The Repercussions

by Catherine Hall

  Rashida frowned. I wondered if I’d pushed it too far, but then she nodded.

  “You know, it won’t be easy. It isn’t something people talk about. It’s too shaming.”

  “Are there any shelters for women who’ve run away from violence?”

  “I don’t know. But I can find out.”

  “Great.”

  “We could also try Badam Bagh prison: it’s for women only.”

  “What’s the connection?”

  “Well, some of them are in for moral crimes.”

  “Moral crimes?”

  “Being found alone with a man who is not from your family. Running away from home. You were talking about being beaten. If you are beaten by your husband and you leave him, you can be sent to prison.”

  “That’s crazy.”

  “That’s how it is.”

  “Well then, that’s where we’ll go.”

  As we started the long process of getting access to Badam Bagh, Rashida got in touch with the women’s shelters. Most were too scared to allow a journalist anywhere near them, but eventually Rashida managed to fix a meeting with a woman called Gulshan.

  “I’ve worked at the shelter for ten years, since it was opened,” she said. “By a British lady. It was the first one – before it there was nothing.”

  “And would it be possible for me to talk to the women there?”

  As Rashida translated, she shook her head. “It would have been all right before,” she said. “When it was managed by the charity. But the government is in control now.”

  “Has it changed a lot?”

  She nodded. “Now each woman has to go in front of a panel that decides if she can be at the shelter. All men, of course. If they want, they can send her home. Or they can send her to jail if they think she has dishonoured her family. And if you are not married, you have to have a medical examination to prove you are still a virgin, which is a very difficult thing to go through, especially if you’ve been raped.”

  “What?”

  “They don’t want women to think they can just come to the shelters because they don’t want to live at home. They don’t want to encourage that.”

  “Do you think that’s why they come?”

  She shook her head. “No. They come because they have no other choice.”

  “And do you think I could take their photographs?”

  “It would be difficult. The women might not want it, and the government wants to protect our country’s reputation. The last time a photographer approached us, a few months ago, they were very unhappy.”

  When Gulshan had gone, Rashida and I sat there, thinking.

  “We could pay a bribe,” I said. “That would probably change their minds. But I don’t want to do that. It’d feel like paying to get to the women. Like buying your way into a brothel.”

  Rashida gave a weary smile. “Many people believe that’s what those places are.”

  “The shelters?”

  “They think that since these women are living without men, they must be prostitutes.”

  “But that’s absurd.”

  “My brothers would be the same. I haven’t told them what we are trying to do. They wouldn’t like it.”

  “Listen, Rashida. I don’t want you to get into trouble because of me.”

  She lifted her chin. “I want to be a journalist. I studied hard for it. This is my chance, Jo-jan. At the moment it’s OK. They say you are like a man but not a man, and so I can work with you.”

  “Like a man?”

  “Yes. You move around on your own like a man. You live alone like a man. You are free like a man. But you are not a man, and so I can be with you. If you were a man, they would never have allowed it.”

  I thought, not for the first time, how glad I was that Rashida’s brothers didn’t know everything about me.

  “All right, you decide. But if things gets too much, you tell me, OK?”

  Twenty-Eight

  ELIZABETH WILLOUGHBY’S DIARY

  14th March 1915

  The newspapers are filled with stories of success in France. Our troops have captured a village called Neuve-Chapelle and with it more than a thousand German prisoners. The news is all of the soldiers’ pluck, and how far we managed to advance, but I am not convinced. The ‘Eyewitness’ column in the Gazette said that it was a “brilliant victory”, but I find it difficult to know what “victory” means any more. They say nothing about the wounded that have begun to pour in on crowded trains.

  I suspected that something was afoot. I have noticed a pattern: when a battle is about to start, the French hospitals empty their beds to make space for the newly injured. Ninety-nine patients arrived from France last week, and many more went up to the Kitchener. I wrote to Robert to ask what was happening, and if he were involved, although I knew he wouldn’t be able to tell me much. When he didn’t reply, I scoured the newspapers for information, but they weren’t especially useful. The Times’s war correspondent doesn’t exactly give news, just his impressions of the state of things, and the ‘Eyewitness’ column has plenty about the weather but not much about what is actually happening.

  Anyway, now I know. The men arrive dazed from the fight, their hands clenched as if still clutching their guns. Some of them are from Robert’s regiment and are badly wounded, which makes me even more anxious for news of him.

  I don’t know how long our new patients spent in the French hospitals, but they haven’t been cleaned up very well. Yesterday a group of Sikhs arrived and were sent off for the usual bath. I never enter the bathrooms, of course, but when the patients come out washed and dressed in their hospital uniforms, I am in charge of seeing that each is given a bed and settled in. While I was waiting for this group to bathe, I heard a commotion, and then one of the orderlies came running out.

  When I asked what was the matter, he said that it was the Sikhs’ hair, which was full of lice and other things too: nits’ eggs, dead flies, droppings – probably from mice or rats. I told him that in that case it must be thoroughly washed and deloused as usual, and that I failed to see the difficulty, but he shook his head and said that this was worse than anything else he had seen. The best thing would be to shave it, so that the problem would be got rid of straight away and they could disinfect the men’s scalps. But the men, he said, were refusing point-blank.

