End of Manners

by Francesca Marciano

  “Not Hanif, though,” I added.

  She thought about it for moment, tilting her head to one side.

  “Yeah. I think you’re probably right.”

  “No, I bet you anything. Hanif’s never killed anyone. You can tell.”

  I knew it not only because it was inconceivable to imagine Hanif with a gun in his hand, but because he still seemed whole and unbroken.

  “Are you asleep?” Imo’s voice whispered in the utter darkness.

  “No.”

  I couldn’t make myself go to sleep. I figured that by now it must be way past midnight.

  “I was wondering…” Imo began almost absentmindedly. “Did you and Pierre ever have an affair?”

  “Pierre and I? Oh, God, no. Why?” I wasn’t going to admit to Imo my pathetic fantasy.

  “Just wondering. He’s such a tombeur de femme. I thought he’d be attracted to you. You’re very much his type.”

  “Well, no, never. Did you?”

  “Yeah. Ages ago,” she said offhandedly.

  I waited for her to offer more details. I was hoping she would.

  “Were you married to that man you broke up with?” she asked instead, after a brief silence.

  “No.”

  “I thought he was your husband for some reason.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. It sounded like marriage.”

  “What made it sound like we were married?”

  Now I was wide-awake. I felt nervous that Imo would be mulling over these bits and pieces of my bio like a detective collecting the tiniest shred of evidence. Perhaps, I thought, under the scrutiny of her magnifying lens my life compared to hers was going to look hopelessly flat.

  “I don’t know…it was just a feeling. Maybe because you look like the kind of person who would get married.”

  “And is that good or bad?” I laughed.

  “Hmm.” She paused. “It’s good…I guess.”

  “Well, we did talk about it,” I confessed. “We had actually even set a date.”

  There was a silence. Nothing came from her bundle for a few seconds. I thought she might have fallen asleep again.

  “Were you ever married?” I tried.

  “No. To vow to be forever and ever with one person sounds like an impossible task. I doubt I’d be good at it.”

  “At the time I believed that was what I wanted the most,” I said, somehow forcefully. But I realized it was someone else I was talking about. Someone who had firmly believed that to have Carlo was all she wanted in order to be happy forever and ever. Someone who felt so sorry for herself when this happiness was denied to her that she crumpled to the floor. It felt like such a terrible waste of time, of opportunities. I’d given up so much for so little.

  “Do you…are you in some kind of relationship at the moment?” I felt strangely embarrassed to ask. Imo was one of those people who have no problem asking others about their intimate lives but manage to keep theirs a secret. There was an invisible barrier whose boundaries she must have ingeniously set up when I wasn’t looking.

  I heard her toss under the blankets.

  “Yeah. I’m seeing someone. But I wouldn’t call it a relationship. He’s younger than me and very handsome and very spoiled.” She sighed. “It’s more like physical exercise. I know I sound horribly superficial, but…hey, I figure I’ll burn in hell later on.”

  “You won’t burn in hell for seeing a beautiful young man,” I offered.

  There was another long silence. I thought it might be a hint that it was time to go back to sleep. In fact, Imo was only eager to shift the conversation onto me again.

  “So, do you despise your ex and wish him dead now?” she asked in a lighter tone.

  “No. Not anymore. I just don’t think about him anymore. The whole idea of him bores me now.”

  To be able to pronounce those words and for the first time realize they were true was exhilarating.

  “Excellent. Being bored is a true sign of victory.”

  “Then I must be victorious.”

  We laughed.

  “I’ve got to pee,” Imo said.

  “Me too. But where?”

  “Right outside. Come on, no one’s around at this time.”

  I heard her moving, then the door creaked on its hinges.

  “Wow, it’s fucking freezing out here. Maria, bring your blanket with you or you’ll die on the spot.”

  “I don’t want to, it’s too cold.”

  “Don’t be silly, come on, it’s amazing out here.”

  I grudgingly pulled on my boots and swaddled myself with everything I had. The moon was high; I could make out the mountain peaks shimmering in the silvery light.

