The Lovers (31 page)

The next day the Consultant picked Jawad up in what he called his mobile office, a bright red, brand-new Toyota Corolla, decked out with flashing blue-white LED lights below the front and rear fenders and along the running boards—pimp lights, people called them. They drove around for a while until the Consultant indicated the center console box. Jawad lifted the lid, where there was a pile of forty or fifty Afghan passports. The Consultant had no idea where their specific passports were but invited Jawad to root through the pile until he found them, which he soon did.

A couple of weeks later, Jawad brought the couple and Anwar to see the Consultant. He’d been suspicious when Jawad had called him and asked him to meet with what Jawad referred to as “my friends,” just to give them some advice about going to Tajikistan. It was not normally part of his services, he said, and he was about to hang up when Jawad mentioned he was willing to pay a fifty-dollar fee. The Consultant insisted he did not need to be paid, that it was not about money, but he was busy and would have to skip other work, so he agreed to take the fifty dollars anyway. He set a meeting place for them in front of the bakery on Lane 6, off Street 15, and when Jawad and the three of them arrived, the Consultant gripped the old man, Anwar, by the arm and led them all off to the shade of a big tree on the corner; he had no intention of taking them to his place.

Under the tree he rather rudely looked them all up and down. True, that was part of his assignment, but no one ever looks at women like that in Afghanistan, not openly anyway. Zakia was in her electric blue long dress, its numerous little bone clasps up the front cinched tight almost to popping with her pregnancy, which was still not evident except to those who knew her well; on her head was a stylish matching blue scarf. The white leather high
heels—those would have to go, he said right away. Something plain. As for her dress, that was no problem; she would have to wear a full black
hejab
and keep her face veiled, so the dress would not show anyway. Ali had on a T-shirt and nondescript trousers—they would do, but his pointy white leather shoes would have to go. Then there was Anwar, who in his attempt to look less conspicuous had changed his old silk turban for a white skullcap, but the rest of his clean but well-worn clothes said “farmer,” and where they were going, that meant “refugee.” With Anwar, he said, it all had to go, everything new. “Look at Jawad,” he told them. Jawad was wearing Western clothes and nothing flashy. “That is how you should all dress.”

“Listen, Uncle,” the Consultant said—focusing on Anwar as the weak link—“you speak the language, so you won’t have any problem. Be brave, don’t be shy. If you’re shy, they will suspect you and there will be problems for you. Tell them you’re just coming to see Tajikistan and you might come again and do some business. Say you have a business in Afghanistan—whatever comes in your mind as a business, tell them that. But be sure to change your clothes. And don’t be afraid of them. If they ask you for a bribe at the airport, just leave some small notes in your passport and let them take them. They’re very greedy. That’s their nature, this is how they are. The police especially are very greedy, but don’t worry, it won’t be a problem.”

The next flight to Dushanbe was on Wednesday, three days away; they aimed to be on it, the three of them and Jawad. As an American I didn’t need a visa but had decided against going along, because it would only draw more attention to them, even if I pretended to be traveling separately. Few foreigners fly from Afghanistan to Tajikistan.

There was some good news before they left. Zakia had had another bout of morning sickness, and her doting men rushed her down to the hospital, a well-worn routine now; usually the doctors sent them to the pharmacy with a prescription, and since they could not read, they had no idea it was merely vitamins, just a placebo.
This time, though, the doctor at the hospital was concerned enough to order an ultrasound. Fortunately, the baby was okay, the doctor said, but, he regretted to tell them, it was a girl.

How did Ali feel about that? “A girl? Why not? We are happy to have a baby girl. When I heard it, I was happy. We want the child to be a good child, is all. Obviously, men as fathers prefer to have sons, and women as mothers prefer girls, because daughters will help their mothers when they grow up, and sons will help the father. But I was very happy.” He sounded a little as if he were trying to convince himself. “At least she will choose her own husband, because she will be the one who has to live with him, not us.” He had no intention of reproducing the large families of his father’s generation, he said. “The most I would prefer is one daughter and one son. More is so difficult to provide for economically. In the past, people did not have much awareness and they were not educated, they did not know much, so that’s why they would have so many. Of course it’s God who will care for and protect the children, but it’s better to be careful yourself, too.” The couple agreed that it would be Zakia who chose their daughter’s name, but what that might be, she refused to say.

