not knowing what awaits and who their parents will pick for them. It affords plenty of time for daydreaming of romance. All the girls keep diaries, where they sometimes write down fantasies fueled by saucy, often thinly veiled homoerotic Persian poetry, with its tales of doomed lovers prepared to die violent deaths for each other. And just as fast-drawing heroes of American Western films usually fall for pure and innocent women, the girls’ favorite Bollywood dramas feature dark, passionate, and often violent strangers who abduct coy Indian actresses. In a common narrative, the stranger hardly needs to utter a word before the female decides she is madly in love with him and delighted to
go against her family’s wishes. The film
Titanic
is the perfect Afghan tale, where impossible love ends with death. All the girls have seen grainy, pirated versions of it more than once.

It’s the universally efficient concept of unrequited romance: Never actually speaking to boys makes for endless musings on what they are really like and how to get closer to them. At this wedding, tricks and tips are shared. One girl admits she’s locked eyes with a boy twice, and now they have a bond. Another is more daring: She has accepted a postcard with an Indian actor on it from an admirer. Nothing is written on the card, but the act of delivery, through a wall outside school, sealed the romance. Girls with cell phones or laptops at home or in school have an advantage, as secret Facebook profiles adorned with pictures of flowers and rainbows in place of a headshot can be used for exchanging messages.

As in any largely illiterate country, cell phones sold in Afghanistan feature a variety of animals and cartoon avatars as an option to typing a name on the speed-dial function. Still, the girls routinely erase messages and call lists, as mothers tend to check cell phones at least once a day. To actually meet a boy in person is the gutsiest move of all, since it carries the highest risk. Their imagined boyfriends are perfect, bold, heroic, and willing to die for impossible love. But the greatest crime an Afghan girl can commit is to actually fall in love and act on it. The girls all know a tale of a distant someone who has gone mad from love and tried to kill herself, or who was actually killed by her family. Fantasies about boys are as far as these girls dare take it. At least they can glimpse one another in the city—in the villages, tales of romances will have to be spun from under burkas and by just looking out the window.

Their future marriages consume much psychic energy, as there is so much to ponder: Who is the most beautiful of them? Who among them will marry first? What will they wear? They all agree that the bride onstage is only of average beauty—that is why she has been matched with such an old husband. Every girl is highly aware of her own ranking, and in this group, those with crooked teeth or scars
from cooking oil speak less often than the more obviously stunning girls who know they will bring a big reward for their fathers. Still, they all share the dream of being the center of attention, of sitting on the tinfoil-clad stage, made up like a movie star. Leaving the isolation of a house with parents and siblings for a new family is for now spun like a romantic adventure.

Some of the girls have career ambitions; others do not. What they all know is that it takes more than looks to marry, and that reputation is key. Without that, no prince will appear. Hopefully that future husband will at least have some of his hair left, they joke, as they take turns on the dance floor, generating even more heat in the shuttered room.

The dancing looks like a joyous celebration of womanhood in explosive color, but it has a distinct purpose. A wedding is actually no time to relax among friends—it is a pivotal event, and one’s performance must be flawless. A secondary purpose of a wedding is to generate more weddings in the future. The girls are even filmed on cell phones for discreet distribution to families who get to see them without scarves. Those who take the floor are well aware that they are dancing on a stage before judges in a very serious, high-stakes auction.

O
N THE OPPOSITE
wall of the crowded room, the older women sit in a line, one next to another, wearing more demure dresses in darker colors. Some have kept their head scarves on. They observe the dancing mostly in silence, sometimes exchanging a few words with serious expressions. Chinese whisper games will start, where one woman will nod at a young dancing girl, asking a question that is passed down the row from one woman to another, before a response comes back up the line in the same manner. These women are in the business of finding wives for their sons and they offer up occasional commentary on the performance before them.

“Not so pretty. Her sister is better.”

“That poor one will have a hard time, yes. The dark skin—she is already an old woman. She will have to wait, yes.”

Information about the girl’s family’s honor, purity, and place in society is also exchanged:

“Her mother works, you know.”

“Really?”

Translation: Too progressive. The girl could become a problem.

It all comes down to whether the subject of their observation really is a
proper
girl: “She seems made of fire, that one. Look at her dancing.”

“Yes. Best to be careful. And too much cake in that belly!”

Another woman disagrees: “A little more on the bones will give her husband many children.”

Every now and then, a teenage girl is called forward, always through an intermediary, for a more thorough interview.

“Do you pray?”

“How often?”

“What dishes can you cook?”

It can be a life-changing exchange. This version of Miss Universe takes place every day in Afghanistan, where a girl’s looks, character, and body fat percentage are assessed in short, determined sentences, as women enforce and perpetuate their own subjugation.

To Setareh, who like any other unmarried girl has often been scrutinized by other women, it is a familiar routine. “They spy on us and look at how we dress and how we move. The other women will tell her all the gossip about you—if you have a bad reputation or if you are proper. If it is not a relative, they will ask someone for your address. Then they will spy around the house, and maybe the boy will go to get a look at the girl. If he likes her, his parents go to the girl’s father. But the boy will not be allowed to choose if the mother and father have already found a good girl and decided for him.”