  Outside in the courtyard the air smelled sweet. After breathing all that dust and the kerosene fumes of millions of stoves hovering over Kabul, to me this felt like the purest, freshest scent imaginable. All I could hear was my own quick breath and the sound of my boots creaking on the frozen ground. I pushed the thick door that closed the compound and peeked outside on the alley. The flicker of oil lamps sitting on the windowsills lit the rest of the village randomly. Imo pointed in the distance, towards the opposite side of the valley. There was another village, perched on the ridge, facing us. Its lights were distant and tiny but in the total darkness they glittered with piercing clarity. We stood there, leaning against the crumbling mud-brick wall, in that absolute quietness that was like a blanket, like the regular breathing of husbands, wives and children sleeping next to each other.

  I imagined seeing myself from above, from a satellite roaming through space, and homing in on the exact spot where I was at that moment on the map of the world. As soon as I tried to envision the distance between the village courtyard and my renovated one-bedroom in Milan, it seemed impossible that my apartment actually existed somewhere on the planet. I tried to visualize it: steeped in the quiet hum of appliances, its shutters closed, the clean sheets folded in the closet, the chocolate cookies I had bought just before I left sitting in the cupboard, the frozen food in the fridge. In a breakneck rewind I retraced the journey that would take me from that courtyard looking out on the valley back home. I reversed from the village, through the gorge with the fierce-eyed men, over the endless graveyard and its fluttering flags, over to Kabul along the Jalalabad road and then soaring over Pakistan, Iran, Turkey, Greece, all the way to Italy. There was way too much space and too many unknowns between me and my front door—to which I still held the key in my purse—for me to believe that I could re-cover all that ground and succeed in putting my key in that lock. I felt a shock, as if I had just discovered where I was—dangling in the void, way too high, and I’d never be able to come down again.

  The idea that there is only one route out of a thousand that leads one back to the assigned seat on the plane that will take one home—and that it needs to be followed to the letter without any detours, delays or accidents in order not to miss it—is terrifying. That’s why I’d been carrying all around Afghanistan a key ring in the shape of a rubber frog wearing a crown that held my house keys. Despite its absurdity, the frog and those thick long keys reassured me. Their presence in that particular moment seemed the only incontrovertible proof that I did have another life.

  I heard a subdued gurgling. Imo had crouched down next to me: she was actually peeing at ten below zero. I saw the steam rise from the ground.

  “Ohhh, how lovely,” she lilted. “You know what, darling? This is so perfect, so magical. I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else in the world. Would you?”

  The first morning prayer woke me before dawn.

  A deep, powerful voice was singing without the aid of a microphone not far from us. Almost immediately the voice of the muezzin from the village across the canyon traveled from the opposite direction and their different modulations of Allah Akhbar echoed in ripples throughout the valley. It was still pitch-dark, but I could feel the village begin to stir. I listened to the sequence of noises from underneath my blan
kets, not daring yet to move away from the warmth I had managed to create during the night. Rustles and hushed voices at first, water being poured from a jug, a baby crying in the distance. A rooster. The shrill voice of a woman calling another, the deep raucous cough of men clearing their throats, their sleepy voices blurting out quick, commanding phrases. The door to our room creaked and a barefoot woman slipped inside holding a kerosene lamp and a bucket of steaming hot water, followed by a little girl. The woman gently shook Imo’s and Shirin’s shoulders, and when she touched mine I could smell firewood and soap on her skin. The girl put down a tray with teapot and glasses.

  “Good morning, girls!” sang Imo in her cheerful tone as she stepped out of her blankets, her head still wrapped in her scarf.

  An hour later we shared breakfast with Malik and Hanif in the same room where we’d had dinner. Malik offered us green tea and warm flatbread with honey. It was delicious and I ate ravenously. An unexpected feeling of calm and well-being had finally descended upon me. We ate in silence, then Malik stood up and gestured for us to follow him. We walked a little way, then he pointed out the door to a small mud-brick house and he and Hanif turned their backs on us. This is the school, they said. The fact that men could not enter, or even look inside, electrified me.

