by Rod Nordland
A report later by the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission details her story, in an English-language version,26 based on an interview with Sabira:
I went to a tailor’s shop where both the tailor and his assistant were present. After a while, the tailor asked his assistant to go out and bring something from the bazaar for him. When the assistant left the shop, the tailor took my hands and brought me to the closet. He asked me to have sex with him while I denied and tried to shout, but his palm was faster. He put it on my mouth and forcibly raped me. He then threatened me not to disclose the case.
Terrified by what would happen if she talked, Sabira remained silent and returned to her home.
Days later, around four p.m., I went with my younger sister to our lands to collect some almonds, where suddenly a villager beat me with a long stick and took me to my paternal uncle’s house. I saw around 50 men from my village gathered in the house. They beat me as well and asked me with whom I have had a relation. After continued beating and under the pain I felt, I finally admitted that a tailor raped me.
Later Sabira recanted her testimony and said that she had admitted to rape only to stop the beating and because it seemed less dire than to admit to consensual sex—which she had not had, but which the men beating her were convinced she had, and so they’d continued to beat her until they had her “confession.” It seemed clear from the reports on the case that Sabira was simply so inexperienced that she was not really clear about what constituted either sex or rape.
When district police arrested the tailor, villagers intervened and insisted that they did not want to see a legal process and preferred to handle the case in a traditional way, through a jirga of clergymen and elders in their village of Nawdeh Hotqol. The government acquiesced in that and released the tailor, handing both Sabira and him over to the villagers for judgment. The villagers believed the tailor’s denials and released him, but for reasons that defy logic they continued to insist that the girl had engaged in sex based on her confession to rape.
Four clergy asked me to answer their questions, which lasted about 15 minutes. I told them that the tailor raped me, but they did not accept my answer and said that my claim was not reliable. They finally decided to lash me a hundred times, while the perpetrator was released because of his denying. I rejected their decision and said that I would appeal for an official due process. But they did not let me go.
Denied any legal process, Sabira was taken out into the desert on the edge of the village and forced to lie facedown in the dirt as crowds gathered on the roofs of homes and on nearby hillsides to watch. The lashes were administered by one of the old mujahideen, a commander from the days of the anti-Communist (and antifeminist) jihad. “One of the famous commanders [was] ordered to lash me one hundred times, but he lashed me one more, one hundred and one,” Sabira said. The 101st lash was the unkindest cut of all. A hundred lashes is enough to severely injure the victim, if administered vigorously, and these lashes reportedly were. The man who whipped her was named Salaam, the junior commander to a local militia leader named Bashi Habib, another former jihadi stalwart, now working as the head of an arbakai unit—a sort of informal police body but really no more than a self-appointed militia.27
Sabira was lashed so brutally that she suffered a permanent injury to her hip. When her parents tried to stop the punishment, they were set upon by the villagers and badly beaten; her father, Iqbal Masoomi, sixty, was hospitalized for two days, and he said that his wife suffered a permanent dent in the side of her skull from the attack.
Zahra Sepehr, executive director of the Development and Support of Afghan Women and Children Organization,28 who worked closely with Sabira and her family, said that Sabira had never been raped, nor had she engaged in sexual intercourse, as the later forensic examination done in Ghazni city showed. Said women’s-rights activist Hussain Hasrat, “They felt that if we do not lash the girl, other girls will follow her and have sex, and the community will be destroyed.” In other words, it didn’t matter whether or not she had sex. The mere suspicion that she had was enough to warrant punishment in order to set a good example, in the eyes of these people from one of Afghanistan’s better-educated communities.
Protests by women’s groups over the girl’s lashing forced authorities to arrest thirteen persons, who were eventually charged in the beatings of Sabira’s parents. The mullahs who ordered her lashing and the two jihadi commanders who carried them out were initially charged but then released after a protest from the Ulema Council—of which one of the mullahs was a member.29 “Many agencies or NGOs were not interested to follow the case because the Ulema Council was involved, and they didn’t want to confront them,” Ms. Sepehr said. The thirteen who were arrested were convicted but received minor fines of three thousand afghanis each, less than sixty dollars—for beating the girl’s father and mother. No one was punished for administering the crippling lashes to Sabira.
