The Underground Girls of Kabul (34 page)

With the war’s downward spiral on everyone’s mind in Kabul, finding a viable “exit strategy” was no longer only on the minds of military and foreign policy scholars. Afghans had heard this story before, when six million of them fled the Afghan-Soviet war in the 1980s. After the fall of the Taliban in 2001, many returned from Pakistan and Iran only to find themselves plotting yet another departure a decade later, with those with means hiring smugglers to take them to Europe or Canada.

However, for the foreigners “to leave with some sense of honor intact” and a semblance of at least a “dirty peace,” in the words of a European diplomat, some kind of agreement would ideally be brokered with the militant opposition; a stark change of tune from refusing to speak to the Taliban a decade earlier. Paving the way for “peace talks” with the Taliban became a favorite new diplomatic term in Kabul, and already in 2011, “soft” issues, such as the rights of women, had been taken off any high-level agenda, according to several diplomats. That any political deal with extremists would sacrifice every shred of
women’s rights achieved in the past decade was largely
ignored by all but human rights organizations.

As Setareh reached a spokesperson for the Taliban in Kunar province with a burner phone procured especially for the occasion, he confirmed that once—as he fully expects to happen—the Taliban regains more power in Afghanistan when most American and allied forces withdraw,
bacha posh
will immediately be banned, as those who attempt to change their gender wrongly “touch on God’s creation.” The spokesperson also informed Setareh that women will be removed from all universities, courts, the parliament, and provincial councils, because “God does not want women in any of those places.”

O
N MOST SPRING
Fridays, Babur Gardens in Kabul, which overlook the dust cloud that hovers over the city’s downtown, is a picnic destination for families who decide to risk bringing their children outside for a few hours. Teenage boys balance on the stone terracing and climb onto clusters of low trees in high midday sun. Women stay strictly covered and close to their husbands. Teenage girls are rarely seen. Not much actual picnicking takes place on the brown lawns, but a lone ice cream man does good business by offering cones from a battered box held by a strap around his neck. In the afternoons, the park becomes almost pretty as the low sun begins to set. A man on the grass plays a flute and the dust whirls have stilled.

But Azita both looks and feels a bit out of place in her gold- adorned sunglasses and swaths of black fabric, with the pointy heels just visible underneath. She never went to public places like these as a parliamentarian; now, as a regular person and one among many, she is uneasy. She fears someone will recognize her and think she doesn’t belong there—that she should confine her children to the family’s own private garden, as a richer, more proper woman might do. It’s not entirely appropriate for her to be in a crowd like this, within sight of so many other men, though she is in the company of her own husband. More than anything, Azita is hoping she will not
run into a friend or a colleague from parliament. It would be best if no one recognized her at all. They may start to ask questions about her family and want an introduction to her husband and his first wife. It would embarrass her, that she—the former parliamentarian—has a polygynous family where she is the second wife.

Azita sits down in a stone alcove while her four girls make a bid for the nearest tree. Mehran, in pants and a shirt, yells in triumph as she hangs upside down from a branch. Twins Beheshta and Benafsha smirk and turn to each other, saying something to the effect of “Enjoy it while you can” to their youngest sister. No one cares that Mehran’s untucked shirt falls over her head, exposing her belly as she waves to onlookers.

Now seven, she is still served first in the family, and she still demands to be listened to at all times. Those who surround her encourage her to be smart and strong and loud. The twins don’t even attempt to climb the tree; they wouldn’t want to get dirty. Middle sister Mehrangis announces that she would actually like to try it, only to be rebuffed by her older sisters. She is too clumsy and chubby, they tell her. She would likely fall and injure herself.

Between the money troubles and the political struggle, Mehran’s gender is the least of Azita’s concerns right now.

But how does Mehran make a difference as a boy anymore, when Azita is no longer a parliamentarian and the children rarely go out anyway? “Why would I make my daughter into a son if this society was working?” she snaps back at my question. “Nothing has changed, and nothing will change. It’s only going in the wrong direction here.”