  The morning sun slanted in from the small windows, slashing light into the room. We were sitting on the floor covered in mats and carpets in the middle of a bare room, Imo, Shirin and me, surrounded by about twenty women staring at us as if they were in front of an otherworldly apparition.

  The colors the women wore were faded but magnificent: pink and emerald-green veils, purple and orange draping. With the exception of a few withered, toothless ones, who looked worn more by fatigue than by time, most of the women were startlingly beautiful. They had fair skin and light eyes, some of them as green as grass, with dark, thick braided hair. Others had full pink lips and thick eyebrows, straight noses. After all those days spent in male company, striving to interpret their gestures, their expressions, to weigh the danger, it was a relief to be alone with women at last. And yet, now that I finally had them in front of me, these women seemed more indecipherable than the men. I had seen men drive cars, talk on cell phones and somehow or other I felt they belonged to the world I lived in, but these women seemed to have been cast out of a time machine. Everything about them was archaic; the smell of mud, flour, sweat and livestock, the feral energy they emanated. I couldn’t begin to imagine them undressed (what would they be wearing underneath? did they have panties and bras?) or as they had sex with their husbands (were they modest, experienced? did they enjoy different positions?). In other words I couldn’t find any indication that suggested our parallel existence on the planet.

  They were staring at us, hardly stirring—I could even hear the sound of their breathing—and we were watching them with equal astonishment. In terms of our reciprocal curiosity we were equal, but I felt their gazes were impudent and unsettling, just like those of the men working on the dam, revealing a morbid, almost sexual curiosity.

  I felt the urge to photograph them there and then, capture those hungry eyes, those bent knees, the way their elbows were resting on them, their chins on their hands, the small blue tattoos between the eyebrows that some of the older women had, the henna red tresses spilling down their backs, the cheap earrings made of tin and colored glass, as they listened to what Shirin was explaining to them. That is, that we had come from a long way away to talk to them about what had happened to Zuleya.

  “Many countries in the rest of the world are concerned about the plight of Afghan women and want their suffering to stop,” Imo said and gestured to Shirin to translate, “so we’re here to listen to your stories, and hear what you have to say. Women among women.”

  A worried silence ensued. The women exchanged wary glances. Shirin plowed on in a courteous tone but received only monosyllabic grunts. A tall woman, a Julia Roberts look-alike, with the same thick mouth, perfectly arched eyebrows, long silky lashes framing eyes the color of moss, jerked her chin to indicate a younger woman with fair hair and a straight nose who looked like the bas-relief of a goddess from the Parthenon frieze. The bas-relief nodded, looking down at her bare, cracked feet.

  “That one is Zuleya’s sister,” Shirin said. Then she pointed to an older woman huddled at the back of the room. “And that’s her mother.”

  The mother made an abrupt gesture with her hand, then covered her face with her veil. She drew herself in even tighter, like a spider hiding in a crack in the wall.

  “Would any of you like to tell us what happened, why did Zuleya want to kill herself?” Imo asked gently and smiled around the room.

  Another lengthy silence followed. Then, as if they had been given an invisible clue, the women all began talking at once, the tone growing louder and louder, increasingly excited. Shirin directed them, interrupting them, translating what she could, getting worked up herself.

  It was the same old story, the women said: Zuleya was unhappy, she didn’t want to marry a man who was too old and who would have taken her away from her village and her family. She was afraid he’d beat her, that he wouldn’t allow her to come back and visit her mother and her sisters. That’s why she thought it better to kill herself, rather than dishonoring the family with a refusal.

  Imo pondered. “Right. So, if a woman refused to get married, what would actually happen? Her family would disown her?”

  The women shook their heads vigorously: impossible. There’s nothing you can do when a marriage has been decided. Nobody can refuse.

  “I see. Okay. Then let’s say a girl and a boy from the same village are in love with one another, right? But the girl has been promised to someone else. Ask them what would happen,” Imo whispered to Shirin.