The tailor fled Afghanistan, while Sabira spent a year in a women’s shelter in Kabul. She tried to join the Afghan National Army when she reached the legal age of eighteen in 2014—her dream had been to enroll in the military academy and become an army officer. But she had stopped her education at the tenth grade when all this happened, and upon trying to enlist as a common soldier, she was rejected on medical grounds, because of the injury to her hip from the lashings. She was officially classified as permanently disabled.
As of late 2014, she was languishing in a juvenile-detention facility in Kabul, waiting until she turns nineteen. “She has just given up,” said her father. “They ruined her life and took away her future.” It also ruined Mr. Masoomi’s future; he was fired as the village schoolteacher and did not get his job back even after his daughter’s innocence was proved. Until all this happened, Mr. Masoomi’s children had been doing admirably well. One is a nurse, and another is studying obstetrics at medical school in Kabul; except for Sabira, all the others are still in school.
There were eight daughters and no sons in the family, which was the heart of Mr. Masoomi’s problem, said Ms. Sepehr. Not only did that mean he had no sons to defend the home when the other villagers rampaged in response to their suspicions about his daughter, but it also meant that in the eyes of his fellow Afghans he was somehow deficient as the sire of mere females.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to recognize the spirit and generosity of the Afghan and Iranian poets and musicians quoted in this book, who all readily extended permission to cite their work, and who are evidence that love will flourish even in the harshest of environments.
This book was conceived with the help and nurtured by the encouragement of my agent, David Patterson of the Stuart Krichevsky Literary Agency in New York City, who was instrumental in shaping it as well as placing it; they do not come any better. My editor at Ecco, Hilary Redmon, did a masterful job of guiding me through smart and insightful edits that always preserved my voice while encouraging me to make the book ever better. Copy editor Maureen Sugden’s industry and intelligence were impressive, and occasionally life-saving. Thanks as well to Ecco publisher Dan Halpern, whose early and continued enthusiasm for The Lovers was very gratifying. The entire team at Ecco and HarperCollins, including Sonya Cheuse, Ashley Garland, Emma Janaskie, Rachel Meyers, Ben Tomek, Sara Wood, and Craig Young, welcomed this newcomer into their house with tremendous hospitality and support.
Throughout my work on this book, no one was more important than Jawad Sukhanyar, from the Kabul bureau of the New York Times, who was my indispensable interpreter, guide, and intermediary with the lovers and their culture. Jawad’s concern and diligence saved many a day. As a reporter on women’s issues, he has no equal among Afghan journalists of either gender.
My best friend, Matthew Naythons, M.D., was a constructive critic throughout every stage of both my reporting this story and writing the book. The writer Ruth Marshall was my first and most intelligent reader, whose insights and advice proved invaluable. My New York Times colleague Al
issa Johannsen Rubin, who I am proud to say has twice been my boss, brought to bear her deep understanding and long reporting experience on Afghan women’s issues, which greatly improved the context I was able to give to the lovers’ travails. Thanks as well to my editors at the Times and especially Douglas Schorzman, whose usual enthusiasm for stories from Afghanistan gave this one a strong ride early on, making everything that followed possible.
Finally, and most of all, my heartfelt appreciation goes to my wife, Sheila Webb, and to our children, Samantha, Johanna, and Jake Webb Nordland, who all understood the importance of this book and readily accepted seeing even less of me than usual over the past year and a half.
Kabul, October, 2015
NOTES
All quotations in this book are based on my own interviews unless otherwise indicated in the notes; similarly, factual assertions not based on my own reporting are recorded here.
1: UNDER THE GAZE OF THE BUDDHAS
1.New York Times, Mar. 10, 2014, p. A1, www.nytimes.com/2014/03/10/world/asia/2-star-crossed-afghans-cling-to-love-even-at-risk-of-death.html.