I still don’t understand. There used to be a specific purpose to Mehran being a boy?

Azita closes her eyes briefly, in a rare plea for questions to stop. The family’s life has changed in many ways since the year before, but now is not a good time to talk about it.

A fifth girl, her dark hair in a ponytail, cautiously watches Mehran in the tree, placing herself a few steps behind the twins. She is their half sister, who moved into their new apartment in Kabul along with her mother a few months ago. At thirteen, she is the oldest child
in the family, but next to the twins, who always present as a team and always seem to have something to say, she can rarely find the words. She has been taught not to be loud or move about very much—it’s not what girls do.

Her mother carefully sits down on the stone alcove next to Azita. In a white cotton head scarf, she is absolutely still, looking down at her hands. Her bulky jacket and full-length pale blue skirt are typical of how village women dress, and offer a stark contrast to Azita’s all-black and gold-ornamented sunglasses.

“Would you like us to pose for a picture together?” Azita asks me.

She moves closer and puts her arm around the other woman, who immediately turns her head away. Where she is from, women are not supposed to have their picture taken. It’s awkward, but Azita insists: They are in the capital now—it’s different here and they must all adjust. Azita flashes her professional smile, while the woman next to her reluctantly lifts her head just enough to show her eyes under the head scarf.

Their mutual husband is in a good mood, sending Mehran off with ice cream money after only a minimum of begging. He says he feels good. He is a normal husband now, out with his two wives and their children. Actually, it’s both a relief and a disappointment that Azita no longer has her seat in parliament. But mostly a relief: It was a long and excruciating campaign, and he was always ambivalent about the prospect of living another five years as the husband of a politician. It also embarrassed him a great deal that they first announced victory and then had to pull back. He certainly doesn’t mind the new, bigger apartment, and he knows Azita wants to get back into parliament, but in his view, life is still better this way. He has fewer responsibilities now than when she was in power. Back then, he had to work with her and greet guests or escort constituents who had come traveling. It was exhausting, and sometimes he had to lie down in the afternoons. Most important, for the five years Azita was in parliament, he could not shake the guilt of living in Kabul while his first wife was still in the village.

That situation has been rectified now, to everyone’s benefit, he
says. He is pleased with his decision: Before, he was too busy, shuttling between them in different provinces. Now the women can share responsibility for the household, making it easier on everyone. And with an uncertain outlook for the country beyond 2014, it is probably for the best that Azita is not in parliament anymore. Her being a politician always posed additional risks for the children. For now, he has agreed to stay in Kabul for a few more months, but he is looking forward to a quieter life in Badghis soon. It will be better for the children, too, not having a mother who is constantly questioned and recognized. As a stay-at-home wife and mother, Azita will be more of a role model to them as they look forward to their own future marriages.

A
FGHAN
F
RIED
C
HICKEN
has only one Kabul branch, and the chipped sign advertises its menu as “Clean, Healthy and Tasty.” Azita’s daughters have all been there before, on a few special occasions. The four of them almost fall over one another as they jubilantly skip-step into the restaurant, followed by their older half sister, who walks behind them.

The older girls are too tall and too big to fit comfortably inside the main attraction—a plastic play area with a yellow slide and a house to hide in—but they all squeeze in there anyway. Mehran goes on the mechanical rodeo horse three times in a row, with coins from her father’s pocket. For her sisters, straddling the toy animal is not an option. Two other families are in the restaurant this evening. They might disapprove, or be offended.

Azita quickly orders for the table. She gets the fried chicken for herself, and the chicken burger special with fries for the children, her husband, and his first wife. This is an expensive restaurant for Kabul—fast food is a Western-style luxury. But Azita has decided to splurge, since the children so rarely leave the house these days. She first took them here to celebrate their move to Kabul and her new position. Her husband sits at one end of the long table, and the wives
on the other, with the children’s empty seats between them. There is no conversation.

