by Barbara Bick
About twenty French and American women and men are assembled at two tables. It is a convivial gathering, minus drinks or wine, since this is still a Muslim country. Nasrine arrives nearly two hours after the rest of us, Shoukria a little later. They have been dealing with last minute details for the meeting, and both look exhausted. Shoukria speaks in French and Nasrine translates for the Americans, describing their mutual fears about Taliban terrorism and disruption.
“The Taliban is back,” Shoukria says, “but the important truth is that the Taliban is not back like it was before. They are getting asylum and support from our neighbors again. But they no longer have the use of Pakistan’s air force or Pakistan’s overt commitment of military reinforcements.”
Shoukria also wants to be sure that we recognize that even though women will be at the Loya Jirga, which is progress, “there are some who want women to have complete equality, while others operate out of fear and want less.” But tomorrow she tells us, two thousand women from provinces throughout Afghanistan will come together to discuss how to guarantee their rights. I am deeply skeptical that anywhere near that number can be brought together. It would be a triumph if several hundred women, defying threats and pressure, meet in Kabul tomorrow.
The next morning Zubair fills the car with me and Judy and our new friends, Jacqui and Jane, and we are driven to the Park Cinema, where the conference will take place. We are stunned by the sight of hundreds of women streaming past us into the theater. The huge auditorium is packed, and the balcony likewise overflows with women. Considering that for five years under the Taliban the women of Kabul have been invisible, it is incredible that Shoukria was right; nearly two thousand women, not one of whom is hidden under a burqa, have come together in a public venue. We are told that more women have been turned away for lack of space.
Foreign guests are seated in the front rows. I squeeze in close to my friends on deeply cushioned sofas. It is freezing, much colder than outside, where the sun is shining. We keep on our heavy coats, scarves, and gloves. The cavernous auditorium is dim despite some electric lights and a row of tall stained-glass windows of arabesque design. The electricity goes off periodically, plunging the hall into pitch blackness. But the women laugh and continue talking. I keep jumping up to look at the sea of faces extending way to the back of the auditorium and up to the balcony. I marvel that Shoukria, Nasrine, and the women of NEGAR have pulled all this together with so few resources and despite threats from the Taliban.
Along the walls, hanging from the balcony, and backing the stage are long banners. They are in Dari, French, and English. The stage backdrop has a large replica of NEGAR’s logo and in Dari and English reads: “NEGAR: SUPPORT OF WOMEN OF AFGHANISTAN—3 Day Conference of Kabul/December 4, 5, 6, 2003—Peace, Constitution, and the Declaration of the Essential Rights of Afghan Women.”
Another banner announces: “After Long Years of War and the Darkness of the Taliban, The Peace Process, the Constitution and Elections Are a Date with History of the New Afghanistan.” Yet another claims: “The Constitution Must Eternalize the Inalienable and Equal Rights of Men and Women of Afghanistan.”
On this, the opening day, there are a handful of men sitting up front, along with notables who will address the meeting. There has never been, in the millennial history of Afghanistan, such a gathering of women—informed, articulate, and determined to be a legitimate part of the constitutional process. The spirit in the hall is so strong that the walls seem to reverberate with the fervency of their hopes.
The meeting opens with a prayer intoned by an elderly woman, instead of the traditional mullah. Shoukria, Nasrine, other NEGAR leaders, and the speakers are lined up on the stage. Kabuli women alternate as chairs of the conference. Nasrine translates everything into English. The most important official to speak is Deputy Chief Justice Fazel Ahmad Manawi of the Supreme Court. He is a dynamic speaker and the women respond with delighted laughter and frequent applause.
“Women are the most important group in society,” he begins, “because all education begins with mothers. Islam began in an era when all societies discriminated against women; therefore, in declaring the rights of women, the teachings of Islam were in advance of society. It follows that since Islam gives both men and women responsibilities in society, both men and women should have rights in society.” Justice Manawi says that he is against women being considered a commodity. Taking a swipe at the West, he adds, “I deplore modern societies’ use of women’s bodies in advertising.”
Manawi is considered the most liberal member of the Supreme Court and is putting forth a somewhat radical vision. Still, it makes me uncomfortable that his speech is entirely within the context of Islamic law, or sharia. The draft constitution states that members of the Supreme Court “should have higher education in law or in Islamic jurisprudence,” but I know that neither Manawi nor any of the other nine justices attended any secular law school. The draft constitution also states, “The Supreme Court shall have the authority of the interpretation of the Constitution, laws, and legislative decrees.” If the Supreme Court judges are only trained in sharia law, can there be a separation of religion and government, and if not, can sharia really offer women equal rights?
Another speaker that first day is Dr. Massouda Jalal, the first female presidential candidate in the history of Afghanistan. There are some reservations about Dr. Jalal, since she never signed NEGAR’s petition for women’s rights. She is not a strong speaker, but her analysis of the role a woman could play as president is interesting. She points out that since women had no part in the disastrous conflicts that left Afghanistan in ruins, she, as a woman, can play a crucial mediating role. She gets a warm response from some of the audience, but I also see many shrugs and frowns that suggest deep skepticism that a woman can be president. Before Dr. Jalal leaves, Connie arranges for some of us to meet her for dinner the next evening.