Once these young girls are picked for marriage, their mothers-in-law will control them in their new homes, just as Azita’s once controlled her. In Afghanistan, as in so many other places, abuse teaches
abuse, and older women pass on their own horrors to those who come after. Stories of torture or an honor killing will regularly surface from around the country, and commonly, perpetrators are not the men in the family, but the women. Mothers-in-law do not just condone but also commit acts of violence against daughters-in-law who do not obey. Afghan women have very little tolerance for acts of transgression by other women, particularly those who are younger. As in any suppressed group, one person’s attempt at freedom can be a grave affront to the suffering of others.

Still, both men and women sometimes cultivate the idea that there is a sisterhood among women—a loyalty that exists between those who belong to the softer, kinder, and warmer gender. That they look out for one another in some sort of universal solidarity. Yet
Afghan prosecutor Maria Bashir, who has been heralded as a women’s rights champion by international NGOs as well as the U.S. Department of State, has a long record of relentlessly prosecuting women who flee from abusive husbands or parents who want to force them into a marriage. Those women are often prosecuted on adultery charges, to clearly mark them as whores in society.

W
HAT WILL TAKE
place later on this particular evening, after the bride and groom finally meet in the presence of their families and have spoken their very first words to each other, is shrouded in mystery for the teenage wedding guests.

Most mothers will share nothing; they don’t want to risk tarnishing the mind of an unwed daughter. Instead, creative explanations on the origins of life are traded among the young girls. One has been told that as a baby, she was purchased by her parents from the market; another, that there is a man who distributes babies from a donkey. Those with married sisters have a clearer idea, since highly subjective information has been shared, of what the bodies of men look like and what the wedding night may entail. The idea of taking clothes off in front of a man, as one girl has been told she may need to do, is the first
horror to process. Beyond that, no girl can risk starting a rumor that she is well-informed, so very few details—and often flawed ones—are what get around. Knowing too much can be detrimental for the wedding night, girls are cautioned. The husband may think she has experience. A telltale sign is also if she should express anything other than discomfort and pain in bed. If that should happen—and ideally, it should never—a new bride must make sure not to let it be known to her husband.

Disaster stories are more generously shared, about newlyweds who have ended up at the hospital the next day, due to missteps when trying to consummate the marriage. But if the groom has a previous wife, or if he has taken a trip to visit prostitutes in Tajikistan (a popular weekend destination for wealthier Kabul men) or has had access to online pornography, the situation may be slightly improved, a few of the unmarried girls have been told.

Shortly after the wedding, if no pregnancy occurs, discretion is no longer called for. By then, relatives can begin asking detailed questions about a couple’s frequency and mode of intercourse and disburse advice. If still nothing happens, Dr. Fareiba and her magic-making colleagues may be called in to produce results. Of the right sort, that is.

W
HEN
I
RETURN
to my guesthouse where I rent a spare room, my legs numb after many hours of modestly sitting on my feet on the floor, I find two aid-worker friends cooing together in front of a Soviet-era television set. On the grainy screen, Kate Middleton’s white veil—a symbol of virginity—is being lifted as she is passed from her father to her husband-to-be, England’s royal prince. As the choir sings, they are joined in matrimony, blessed by the archbishop.

As of that moment, when the future Duchess of Cambridge enters into marriage in Westminster Abbey, only one major thing is required of her: to bear a child. It will be another five months after the wedding before
the rules of succession are changed by Queen
Elizabeth II to allow a potential baby girl to inherit the throne. But the issue will remain unresolved throughout the Commonwealth, who may or may not recognize a female heir. And the demand for procreation is nonnegotiable. From this point onward, Kate Middleton’s body owes payment to entities and a tradition more important than herself and her husband.

The dress, the virginal veil, and the modest expression on the future queen consort’s face delight millions of viewers all over the world. She is so thin, so beautiful, so dreamily perfect. It’s a fairy tale to aspire to for many of the two billion witnesses around the world watching on television. The bride has passed many levels of vetting as a very,
very
proper girl, whose womb will ensure the perpetuation of the British Empire.

It’s very romantic.

Shukria

I
N THE END
, the act itself was not as bad as she had been told. Her colleague, a married woman at the hospital, had warned her of something so painful and dehumanizing that she had begun to stutter as she described it. On the wedding night, she told Shukria, a bride did not only suffer excruciating pain—there was also a risk of permanent injury.

“Where?” Shukria, who was soon to marry, asked. “Where will I be injured?” Her friend pursed her lips and closed her eyes. The unspeakable area. Of course.

Twenty-year-old Shukria was embarrassed. She was to be married in only a week and she knew how babies were born, but she really had no specifics on how they were conceived. Indeed, she would be lucky not to end up at the hospital, her colleague continued. Shukria’s new husband would need medical care, too, if things went awry.

“It made me so worried,” Shukria remembers. “I lost weight. What to do? I thought about it all the time. She told me such strange things that I did not understand.”

But when the consummation of her marriage finally took place, Shukria escaped unharmed. It was a little weird, certainly. But “more okay” than what she had been told. It was the other thing that
worried her more—that she ought perhaps to have been the one with a penis. Up until a month before her wedding night, Shukria had lived as a man.