Dear Zari: Hidden Stories from Women of Afghanistan (10 page)

I did eventually ask my mother who all these people that kept calling at our house were and she said, ‘I don’t know, but I’m certain of one thing and that is that something bad is happening. I feel as though there is a dark shadow over us and it frightens me
.’

The next day my father told my mother to prepare special food for some guests he had coming. My mother appeared to know who they were but wouldn’t tell me; and this is the one thing I can’t forgive her for. She could at least have told me in secret what was happening. And so the guests – all elders in the Pashtun community – arrived and ate the food my mother had prepared, and I could hear them discussing someone’s marriage. When finally they left my mother asked me to help her wash the dishes, and I helped because there was nothing else to do. From the very day my father had found out about my love for Abdullah he had banned me from going
to school and even from leaving the house, so I was effectively a prisoner in my own home. And during this time, with nothing to do, all I did was dream about Abdullah. But of course I heard nothing from him, as it was far too dangerous for him to get in touch; my family would not have hesitated to have him and me killed if he had so much as tried to contact me
.

While I was washing the dishes my mother said, ‘Hurry up with the washing-up. I need to put henna on your hands’. I asked why she wanted to do this when it wasn’t Eid or any other special occasion, and she replied, ‘It’s because you’re getting married. Tomorrow you will be going to a new home.’ For one wild and happy moment, I thought I was going to be reunited with my love, and felt like a bird that has just been released from its cage
.

I asked my mother, ‘Is he going to come for me?’ and she shouted at me, ‘Have you no shame? Haven’t I told you to forget Abdullah? Don’t ever mention his name in front of your husband or your life will be a living hell
.’

I began crying, ‘But I don’t want this to happen. Who is this man? Father can’t do this to me
.’

‘
Your father can certainly do this, and what you want has nothing to do with it. Your father has already taken a lot of money from this family to see you married
.’

I begged my mother to help me escape, but she began crying and saying that I had committed a sin and must be punished for it. I pleaded with her that I wasn’t a criminal and only wanted to be with Abdullah. At the very mention of his name she slapped me and called me shameless
.

You should be thankful your father didn’t kill you. If he were like other Afghan fathers he would have disowned you by now. At least he is civil to you. At this I began screaming that I would rather be dead than marry another man, as I loved Abdullah and knew he was waiting for me. My mother scoffed at the mention of love, saying it was nonsense and that Afghan girls didn’t love boys and were certainly not allowed to marry someone they loved
.

I spent the whole night crying and refused to let my mother paint henna on my hands. I was a wretchedly unhappy bride. At midday, my uncle and one of my brothers came to fetch me. But I was a bride without a wedding, and
I didn’t even have the traditional new dress usually given to brides or any presents. Above all, though, I couldn’t believe the fact that no one in my family had any sympathy for me. I clung to the doorpost as my uncle dragged me away, before bundling me into a car. Waiting for me in that car was my new husband, a forty-year-old drug addict. I kept crying and shouted at the man in the car, ‘Uncle, please tell them not to take me’, but he just laughed and said I was the first bride to call her husband an uncle. He grasped my hand in his large, rough hand and said, ‘Shut your mouth. I’m your husband now and I’ve paid a lot of money for you
.’

He kept repeating that I was his now, and when he smiled I could see his yellow teeth. He was laughing, happy that he would soon be having sex with a fourteen-year-old virgin. A part of me died then, and my family ceased to exist for me. I’d extinguished any feelings I’d had for them
.

Even though I couldn’t see Nasreen’s face I could tell that she had once been beautiful, but that life and hardship had aged her. A feeling of trust had sprung up between us.

Zari, dear, all the happy times I’d ever had with my family were gone. My relationship with my mother was no more, and I’d left behind my precious bangles. I didn’t even have a spare set of clothes. That day, although my soul died, my love for Abdullah lived on and the pain of being separated from him was sharper than ever. It was the start of a lifetime of suffering
.

I asked Nasreen if she had ever seen Abdullah again. She said she hadn’t, and that she hadn’t even seen her own parents again.

They thought I was a bad woman because I loved a man. Well, I still love him, and I want them to know that although I can’t be with him my feelings for him remain unchanged. I can even still picture his smile
.

She then returned to the story of her forced marriage.

I was taken to this man’s home – a dark room on the outskirts of Kabul, far away from my parents’ home and far away from all the people I knew.
This man, this so-called husband of mine, raped me that night; a forty-year-old man sexually assaulted me, a young girl. But I was already dead inside and my innocence was shattered. I could never forget Abdullah, though, and I really hope he has married someone nice and has a happy family life
.

My married life began and I lived like a maid, cooking this man’s food, eating the leftovers and even preparing his hashish. Sometimes he would beat me up as though I were an animal if I was too slow making his tea or preparing his drugs. I just wanted to die. But now I’m an old woman living a pointless, empty life who is simply waiting for God to end it. This is my story
.

At this point I stopped recording, my head full of thoughts of Nasreen and her wretched life. I thought too of how she would have been when she was fourteen, fresh and pretty, and tried to work out how I would edit this material. When Nasreen’s story eventually went out on air, I noticed some of my Afghan colleagues here in London made snide comments about her. One said that since she’d fallen in love when she was so young then it wasn’t surprising she’d had to face the consequences. I was at a loss to know what to say. To me, Nasreen was just an ordinary girl who’d had a crush on a boy, as many girls do at that age. Her love was innocent, and in my opinion she’d done nothing wrong by simply following her feelings, but she’d paid a terrible price for doing so.