The conference breaks for lunch, served outside in a huge tent-like structure. Temporary fences screen the area from pedestrians. All the fabrics covering the area are richly colored or are silk-screened with gold fleur-de-lis and brilliant red and blue Islamic wheels. Inside the tent, long tables are lavishly spread with platters of nan, cooked meats, salads, and vegetables, plus cans of soft drinks.
The young male waiters are a pleasure to watch as they balance oversized trays above their heads and gracefully slide in and around the hundreds of women eating and conferring. With masterful efficiency, they clear the tables of enormous messes of food, platters, cutlery, and cans and carry it all around a corner to the back of the building. I follow them, intrigued by their skill. Huge caldrons are being sluiced down; enormous platters are scraped, and a rising mound of discarded food and trash lies at the far back. A small girl has found her way through all the fencing and is rapidly piling food into a bag, while other poor children watch from the other side of the fence.
The afternoon speakers talk in Dari, and since neither Nasrine nor anyone else is translating the session, most of the Westerners are frustrated and bored, but I am so engrossed by the women attending the conference that I don’t really mind. Most are fairly young, with few past fifty. They are animated, laughing and talking to each other, and they are interested in and responsive to the speakers. It is hard to reconcile these women with the images from the terrible Taliban years of silent figures hurrying through the streets hoping not to be caught in some infraction.
Most of the women have a head covering of some sort. There are many white scarves—gauze, lace, silk, or cotton. Others are patterned, or multicolored knits. There are some uniformed army women with regulation hats.
Jacqui and I, wandering through the building with Zubair, come across a group of Hazara village women in the balcony. They are from an ethnic group that has been treated as second class for decades. Except for the two youngest, who wear simple scarves, the women wear burqas that are open in front to reveal their faces or thrown completely back, with their hair uncovered and the cloth tra
iling down their backs. Along with the usual blue burqas, there are a polka dotted and a paisley one.
“Why are you here?” we ask them.
“We heard about the meeting in a town near us,” one of them answers. “We are eager to learn and we came.”
“Did your husbands try to stop you?”
“No,” another replies. “They were happy that we wanted to go.”
“Do you think things will be better now?”
They turn to look at each other, before answering. “We don’t know,” several answer, “but probably not. It’s not easy for change to happen.”
We ask their ages and tell them ours. They are not surprised at how well we look for our age compared to women in Afghanistan since, as they tartly point out, “in Afghanistan, we live very hard lives, not like you from the West.” These isolated village women want change, education, a better life. They are realistic, skeptical, and determined. I doubt they will ever lie down passively, like sheep to the slaughter.
In late afternoon, Zubair and I leave to drive around the city. I want to drive past some of the landmarks of my 1990 trip. I want to recapture that time and put this visit in context. It is slow going, the dense traffic being completely chaotic. Zubair explains that there are seventy thousand taxis in Kabul, all yellow Toyotas designed to be driven on the left side of the road, while everyone in Afghanistan drives on the right. They were given to the Taliban by Pakistan. Along with the taxis there are bicycles, horse-drawn carts, small buses, and huge trucks that carry goods over long distances. Public transportation has yet to be implemented. Local tradesmen seem to rely on clumsy pushcarts, most often loaded high with market goods. With no traffic lights, each vehicle forces its way ahead, honking relentlessly. Men, women, and children of all ages dart into traffic to get across the road, some of them hauling backbreaking sacks. There are few sidewalks. The pollution is terrible.
Jockeying for position in one such traffic jam, Zubair suddenly points to a looming construction site. “That’s the Kabul Hotel where you stayed,” he announces. “It’s being remodeled.” It looks more like a complete reconstruction than a remodeling job. The low, rambling, yellow stucco structure where we stayed had been shabby but possessed a provincial charm. Built in the early years of the last century, it had been a longtime business and meeting place in the center of town, as well as a favorite venue for social engagements like the elaborate weddings I witnessed there. My favorite spaces at the hotel had been the wondrous, neglected garden and the dim back lobby, with its worn oriental rugs and deeply cushioned sofas, where I’d found quiet and solitude.
I learn that the Aga Khan, the billionaire leader of the Shia Muslim Ismaili community, has bought the Kabul Hotel. Americans of a certain age will remember the Aga Khan’s playboy father, Aly Khan, who married the film star Rita Hayworth. The for-profit Aga Khan Fund for Economic Development, which owns more than ninety hotels and lodges in Africa and Central Asia, is planning a five-star hotel that will replace the genteel old building. At least the Aga Khan Trust for Culture, another arm of his large empire, is financing repairs at some of the old mosques, shrines, and courtyard houses hidden in the narrow streets of old Kabul.
I cannot find any of the landmarks I remember. I look in vain for the circular domes and slender minarets of an old mosque, the several huge Romanesque government buildings that had once been palaces, a shimmering white Persian-style building that had been a sports center with swimming pool and green park. So much destruction, such rash, precipitous building. Darkness falls, as do my spirits, as we return. I know it is unreasonable, but what I really want for Kabul—the beloved city of the Mogul emperor Babur, a city celebrated by poets for its glorious gardens—is to see it rise again, not only in its own indigenous beauty but also in terms of the welfare of its people. I want to see less haste and luxury and commercialism, more affordable housing and schools and clinics, more parks and playgrounds.