  Shirin swallowed hard and nodded. She seemed wary, as if the word “love” had some dangerous possibility attached to it. She translated the question slowly, neutrally, as if she were handling explosives. Again, the women started speaking one on top of the other, more and more excitedly. Everyone seemed to have a strong opinion about this. Julia Roberts stood up—she was very tall and statuesque—silencing the others, and drew her index finger across her neck. The women burst out laughing.

  “What did she say?”

  “She says love doesn’t make a difference. That either you do what the father decides or you end up like that,” said Shirin, mortified.

  “Like what?” Imo had put on her red glasses and was taking notes.

  “Like that, with your throat cut.”

  “Ha? With your throat cut?”

  Shirin nodded. Imo eyed me with a triumphant look. This was just the kind of quote she’d been hoping for.

  “So why do you think they’re laughing?”

  Shirin shrugged.

  “I don’t know.”

  “No, I’m sorry, I’m interested. What’s the joke?”

  “Nothing. They’re laughing because they think it’s funny,” Shirin replied, her words tinged with a nuance of sarcasm, which Imo didn’t seem to notice. “They too have a sense of humor.”

  “A pretty dark one, it seems.” Imo made a face. “Ask them if that’s ever happened in this village. You know, whether a father has killed his daughter who disobeyed.”

  The women nodded vigorously, without any hesitation, as if it were a silly question that only a foreigner would ask, then carried on a lengthy discussion among themselves, completely oblivious to our presence.

  “See? Probably our friend Malik would too,” Imo whispered to me as she scribbled it all down. “Isn’t that just insane?”

  She turned back to Shirin.

  “Please ask them whether they know that in the West a woman’s life is worth the same as a man’s and if a father kills his daughter, he’s sent to prison for life.”

  Shirin dutifully delivered the translation and the women stared back at us, in a sort of impenetrable way.

  “Do they know that?” Imo asked.

  A little dis
cussion ensued among Shirin and a couple of older women.

  “Yes, they do,” Shirin said. “But they say that according to Islam you can’t, that it’s not possible, that you have to obey your father and then your husband. These are the rules, the tradition.”

  There seemed to be no way out of it. All that mattered was the rules. Their volition didn’t seem to exist anywhere in between.

  “Yes, I understand that, but then why are so many women committing suicide? It must mean they don’t want to follow the rule, right? Or do you think these women are afraid to speak?”

  Shirin adjusted her glasses on her nose. Then she nodded and looked down at the floor.

  “Yes, maybe they are a bit afraid to speak,” she admitted.

  I had a sense that Shirin’s feelings were becoming more and more ambivalent as the day in our company progressed. I couldn’t tell what was making her more uneasy, having to translate what she felt was her compatriots’ backwardness to us or having to translate our lack of tact to them. The Parthenon Frieze, Zuleya’s sister, took the floor and suddenly there was silence. The girl spoke for some time. Her stretched arm was resting on her knee, and the cheap bracelets around her wrist kept tinkling as she moved her hand.

  “She said that if she could turn back time, she would have killed herself too,” Shirin translated impassively. “Now she can’t, because she has children. She says she had to marry a man three times older than her who has always beaten her, since the very first day. She says that the life of a woman is a very sad life; in truth she says that it’s not a life at all.”

  Imo leaned slightly towards me.

  “What a fabulous profile this one has, try and shoot her while she’s talking. Can you work with this light?”

  “Yeah, sure…but first shouldn’t we…I mean, I’m afraid that if I start shooting without asking permission they’re going to go crazy again like those—”

  “Just give it a go and let’s see what happens.”

  I took out one of my cameras and held it for a second so they could get used to its presence. Every woman looked in my direction and stared at the object in my hand. I acted like I was not aware of their attention and started to fiddle distractedly with the lenses. But just then a wan, sickly-looking woman, older than the others, shouted something. She was pointing to the camera and instantly I felt the same hostility wind through the room that I had encountered the day before in the hospital.