After weeks of torture while the husband tried to make Latifa confess her sin, he finally threw her out. The poor girl first knocked on her father’s door, but her own brother savagely beat her and left her in the middle of the street. It was the only way for them to wash her of sin and save the family’s honour. After that, they lost track of her. Nobody gave a damn; it was as though she were dead.
Later, they found out she had been caught by two policemen, who had spotted her in the street as she was walking unaccompanied by a male family member. They took her into their office and raped her many times in other men’s company, after which they did her the favour of not putting her in jail but left her in the street again. Everybody has lost count of how many times she was raped as a woman alone in the street.
When she was finally brought into hospital on a stretcher, Latifa asked a nurse what she should do. The nurse answered that suicide was the best solution. She even advised her on a way to do it: immolation. This is what Latifa tried to do, but unsuccessfully. Clumsily, she only sprayed her feet with gas, hoping that the flames would set fire to the rest of her body. But while her feet were burning she was not able to endure the pain anymore and started rolling around on the ground. She was saved with her legs burned right to the bones.
Where was she now and what was her future? What happened to her was preferable, said Rasul, as other women who abandoned their family were living as prostitutes, and even drinking, smoking and taking drugs. Latifa was a nightmare for her family. Rasul cited to me the Afghan saying about the three big dangers that threaten their social order: zan, zar, zamin – woman, gold, land. Even though veiled and without freedom, women were the worst of all evils. Lafita’s case was the best example.
In all this, and despite the tyranny exerted by men upon women, there is nevertheless a divine revenge, as even Rasul has to run away from home to escape arguments between his sisters, wives, sisters-in-law and mothers-in-law. They quarrel all day long over small things, be it the best place near the fire, a piece of soap, or a dirty rug. The women of the family are pitiless with one another. It is easy to imagine that they apply to their sisters the same ill-treatment that men inflict upon them. A woman is the only individual with whom another woman can argue in the house.
I have to go. If everything goes well, I will be back tomorrow morning.
Y
To my letter, “Are you back?,” Yannis answered two days later.
Re: Are you back?
The power shut down because of a small shooting. No casualties though.
Marching in front of the garrison, I met Azuz, Rasul’s friend. He too seeks out my company, but he is very different from Rasul, even if he wears the same clothes and his features speak of the same tribal origin. He is also a Pashtun, but God knows from which branch of the tribe. Each new day, Rasul tells me another story about his friend, and I imagine this is because of his poor English. Maybe it is just the fact that he only knows a few words that makes him forget what he said the day before. Each time we talk about Azuz, he adds strange new events to his biography, worried only about pronunciation and awkward new words, without paying attention to the different meanings he evokes.
Yesterday, for example, he told me that Azuz was educated in a Pakistani madrassa, and that this explains his friend’s admiration for our group of men. The orphans born and raised in Pakistan are almost exclusively educated in refugee military camps, without any contact with women. Young men who come from that indoctrinated milieu have neither family nor roots. Little boys are fed all their lives by foreign aid, they are deprived of any lay education, they ignore the traditional arts and crafts, and they do not experience the affective bonds that link members in a tribal society. Their interests are exclusively related to war and blood. This may explain why Azuz is so grim about the fact that there is nothing wrong with the punishment inflicted on disobedient women: they should remain inside the house forever. From his childhood he has been taught that women are just bad seeds, temptations that lead men astray.
In the light of these revelations I understand why Azuz is so attracted by a manly way of life, like ours. Foreign troops look like old religious orders to him. In a way, he really admires us, the invaders. Azuz looks at me passionately each time I touch my clothes, rub my ears, or loosen the strap on my helmet. My body is like a show he does not want to miss. We, too, are living a manly life, a military brotherhood, away from any womanly touch or presence. They keep women away by education and we, by fear. Those veiled women awake in us no desire, as we are not used to guessing the beauty hidden underneath their thick dresses. Azuz’s erotic fantasies are stimulated by even a delicate movement of a dark veil.
Despite his many faults, Rasul seems to me a man educated by tradition. He knows by heart the genealogy of his tribe and of his own family, and he is very proud of it. He knows many legends that he is not able to recount in detail, but his gestures are clear enough for me to get their essence. The traditional anti-feminist culture nonetheless leaves him with a certain tolerance mixed with a lot of envy of the weaker sex. Under the pleats of their dresses and veils, women are not just shadows or evil ghosts but humans endowed with a soul. Rasul has two daughters whom he does not seem to discriminate against compared with his sons. Sometimes he comes to see me accompanied by one of them, the one who is always sick and snotty, wrapped up in threadbare sweaters and wearing her mother’s ragged slippers. Rasul knows that the soldiers will give her candies and chewing gum and even some Kleenex. However, she always uses her sleeves to clean up her abundant snot as her mother uses the Kleenex to light the fire.