  “Cutting their hair is out of the question,” I said. “It’s a matter of religion to them.”

  “But Nurse, it’s disgusting.”

  “I’m sorry, but someone will have to wash it, then comb it through, take out the lice and apply the disinfectant.”

  He grimaced. “I don’t know if anyone will want to.”

  “Well,” I said, remembering Hari’s theory, “if you don’t, we might find ourselves with a mutiny on our hands.”

  He was still hesitating when Colonel MacLeod approached, frowning, and asked what the disturbance was about.

  I explained the situation, adding that of course I hadn’t seen the patients myself, as they were in a state of undress. Colonel MacLeod looked closely at me, trying to detect any hint of insubordination, and said that he would go and see for himself. In a few minutes he was back out again, saying that I was quite right, and that he had instructed the orderlies on how to get it clean without cutting it.

  Not long ago, I wouldn’t have known what it meant to the men to have their hair cut off. I felt a certain satisfaction at how much more I know now.

  This afternoon I accompanied some of our patients on a walk along the seafront. Each day a small group goes out to take the air, and today we had five patients, one in a bath chair, the others able to walk with the aid of sticks. The group was headed by Colonel Coats, a nice man who used to be in the 25th Punjab Infantry and who takes a great deal of care with the patients, often leading them around the town to show them places of interest.

  We went down the Old Steine and turned left along the promenade. It was a bright and breezy day, a relief after weeks of dismal rain.
The patients were in good spirits, paying close attention to Colonel Coats’s commentary on what is to be found on the seafront. They were very interested in the Volk’s Electric Railway, which runs from the Aquarium for a mile or so until it reaches Black Rock. The railway is so small as to be almost like a toy and is always busy with day-trippers enjoying the novelty. One of the patients said he had seen a similar train in Darjeeling, but was shouted down by the others and forced to concede that, unlike Volk’s, it was powered by steam.

  We walked to Black Rock, then stood for a while looking out to sea. One of the men pointed to the horizon and said something to Colonel Coats, who nodded and replied. I guessed that he was asking if that was the way to France, because after that the men stood still, looking very serious, remembering, I suppose, what happened across the waves and thinking perhaps of their friends and fellow soldiers still in the trenches. I thought of Robert too, hoping that he was all right, but also of what was behind that “brilliant victory”, and what terrible things he and his men had done to achieve it.

  We made our way back through the streets of Kemptown, somewhat shielded from the wind, although it still managed to whip up the little side streets that run up from the promenade. As always, when we go out on these trips, our group attracted a certain amount of attention. On our way down St James’s Street, a woman sidled up to me.

  Her hair was piled messily under her hat, which was fighting a battle against the wind. She had rouged cheeks and glittering black eyes that were looking with interest at the patients.

  “Good afternoon,” I said, rather unwillingly, hoping that Colonel Coats, who was up at the front of the group, wouldn’t notice.

  “Taking the air?” she asked.

  As she spoke, I caught a whiff of something – beer, perhaps.

  “Yes. It helps the men’s convalescence.”

  She gave a low chuckle full of suggestion, and said that she knew of other ways to make them feel better.

  “All the girls are dying to help,” she said. “They’d kill for your job.”

  I was beginning to feel agitated and hot. “It’s not like that at all!”

  “Isn’t there a way you could get me into the hospital? When the powers that be aren’t looking? You could slip my name to some of the men. It’s Rose, by the way.”

  Some of the men were beginning to notice her. She smiled and thrust out her chest.

  “I think you should leave,” I said.

  “Why? The men don’t mind.”

  “Colonel Coats would. You’ll get me into trouble. Please.”

  The St John Ambulance man in charge of the bath chair came closer. I thought he was coming to help, but instead he said that he would be happy to take her out for a drink, at which she put on a haughty face and said that she wasn’t interested in his sort. Just then, Colonel Coats looked around. One glimpse of his military whiskers was enough to convince her, and she vanished down an alleyway in a flurry of skirts.

  I wonder if this is the kind of woman that Colonel MacLeod and Colonel Seton are so scared of. Judging from the spark of interest in their eyes, the soldiers had seemed to like her. I could not help thinking of Hari and his vagueness about where he goes at night, and wondering if he would like her too.

  Twenty-Nine

  I spent a long time looking at the images of Aisha Bibi, the girl with no nose, trying to plan my photo shoot with Leila. I used to love the speed of frontline photography, the rawness of it, the lack of time to set it up. When a situation explodes in front of you, you start to shoot, and keep going until the violence has stopped or it’s too dangerous to continue. You’re shooting under the influence of adrenalin, not sure of what you’re going to get. Portraiture is the opposite: constructed, considered and slow, and for a long time I didn’t want to do it. I’ve had to work out how to do it truthfully, but in a way that makes it interesting. I knew the shoot with Leila would be a tricky one, partly because of how to make it different from the pictures of Aisha Bibi, but also because I didn’t know how to square it ethically in my head.