Zakia was more introspective, contemplating a daughter. “Of course we don’t mind whether it’s a boy or a girl—it’s all God’s property, boy or girl—but what is important, I don’t want her to be like us. Now we’re going to Tajikistan, and we can’t even read and write. I’ve never been anywhere but Bamiyan and Kabul and the mountains. I don’t even know where Tajikistan is. I want her to be educated, to be good, and someday, after all this bad experience we have had, these bad times, I want her to do what she wants to do.”

It was one thing to be illiterate down on the farm; the need to read was never all that pressing there. Their months on the run, though, especially hiding in a big city, had made them keenly feel their handicap. “If you can’t read and write, it’s just as if you’re blind,” she said. Street signs are mysterious. The numbers on currency, meaningless. Instructions on packets of medicine, labels in the supermarket, a sign on a shop door saying “Back in an
hour,” a note from the doctor—all indecipherable. Typically, half the packaged food on sale in Kabul supermarkets is long past its expiration date; they would never know. “Someday I hope we can learn to read and write,” Zakia said, “It should be possible, since we’re still very young and will have a long life—although it’s never really known how long we have to live.”

Her smiles still lit up rooms, and she smiled a lot those last three days in Afghanistan. “We are ready. I got a veil, I didn’t need much. The men needed much more than me. In one way I’m happy, I’m excited because we will be free there, but in another way I’m worried, since we’ve never been there before. Will we manage to live there okay?”

Ali reacted as he usually did, with a love poem memorized from a song. As usual, he knew neither the name nor the author, just the words:
¹³

Though I am far away and cannot see you

There’s no reason to think I could be unfaithful.

My loyalty to you is such that your name is always on my lips.
¹⁴

There was still enough money on deposit with Women for Afghan Women to give them what they’d need for living expenses for a good three months in Tajikistan, possibly more, and they made a final visit to the NGO to withdraw it and to talk to the group’s capable country director, Najia Nasim. Beautiful and charismatic, Najia carried the day on many of the group’s regular crises by sheer force of personality, and her warmth and directness was a dose of what the couple needed on the eve of their departure. “You should be optimistic about the future. Tajikistan won’t be a problem. You’ll get through it. There will be a lot of bureaucracy, and it may take a long time, but you’re young and you will get through it.

“You know you are both very famous now, and you must take care until you are out of Afghanistan. Separate into two groups on the plane, Zakia and Anwar together and Jawad and Ali together, and don’t talk to one another on the way.

“Zakia, you are lucky. Ali cannot wear anything to cover his face—if he does, everyone will suspect him.” They all laughed. “But you can wear something to cover your face. I do it myself when I go to the provinces.”

Jawad checked on their preparations and realized they had planned to bundle up their possessions in cloth and tie the bundles with string, checking that as their luggage; it would not do. He helped them buy a suitcase each, just one, so they did not look as if they were moving to Tajikistan forever.

In our last meeting, Ali began laughing to himself—a habit he had when he was introducing an embarrassing subject. “What’s up Ali?”

“You’re not going to leave us there, are you? Just once we get to Tajikistan, leave us on our own and we’ll end up begging in the streets?”

“No, Ali, we’re not going to abandon you there, don’t worry. Once you’re refugees, we’ll come and visit you, and there are Western Union offices all over the country. People will be able to send money to help you.”

On Wednesday morning Jawad picked them all up at the usual place. They were late, though, so when Jawad saw that Anwar was still dressed like a peasant from Bamiyan, ancient silk turban and all, it was too late to do anything about it. He figured the old man would be forgiven his retro look by virtue of his age; could Tajikistan really be all that different from Afghanistan’s predominantly Tajik north, after all? Traditional dress was common there.