I have to leave. I will be back in the evening, a little later though.
Y
You will have seen on TV that Corporal Yannis Alexandridis died in a bomb blast while he and two other soldiers were on a mission to provide food to a garrison in a nearby village.
I, too, heard the news on TV. Nobody mentioned our relationship, and I did not go to his funeral, which was in Montreal. I did not want to meet his mother and his sister, each of them what the Archbishop had called a Lilly crying over the death of the man in their family.
I did not give Yannis the opportunity to know I loved him. I was ashamed to acknowledge how much I needed him and that it isn’t only countries that have to be defended but individuals, too. If I did, he would not have died. My love would maybe have played a role, choosing him for life and not for death.
I refused him moments that should have been ours alone; I did not guess our relationship would be so short. I would have been very happy if he had treated me as his wife just for three weeks. Unfortunately, it’s war that cancels out the possibility of becoming, or simply of continuing to be what you are.
The next day, everyone forgot the incident. North America does not give people much time for regret. Someone who mourns too long ends up on the psychiatrist’s couch. People believe in a quick healing. Love, death, failure – nothing lasts long.
I forgot to tell you about Maisonneuve’s death. That was the best part of the religious plays we made up in Marika’s basement. My friend understood all too well what must have been in this man’s heart when he returned in France, defeated and humiliated.
After being banished from his post, Maisonneuve did not go back to the mansion inherited from his father. He preferred to settle in Paris, a crowded city, where he rented a room for himself and his servant Louis Fin. After a while, he decided to travel a little through Europe. First, he went to Brittany, and then he headed to Amsterdam to see paintings by a painter called Rembrandt. In one of his tableaux, the painter depicted Paul from the shadows, wearing a ridiculous bonnet, with his cheeks hollow and his eyes teary. This is what Maisonneuve had become.
He did not stay abroad any longer. He went back to Paris to dwell in the house of the Fathers of Christian Doctrine, on Fossés-Saint-Victor. In the small garden behind the house, he built a Cana
dian-style wooden cabin for Canadian visitors coming to Paris. Despite his timidity and his secluded life, he was easy to spot. His strong carriage, his height and his dark skin, tanned from long exposure to the sun, were difficult to overlook in a Parisian crowd. Traders regularly saw him along the narrow streets, hobbling from the pain in his left leg.
The faithful Louis Fin, who had followed him into exile, shared his retirement. His life as a servant was quiet, as his master had very modest tastes. Maisonneuve was never a demanding man, and at this time he was even steadier than before and easy to satisfy. His only excess was the time he asked for a flautist to come and play for him. Like Jeanne Mance on the shores of the St. Lawrence, he was quietly preparing for death.
What occasionally disturbed his daily routine was the arrival of a deputation from Montreal looking for money from rich benefactors. That was the only thing that awoke him from his torpor, and he did everything in his power to help them. To celebrate their presence, he himself went to the nearby shop to buy a bottle of good wine. He even unlocked his wooden case to retrieve those old documents that had declared him Governor of Montreal. After their departure, he withdrew into his loneliness again.
As the difficult emotions experienced in Ville Marie faded away, he enjoyed a peaceful new life. From an active faith, he got used to detachment, patience, and silence. He died in a bed covered in furs, just as though he were lying in a Canadian cabin. He bequeathed all his belongings to the Notre Dame congregation and Hôtel Dieu of Montreal.
One day, Marika proposed that we change the story and make it so that Maisonneuve ended his days in Montreal with Jeanne. The brave soldier should never have returned to France. He should have died in his beloved Ville Marie. The two old friends should have grown old together, even though they would have been appalled by the way people were now behaving in the colony. They would have been helpless witnesses to changes that flew in the face of all the pure convictions they had started out with. Their friendship, such a rare friendship, would have helped them to overcome their sorrows more readily.
After a few troubled years, the Montreal community began a new period of peace and prosperity under the authority of the new Governor, Jean Talon. Both Paul and Jeanne would have ended their days watching ships sailing downriver to Quebec, loaded with wood and pelts, while canoes paddled by Indians travelled back and forth between the north and south shores of the St. Lawrence.