When a burger on a paper plate lands in front of her, the village wife silently looks at it for several seconds, hands still in her lap. Then she removes the bun on top and looks at the piece of fried meat inside. She puts the bun back. As the children are called back to the table, she does not move again until Beheshta has poured ketchup all over her burger. Only after Beheshta’s first bite into her burger does her stepmother pick up hers and mimic the move. She chews a small bite carefully and puts the burger down again.

Azita’s husband exclaims his confusion out loud. Why is there no bread on the side? There should be bread with every meal, regardless of any burger buns. The restaurant must have made a mistake. He calls on the waiter and complains.

Azita looks down. “It’s not easy for him,” she mumbles. His daughters can all read and write now, on different levels. Their father has made clear his intention not to learn. Why should he, when Azita makes all the decisions anyway, he has joked.

His first wife hushes the children. She never asked to be brought from the village to the capital, nor does she feel particularly at ease here. After living together and then splitting up the household due to too many conflicts, the two wives had developed a courteous but distant relationship. It worked when they occasionally saw each other in Badghis, when Azita was there campaigning or visiting her parents.

Now it’s different.

The first wife never commented much on Azita’s children before, but here in Kabul, she has begun to voice her concerns about how frivolous the family has become, adopting strange customs and behaviors. In her view—and she has let it be known—Azita’s daughters have become spoiled and inappropriately spirited. They speak back to their parents, are reluctant to help out at home, and in general seem to take too much for granted, she has explained.

The first wife, who is also illiterate, has made it clear to Azita that she will not allow her daughter to be influenced by any such Kabul
behavior, which in addition to fantasies of higher studies includes dancing in the living room and watching American movies. She has also noted that Mehran seemed to have her father’s ear, more so than the other girls. It has come to bother her quite a bit. There is no reason to extend extra privileges to his youngest, she has told her husband. After all, she is only a girl. But he brushed off her concerns about Mehran’s behavior. After that lack of response, the first wife told Mehran to wear a head scarf to school—a demand Mehran completely ignored. The blatant disobedience triggered her stepmother even more. She began to taunt Mehran, to imprint the truth in her: “You are not a real boy—you know that, right? You will never be a real boy.”

It works well, as it takes Azita almost a half hour to talk Mehran out of each meltdown that follows.

Just a week earlier, the first wife lectured Mehran about how she should never think she is any closer to her father than the other children, nor that there was a special bond between them. Mehran responded by throwing another fit and yelling at her stepmother. When Azita came in, intending to plead with her husband’s first wife to stop, she instead lost her patience with Mehran, who furiously screamed back. Azita slapped her across the face to make her stop.

It was the first time she had hit her daughter.

“You must never speak to your other mother like that again!” she yelled at her daughter. Mehran went silent immediately. Azita froze as she watched the surprised look on her daughter’s face and the tears that ensued. The red marks on Mehran’s cheek faded, but she did not speak much until the next day.

Azita pleaded with her husband’s first wife to recognize that the
bacha posh
arrangement is to their joint advantage. It helps control the pressure to bring another child into the family. Or a third wife. But that argument gains no traction with the first wife, who has firmly argued that Mehran must look, behave, and be treated like the girl she is. Until Azita understands this, it is necessary to remind Mehran that she is indeed a girl—and an ugly one at that—if she misbehaves.

Underneath these forced but polite conversations between the two wives, they both know exactly what is at stake: If Mehran is stripped of her role as a son, it will also remove Azita’s fragile status as a somewhat more important wife. There is a traditional ranking order between multiple wives married to one husband, where the first-married holds a higher status and more clout in the family. But that is, in turn, calibrated by who produces the most sons. Mehran is all that stands between Azita as she lives now and potentially reverting to the traditionally lower status of second wife. Making an already complicated childhood even more difficult, Mehran thus holds some of the power balance between her mother and her stepmother.