  On the day of the shoot, Faisal had a meeting at the hospital and couldn’t stay.

  “I trust you, Jo,” he said as he left. “Look after her.”

  When he had gone, Sonia brought tea. As we sat drinking it, I looked around the room. There was one window, shielded by a piece of muslin that filtered the harsh sun.

  “We need light,” I said, going over to it and lifting a corner of the cloth. “Perhaps we could take away the curtain.”

  Leila blinked and said something, her voice urgent.

  “She doesn’t want you to do that,” Rashida said. “She doesn’t want people to see her.”

  “Of course,” I said quickly. “We’ll work with the light we have.”

  “Leila’s asking if she should stand or sit,” Rashida said.

  I’d been wondering the same thing. There wasn’t much in the room apart from a few cushions to sit on and, on the walls, the photographs that I’d taken when I first met the family in 2001. I knew that everything in the shot would mean something later on – a cooking pot could become a cliché, a hairbrush might take on too much significance.

  Do you remember that book, put together by a German photographer, of those pictures of Taliban soldiers taken in backstreet Kandahar photo studios? They posed, the warriors, hand in hand – extraordinary, dreamy, holding flowers, guns, mobile phones – in front of posters of Swiss chalets, riverboats, suburban American houses, wearing thick black eye make-up. The soldiers on the front line in Khoje Bahauddin had worn mascara too, to ward off the evil eye. I’d tried to sell my photographs of them to the newspapers, but no one took them. I guessed they didn’t want the troops we were backing to look effeminate. These soldiers seemed not to care. They knew that photography was banned. They knew that homosexuality was forbidden and what could happen if they were discovered, that they could end up standing in front of a wall while a bulldozer pushed down stones to crush them to death. Yet, they still had these photographs taken as they wanted, paying attention to their outfits, looking as camp as the boys who parade down Old Compton Street on Friday nights.

  We looked at those photos together, didn’t we, giggling at an old Afghan joke that I’d found in some book: “In Kandahar, homosexuality is so common that crows fly above the city with one wing clamped to their bums, just in case.”

  Now it was Leila who wanted to be photographed. I thought she should choose her pose.

  “What would you prefer?”

  “She says she doesn’t know,” Rashida said.

  “I want you to be comfortable, to look how you want to look.”

  I realized, as soon as I said it, that she never could.

  “We could try both, if you like,” I said. “I’ll take some closeups of your head and shoulders, then some from farther away.”

  Leila gestured to her pale-blue shalwar kameez.

  “She’s asking if what she’s wearing is all right,” Rashida said.

  “Of course,” I said. “You look very nice.”

  She smiled, then whispered something to Rashida, who nodded.

  “What is it?”

  “She says that she hasn’t painted her nails since it happened, because it hasn’t seemed important, but now she wants to do it. If she’s to be seen with a face like this, she wants to have nice nails at least.”

  I looked at her hands, their surface blotched and twisted from skin grafts. Her nails were the only part still intact.

  “Absolutely,” I said. “Take your time.”

  Sonia brought nail polish and began to paint Leila’s nails. I pulled out my camera and took a few shots to check the light, hoping I wouldn’t have to change the lens, always a nightmare in Kabul because of the dust.

  While I worked, I thought of your hands – painters’ hands, strong and square with short, blunt nails, the skin rough from scrubbing to get the paint off at the end of each day. You’d stand with a nail brush at the big old Belfast sink in your st
udio, slightly scummy from years of use, the wooden draining board covered with water stains, while you looked out of the window. I’d watch you there, those five minutes when you were coming back down to earth from work, and I knew to leave you alone until you turned, ready to be part of us again. When we got home, you’d wash your hands again, a little ritual, pushing up sandalwood bubbles between your palms, rinsing, then drying them on the old grey towel that hung by the sink.

  Later, I loved to feel your hands on my body, the skim of them over my skin.

  When Leila’s nails were done, she nodded. “I’m ready.”

  “OK,” I said. “Let’s try a shot with you standing against the wall, in that patch of light.”

  She went over to the wall and adjusted her headscarf, then pushed back her shoulders and lifted her chin.

  “OK,” Rashida said. “She’s ready. You can begin.”

  Through the lens of my camera, I saw Leila’s burns properly. Her skin, magnified by the zoom, was rubbery, a patchwork of colours crossed with an etching of scars. Her mouth was a shock, with no lips to buffer it – a hole, like on a Halloween mummy. One eye was closed, the other half-shut. Her eyelashes had gone – her eyebrows too. Despite her headscarf, I could see patches of scalp at the front, where her hair hadn’t grown back.

  She stood awkwardly, pressed against the wall, and muttered something.

  “What was that, Rashida?” I asked.

  “She says that no one’s taken her picture since her wedding day.”

  “Please ask her how she would usually hold her hands.”

  As Leila folded her arms across her chest, her shoulders relaxed.

  “Wonderful. Now, can you just move over towards the window? Not too far, don’t worry, just a tiny bit.”

  The light fell over the side of her face with the half-shut eye.