Every Sunday, they would have walked side by side in the market at Place d’Armes, where they would have seen barrels of fish, furs stretched out in the sun so the pelts became glossy, and game hanging from iron hooks. The Indians, those formidable hunters who were the children Jeanne and Paul had once baptized, were carrying on the same trade as their parents before them, except that they were now exchanging furs for guns and alcohol.
Free now of their duties, it was only now that the two old friends could think about what their lives had been and what they might have become. They could even confess their passion, as Jeanne and Paul were undoubtedly in love with each other. What had prevented them from admitting their feelings were the daily uncertainties, the danger, and especially the example of morality they had to show their companions.
Jeanne and Paul had missed out on the opportunity to declare their love for each other when they were young. If now, in old age, they did finally admit their passion, they could end up reliving their missed youth. They would have talked about their vanished vigour and beauty, as neither Paul nor Jeanne was bad-looking. They would have amused themselves remembering the dresses Jeanne wore, so shabby and faded that nobody could tell what fabric they were made of. And what about that winter when Paul took down his own curtains to give to the tailor, Guillaume Chartier! And how many other things could they have told each other, as peace was restored within the colony. What religious fervour could prevent a man from falling in love with a woman?
My last thought is for my mother, who lives her own life in this mystic city, which was founded on behalf of a civilization of love, but who is still nostalgic about Greek muses. Is it true that when people get old they rejuvenate themselves with Greek civilization? Somebody said that this happens, particularly in dreams. For my mother this would be nice. Nothing can shock her, least of all the future.
The accelerating rhythms of newness make some people dizzy, but not my mother. She can no longer be astonished by the random piling on of events that turn our lives upside down. Her firm conviction is that the effects of war and migration on the human species are ways the past imposes itself on the present. She mourns losses like that Jewish woman, once upon a time, for each mother knows what hurts her offspring. This war had mortally wounded me, and there was nothing she could do.
If I were to give an account of my present life, I would see how unheroic it is. How many insignificant gestures a woman makes in order to survive in this mysterious sea of life. And how fateful are the consequences of every move she makes to keep the vessel of her existence afloat. I know what you think: I am too young to say that the best part of my life is behind me. But too many hurts suffered at an early age diminish one. I distrust pleasures still to come.
There are still people who ask me for interviews, even though everyone I know questions the role played by foreign troops in Afghanistan. Some of them think I’m someone who should support the war. I still accept their invitations to talk. Even if there is nothing to talk about, I hope my words will at least help preserve people’s memories of the war.
As for me, since Yannis’s death there is no afterwards. What I still have is this routine, with my mother. There is little chance of that being interrupted by anything else, for the postman never rings twice, if you know what I mean.
Acknowledgements
Although this novel was inspired by a true story, all the characters in the book are fictional. My first praise goes to Maclean’s magazine for covering the astonishing story of a young woman and a Canadian soldier in the summer of 2007.
Despite the liberties I have taken in creating this work of fiction, there are writers who played a significant role in helping me – as I have never set foot in Afghanistan – to recreate the Afghan side of the story. I am happy to acknowledge my debt to the American journalist Ann Jones, whom I admire for involvement in the plight of Afghan women, which led her to write Kabul in Winter (Metropolitan, 2006); the Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid’s L’ombre des Taliban (Autrement, 2001), which is essential reading for those interested in the nature of the conflicts in that part of the world; and Angelo Rasanayagam’s Afghanistan: A Modern History (I. B. Tauris, 2003), an erudite journey into the history of this people.
In reconstructing the founding of Montreal, I spent many wonderful hours at the archives of the Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec. It would be impossible to mention all the documents and maps I consulted, but I will single out The People of New France (University of Toronto Press, 1997) by Allan Greer, and Jeanne Mance (Bibliothèque québécoise, 2009), by Françoise Deroy-Pineau.
Of great help in finishing my novel was a grant from Conseil des arts et des letters du Québec along with a residency at The Canadian Institute. The person who encouraged me to submit an application was Émile Martel from PEN Québec, whom I thank once again.
My gratitude to Liz Brooks (now Robertson) for her English lessons, and to Sorel Freedman whose course on Canadian civilization at the Université de Montréal persuaded me to subscribe to Maclean’s. Adela and Bogdan helped by making fun of my accent and the way I pronounce the words “idea” and “better,” which sound to them like “ID” and “Beta.” Calinic persuaded me not to listen to the children. Last but not least, I thank Linda, who made all this possible.
© 2012, Felicia Mihali
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, for any reason, by any means, without the permission of the publisher.
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Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Mihali, Felicia, 1967-
The darling of Kandahar [electronic resource] / Felicia Mihali.
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ISBN 978-0-9878317-1-2
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LITERARY FICTION
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