I have also asked Zubair to help me find Shakira and Zahera, and Zahera’s daughter Leila, who would now be 19. I surmise that some government agency may have records of pre-Afghan organizations but Zubair says that all agencies are understaffed and in disarray so we’re unlikely to find anyone to help us. He promises, however, to speak to an official he knows. Several days later I have depressing news: Zubair reports back that all records were destroyed either during the civil war or under the Taliban. He does not know how to proceed further in finding Shakira and Zahera. I too am at a loss as to how else to look for my friends, and so the search ends there.
The next days of the conference are its heart and soul, the reason all these women have come together. Reports from the ten regional meetings held in the summer and fall are going to be presented for discussion and affirmation.
In early August NEGAR had held a kick-off meeting in Kabul to launch the effort to educate provincial women about the draft constitution and their right to participate. It began with a ceremonial presentation to the Constitutional Commission of one hundred thousand of our signatures from petitions brought from Paris and Washington. Another two hundred thousand signed petitions were kept back for a future event.
Over a three-month period after the kick-off, regional meetings were held in eight towns. NEGAR’s original plan called for meetings of one hundred women at each location. Work kits included the Bonn Agreement, charters on women’s rights, UN declarations, and relevant parts of Afghanistan’s 1964 constitution. Local women leaders and NEGAR members were trained to analyze the draft constitution, to focus on women’s rights, education, social policies, and peace. They would help to prepare recommendations and resolutions for the Kabul conference.
It did not happen quite that way. At the first seminar in Charikar, two hundred and fifty women and fifty men, including the governor of Parwan province, showed up instead of the one hundred women who had been invited. The meeting was so well received that the governor, then and there, created one hundred and four civic posts for women at the provincial level. The numbers kept growing at each regional meeting. NEGAR had underestimated the magnitude of women’s eagerness to participate in society and the generally positive response and involvement of men, including regional leaders.
Now, as women present reports from these regional meetings, the women in the hall are electrified, applauding and waving their arms for every vote. The conference is moving and exhilarating. Yet I am still gloomy. NEGAR’s great work has created space for women’s energies, capabilities, and aspirations, a space that will hopefully allow them to be a part of building the future. My sadness stems from a sense of how fragile it all is. Rumors are circulating that the Loya Jirga is going to be postponed; there is gossip that leaders within Massoud’s faction of the Northern Alliance are moving away from each other, and worst of all, that the Taliban is gaining strength and moving up toward Kabul.
I also realize, once again, that what happens to Afghanistan is not just about Afghanistan. It seems to me that there is a kind of universal, inchoate disorder affecting all nations. Never before have I thought in terms of Good and Evil, but I wonder now if the astounding rise of extremism among many religions of the world is a consequence of some perilous conjuncture we cannot yet comprehend. The notion that it is not just Afghanistan, but humanity, that is in crisis casts a shadow over my mind.
Leaning closer to Jacqui, I whisper, as if she can read my mind, “Do the bad always win? What is the answer?”
She smiles and is silent. Soon she passes me a folded note. I unfold the paper. “The answer is blowing in the wind,” it says. Ah, well . . .
That evening, a small group of us join Massouda Jalal, the presidential candidate, for dinner at the Hotel Intercontinental. Dr. Jalal, a pediatrician and lecturer in medicine at Kabul University, has brought along her husband, a professor of law at the university. Dr. Jalal is soft-spoken; a slight smile plays on her pale, perfectly oval face. In contrast to her husband, who projects nervous energy, there is an almost Buddha-like quality to her.
“During the emergency Loya Jirga, immediately after the fall of the Taliban, I challenged Karzai for the position of interim president. I came in second with over 170 votes. Karzai offered me a position as his deputy if I would withdraw, but I wanted to challenge, whether I won or not.”
We are impressed; none of us other than Connie had realized that Dr. Jalal had run for office and done so well. But when Dr. Jalal begins to speak disparagingly of the Northern Alliance and condemns Karzai for appointing Northern Alliance leaders to his cabinet, I decide to liven things up a bit.
“Well, you know, I wouldn’t disparage the Northern Alliance so roundly,” I say. “They were, I recall, the only group defending Afghanistan against the Pakistan invasion via the Taliban!”
Professor Jalal abruptly sits up. “These are dangerous men, undemocratic, warlords! They destroyed Kabul,” he growls.
“Weren’t they defending Kabul?” I answer. “I thought the great Ahmad Shah Massoud, whose photograph is all over Kabul, was saving the city and the people from the fundamentalist Hekmatyar.”
Angry with me, fiercely defensive of his wife, the professor seems to dislike a challenge from any other woman. Connie also disapproves of my provocation. Clearly, just because my friends support the Northern Alliance doesn’t mean that other Afghans don’t have valid concerns about them. Of course, I know that people of goodwill experience similar events in completely different ways; it’s just that sometimes it’s hard for me to admit it.