Mar. 31, 2014, p. A6, www.nytimes.com/2014/03/31/world/asia/afghan-couple-finally-together-but-a-storybook-ending-is-far-from-assured.html.
Apr. 22, 2014, p. A4, www.nytimes.com/2014/04/22/world/asia/afghan-couple-find-idyllic-hideout-in-mountains-but-not-for-long.html.
May 4, 2014, p. A10, www.nytimes.com/2014/05/04/world/asia/in-spite-of-the-law-afghan-honor-killings-of-women-continue.html.
May 19, 2014, p. A10, www.nytimes.com/2014/05/19/world/asia/afghan-lovers-plight-shaking-up-the-lives-of-those-left-in-their-wake.html.
June 8, 2014, p. A14, www.nytimes.com/2014/06/08/world/asia/forafghan-lovers-joy-is-brief-ending-in-arrest.html.
2.On the Persian calendar, the year begins on March 21, the first day of spring.
3.A permanent terminal building at the Bamiyan Airport was constructed with foreign-aid money in 2015.
4.UNESCO website, “Cultural Landscape and Archaeological Remains of the Bamiyan Valley,” whc.unesco.org/en/list/208.
5.Barbara Crossette, New York Times, Mar. 19, 2011. “Taliban Explains Buddha Demolition,” www.nytimes.com/2001/03/19/world/19TALI.html. The Taliban objected to any representation of human or animal form, whether statues or artworks, and carried out similar depredations on objects and paintings in the National Museum of Afghanistan.
6.
7.At least one of the girls remained in the shelter even more than a year later, as of early 2015, according to sources in the Bamiyan provincial government. Their names are changed for their protection.
8.
9.
10.“It’s actually considered a shame if someone knows the name of your wife,” said Wazhma Frogh, an Afghan women’s activist with the Research Institute for Women, Peace & Security. “No one is allowed to ask this. We are considered the property of the father, husband, brother—even your younger brother has the right of ownership over you. You are not a person, you are the wife of a person, the sister of a person. We are not considered as human beings in our own rights.”
11.One popular joke goes like this: There’s a knock on a mullah’s door, and he opens it to see his daughter standing there crying. “What’s the matter?” he asks. She tells him her husband has been beating her. Immediately he slaps her in the face and orders her to go home. Then he calls her husband and berates him for beating his daughter. “I got even with you, though,” he said. “I smacked your wife. How do you like that?”
2: DEAD FATHER’S DAUGHTER
1.Hazarajat refers to the central highlands of Bamiyan and neighboring provinces, where Hazara people predominate. Some other remote northern areas such as Badakhshan Province in the far northeast were also free of Taliban control during that period.
2.The Hazaras were subjected to a campaign of massacres in the nineteenth century, which they describe as a genocide, followed by their widespread enslavement by the dominant Pashtuns. The Taliban are mostly Pashtuns. Hazaras have long been Afghanistan’s underclass, but their status has only recently begun to change. See www.hazara.net/hazara/history/slavery.html.
3.Although education was free, having children in school is costly to farm families because of the reduced labor force.
4.Because of the dubious Afghan belief in the religious sanctity of the burqa, it can actually be risky for foreign women to wear it, as some of my female colleagues do in dangerous parts of the country. Wearing it is an effective disguise only from a good distance. Afghans are quick to spot foreigners in burqas, either from their shoes or by how they carry themselves in such an unfamiliar garment. Similarly, male suicide bombers who have tried to dress in a burqa to get close to a target are usually quickly spotted by Afghan guards. Afghan men often boast that they can tell if a woman is beautiful, even when she is wearing a burqa.
5.
6.The Night of the Lovers program’s Facebook page is at www.facebook.com/arman.fm/videos.
7.The Night of the Lovers program had been running for sixteen months when he was interviewed in June 2015, airing close to a thousand love stories, of which only ten were happy ones—1 percent.