I know in most societies women are not judged simply for liking a man and that relationships are allowed to develop naturally; a woman and man understand each other, their love grows and they can choose whether to get married. As a result girls and boys learn from what they see and begin to understand how to go about finding the right partner. Yet here I was in the UK having to endure the sneers of some of my male colleagues. I didn’t say anything in response, though, but kept quiet. I may have been living in the UK but I was working in a male Afghan environment, so I couldn’t defend Nasreen or some of my colleagues
would see me as a woman who was using the radio to encourage other women to do shameful things. All I could do was pray that Nasreen would be the last girl to suffer in this way.

One important thing I have learnt from Nasreen’s story is that no matter where an Afghan woman or girl lives – whether she is brought up in the UK or in Kabul – as long as she is Afghan, she is not allowed to fall in love or express her love for a man openly, and most especially not to her mother or father. To do so would be unacceptable and bring shame on the family. If she were to have an open relationship with a man whom she might one day want to marry, she would be subject to gossip and back-biting from within her community. It wouldn’t matter if her parents had brought her up to be a responsible member of society; within her community all her good qualities would be ignored and she’d be branded a slut.

Over the past four years I have met some young Afghan women who have boyfriends, but their relationships are usually kept within a circle of friends most of whom are not Afghan. They tend to live two very different lives in one city: when they are away from the family home, they are just like any other Western girl, but once they’re back home they become a traditional Afghan woman, who doesn’t talk about men, go out with friends or enjoy a loving relationship with a man. I personally consider Nasreen to be an immensely brave woman; she at least had the courage to tell her mother about her love for Abdullah, and I can understand just how hard that must have been. If even I – a financially independent Afghan woman living in an open society like the UK – find it hard to talk about my true feelings with my family, then I can fully appreciate just what Nasreen has been through by revealing her love for Abdullah within her closed world.

I often find the attitude of some Afghans here in the UK very upsetting. Some have been living here for more than ten years but they have maintained strong Afghan traditions and cultural values. On my visits to Afghanistan I’ve met a number of different Afghan men and women, and have been interested to find that some of those who stayed in their
own country were much more relaxed about accepting changing values that might have been seen as damaging to their family honour or culture twenty years ago. For example, in some cities families have started letting their daughters and sons go abroad for higher education, taking up the scholarships being offered to young Afghans by Western countries. Yet here in London I have met Afghan parents who strongly oppose the idea of their sons or daughters even living in student halls of residence, as the family’s reputation could be damaged. Reputation and the family name is everything. So if a daughter marries the man of her parents’ choosing, she will be respected and held up as an example to other girls who dream of falling in love. This is the pressure young Afghan women struggle to live with.

She spoke in a shaky voice, her hands were rough and calloused and her face was lined with wrinkles. Each line told the story of her life, and, as Shereenjan herself said, her whole body showed what sort of life she had led.

She was sitting in front of me with her legs tucked round to one side, her large scarf partly draped on the floor. On her feet she wore the plastic shoes older people in Afghanistan so often wear, and her brown dress and
shalwar
were faded. I first met Shereenjan in the summer of 2006 when I was on a work trip to Afghanistan. She lived in the outskirts of Kabul near my grandparents and uncles. I usually spend a day or two with my grandparents and the rest of the family – who all live in one big house – when I visit Kabul, and was one day chatting to my uncle’s wife about the life stories on Afghan Woman’s Hour when she mentioned Shereenjan. I was intrigued by what I heard and asked my uncle’s wife to introduce me to her. I wanted to see if I could persuade her to tell us her story.

When I met her, Sheerenjan said, ‘Look, my child, if I tell you my story in detail, you’ll have to bring twenty cassettes with you. It’s a very long story and most people won’t actually believe what has happened to me.’ At this she laughed. ‘As you can see I’m alive and well, but I do sometimes wonder how I’ve survived everything that’s happened to me.’

I told Shereenjan I would love to hear her story, even if it meant returning with twenty cassettes, and I left her house pleased at having found someone whose life story would relate old Afghan traditions. Back in my room at the BBC guesthouse I lay on my bed and rested, until suddenly my mobile phone rang. It was my mother calling from England, and I was happy to hear from her. She told me that one of our relatives who lived in Pakistan needed some money to help pay for her wedding, so I took the relative’s phone number and promised my mother I would get in touch. That night I slept badly – I couldn’t get Shereenjan out of my mind and was really excited about recording her story. In fact, the UN Human Rights Commission says there are hundreds of women in the remote corners of Afghanistan whose terrible stories are never heard, but at least Shereenjan could finally tell hers.

Another phone call woke me early the next morning. I heard a nervous female voice speaking Pashtu but didn’t recognise it, and asked who it was. The woman on the phone said she was Pana’s auntie, and began crying. I realised that Pana and her auntie were the relatives my mother had wanted me to get in touch with about money for a wedding. I remembered Pana’s mother from childhood memories of when I lived in Kabul. She would often come to our house and, because she was family, would sometimes stay the night, but when the war broke out she had gone to live with her parents in Pakistan. She’d got married, had a boy and a girl, but tragically died when her daughter was only two months old, leaving both her children to be looked after by their grandparents. The grandfather was a traditional village man who believed in following old customs, one of which was the practice of using women to settle disputes, known as
dukhmany
.