Everything went smoothly at Kabul International Airport; no one recognized Zakia with her veils on or Ali with his close-cropped head. The passport authorities seemed indifferent, and the group was soon aboard the hour-and-a-half-long Kam Air flight to Dushanbe.

13

IN THE LAND OF THE BOTTOM-FEEDERS

Tajikistan’s two biggest exports are aluminum from the state-controlled monopoly—the proceeds of which are believed to be funneled into offshore companies belonging to the dictatorial president, Emomali Rahmon—and prostitutes. Women from Tajikistan fill brothels throughout South Asia, including in Afghanistan, where indigenous prostitution is rare, despite the poverty. As the American ambassador to Tajikistan described it in a report to the State Department, “From the president down to the policeman on the street, government is characterized by cronyism and corruption.”
¹
The country is so broke with such a trade deficit that its only hope is foreign investment, but the few investors who dare to come rarely stay long. One prominent Afghan businessman told me he had closed his factory in Dushanbe, putting dozens out of work, because the annual bribes demanded by the tax office exceeded his annual gross profits.
²
Mahmadsaid Ubaidulloev, the chairman of the upper house of the Tajik parliament, a rubber-stamp body like all of the country’s democratic institutions, was not just corrupt but, as described in another leaked State Department cable, deeply delusional. Discussing the Afghan War with the American ambassador, Richard E.
Hoagland, Mr. Ubaidulloev, who was also the mayor of the capital city, Dushanbe, warned the ambassador about extraterrestrial wars to come. “We know there is life on other planets, but we must make peace here first,” Mr. Hoagland quoted him as saying. Worried about the rampant drug smuggling across the shared Afghan-Tajik frontier, the State Department’s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement (INL) contracted with a Tajik firm to make winter uniforms for the country’s border force, only to discover they were being made of lightweight summer material by female Tajik workers who went unpaid for their labor. Another INL project provided the border patrol with bomb- and drug-sniffing dogs, highly trained animals that can sell for more than a hundred thousand dollars each. An INL inspection discovered that the dogs were being used as watchdogs in freezing conditions and had been put out to stud to breed other dogs for sale. The INL recommended that any future dogs sent there be neutered first to prevent that from happening again. In addition, many of the sniffer dogs could not be accounted for at all.
³
As the border guards were poorly paid and underfed, there was speculation that some of America’s dogs had been eaten.

In retrospect, I should have known better than to help the lovers flee to Tajikistan. We just did not appreciate how brazen the corruption was there. After all, we thought, they were Muslims and Tajiks, like Afghanistan’s second-largest ethnic group and like Zakia’s family—how different could they be, even in a former Soviet republic? And anyway, what would corrupt Tajik officials care about three poor Afghans?

“Dushanbe Airport,” reads a publicity blurb on its website in English, “is indeed a delight for the passengers as it caters varied services in a truly graceful way. It is categorized as a ‘civil airport’ as both the common masses as well as the officials belonging to the armed forces like the Military.” Predictably, decades of Communist rule have left their mark; the terminal is ugly, squat, functional, and small.

The plan for them all to travel separately unraveled as soon as they reached immigration, because of one unexpected detail: the landing cards. An immigration officer pointed to the pile on a
counter, and Zakia and Anwar looked at it blankly; Jawad, coming up behind, realized the problem and joined them to help them fill out the cards. It drew attention to the whole group, all the more so because Anwar was the only man in the terminal wearing traditional garb. The Tajik immigration officers knew a moneymaking opportunity when they saw it and grilled all four of them; the officials scoffed at the few small bills the group had offered in their passports and demanded a hundred dollars each to let them into the country, even though they had valid visas. They settled for fifty somonis apiece—about ten dollars. Bad as that was, it seemed more annoying than threatening. Tajik airport officials were crooked, it seemed, but cheap.