8.Of the 176 prisoners in Badam Bagh Prison in November 2014, according to Qazi Parveen of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission, 75 to 85 percent of them are convicted or charged with moral crimes. Seven of the prisoners are pregnant, three have given birth since their incarceration, and forty small children are living with their mothers in the prison. When I visited Badam Bagh on November 14, 2014, the population that day, according to inmate rolls provided by the officials on duty, included seventy-six adultery cases, twenty-two cases of runaways, seven cases of alcohol consumption, and five cases of attempted adultery, or about 65 percent moral cases. Note the runaway charges, despite the abolition, in the EVAW law of 2009, of the charge of running away from home.
9.Official figures on drug use among the Afghan security forces have shown that from 12 to 41 percent of Afghan National Police recruits test positive for illegal drugs, usually hash or opiates. Figures among army soldiers are lower but still worrisome. New York Times, May 16, 2010, p. A4, “Sign of Afghan Addiction May Also Be Its Remedy,” www.nytimes.com/2010/05/17/world/asia/17afghan.html.
10.Desertion has been the bane of the Afghan military, which loses a third of its force annually to attrition, including casualties, failure to reenlist, and especially desertion, which is so common that the government does not dare to criminalize it. See New York Times, Oct. 16, 2012, p. A1, “Afghan Army’s Turnover Threatens U.S. Strategy.” Further data on attrition can be found in the Brookings Afghanistan Index, www.brookings.edu/~/media/Programs/foreign-policy/afghanistan-index/index20150520.pdf?la=en.
11.
12.
13.A good summary of the EVAW law’s provisions is available in this report by the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, “A Long Way to Go,” Nov. 2011, www.ohchr.org/Documents/Countries/AF/UNAMA_Nov2011.pdf.
14.UNICEF, “Monitoring the Situation of Women and Children,” May 2015. By age fifteen, 15 percent of Afghan girls are married; 40 percent are married before age eighteen. The legal age of marriage under Af-ghan law is sixteen. See http://data.unicef.org/child-protection/child-marriage.
15.
16.Khadija’s husband, Mohammad Hadi, now lives in Kabul, where he married again at age twenty-three, and says he is not sure whether Khadija was killed or whether she might have escaped from her family; he is reluctant to believe the worst and still loves her, he said. Unfortunately, Mohammad’s family was under such threat after the controversy over their marriage that they all relocated to Kabul around the same time that Khadija disappeared.
“She had a lot of courage, she was courageous enough to escape, but we had to flee our home, and she wouldn’t know where to find me,” Mohammad said. He still hopes that one day Khadija will find him and says his new wife is no impediment. “If she came back, I would live with them both,” he said. Marrying up to four w
ives is legal under shariah law, and having two wives is not uncommon in Afghanistan.
17.The Afghan version mostly tracks the great twelfth-century Persian poet Nezami’s epic retelling of the original Arabian story. See “Persian Poetry: Nezami Ganjavi,” on the University of Arizona’s website at http://persianpoetry.arizona.edu.
18.According to Global Rights, March 2008, “Living with Violence: A National Report on Domestic Abuse in Afghanistan,” 58.8 percent of Afghan women are in forced marriages, either arranged marriages to which they objected or marriages made when they were still children. See www.globalrights.org/Library/Women%27s%20rights/Living%20with%20 Violence%20Afghan.pdf.
3: ZAKIA MAKES HER MOVE
1.The Afghan Constitution in English (which is the document’s mother tongue) can be found at www.afghan-web.com/politics/current_consti tution.html. In addition to guaranteeing women the right to education and a share of seats in parliament and provincial councils, Article 22 reads, “The citizens of Afghanistan—whether man or woman—have equal rights and duties before the law.”
2.The death penalty is applied only in adultery cases where the woman was married, but Zakia’s father later insisted that had been the case with her. In practice, death by stoning usually is not instituted by Afghan courts in adultery cases, although in many instances communities take it upon themselves to impose such punishment.
3.Sabira’s case is discussed in more detail beginning on p. 307.