The women are sympathetic to both Soraya and Farah—but are mostly sympathetic to the Shah. “Life is tragic. One’s fate is what it is. One’s duty cannot be shirked.” I conclude that they may look European on the outside, but on the inside they seem to have different values.
I know I really am in Asia.
Here one can see enormous wealth right next to dire poverty. Barefoot women and children work for and live with people who wear only the finest Italian leather shoes. Yes, of course we have pockets of entrenched poverty in America, but I have never seen barefoot servants or child beggars on the streets of New York.
My family is poor, but we do not think of ourselves this way. True, I have sometimes worn hand-me-down clothes, but we have always had enough to eat, a roof over our heads, a free coed education, and private music, drama, and art lessons for me, the presumed child prodigy.
In Teheran’s Grand Bazaar shopkeepers man tiny stalls. I wonder if the bazaar has looked like this for the last thousand years.
Fresh carcasses of sheep hang in the streets. One has to buy fruit in one place, vegetables in another, bread and delicious pastries elsewhere. Each stall is devoted to a single item: carpets, hammered goods, spices. Everyone specializes. This is so different from the American department store or supermarket, where one can buy almost everything in one place and all indoors. The bazaar has a public bath whose exterior resembles a palace.
The smell of the bazaar is tantalizing, familiar, energizing. Gas and kerosene mingle with such spices as saffron, cinnamon, garlic, basil, and cilantro; the smells of fresh or not-so-fresh meat and vegetables combine with the smells of dirt, human sweat, cigarette tobacco, and the latest French perfume.
I love it.
We arrive in Kabul on an early morning flight from Teheran. From the plane the notoriously treacherous mountains—the Hindu Kush, the Pamirs—look like unassuming piles of snow-whitened red-brown sand. Thirty or more relatives are waiting for us at the Kabul airport—including not one, not two, but three mothers-in-law. Before I can even ask Abdul-Kareem what this means, the entire family is upon us.
It is all very emotional. There is much excitement, many introductions. I think I have been introduced to the same people two or three times. There are tears, smiles, handshakes, bows, and Russian bear hugs.
My (real) mother-in-law, Abdul-Kareem’s biological mother, is my father-in-law’s first wife. Her name is Bebegul. She is a short, full-breasted woman. Her feet seem small. She is wearing a long, loose, comfortable dress under which I can see her Turkish-style trousers.
I immediately want a pair of trousers for my own. Yes, I am eager to go native; I will undoubtedly be more comfortable dressed as a traditional Afghan woman (or man) on the many traveling adventures I have in mind.
Bebegul’s lined and weather-beaten face and shoulders are softly framed by a long chiffon veil. She steps forward and kisses me and her son on both cheeks. She searches our faces intensely.
Her husband, Ismail Mohammed, my father-in-law, is an incredibly commanding figure. He stands six feet tall and has dark velvet eyes and thick dark hair only lightly flecked with white at the temples. Ismail Mohammed (or Agha Jan, Dear Father) sports a debonair moustache, an expertly tailored European suit, and an expensive karakul cap. Unlike Bebegul, he belongs to the modern world.
The other women are wearing devastatingly fashionable Western dresses, light scarves, and long coats and are exquisitely poised on high heels. Ismail Mohammed embraces Abdul-Kareem and addresses me in English, “Was the flight pleasant? Are you well rested?” Before our modern-day caravan can set off, an airport official politely but firmly demands that I turn over my American passport.
I refuse.
Everyone stops. Both the official and my husband—whom I trust more than anyone else on Earth—assure me that this is a mere formality. It will soon be returned to me.
“Madam, we will have someone bring it to your home.”
I reluctantly relinquish it.
I never see that passport again.
I am now subject to the laws and customs of Afghanistan. I am an Afghan wife. This does not mean that I enjoy the rights of an Afghan (male) citizen; rather, I now belong to one man and his family. I am their property. At the time I do not realize that I will not be able to leave Afghanistan at will or as an American citizen but only if my husband or father-in-law agrees to obtain an Afghan passport for me and allows me to travel out of the Royal Kingdom of Afghanistan.
In the weeks that followed, the Afghan government did not return my American passport to me. It was hard for me to understand and accept that Abdul-Kareem did not share my outrage and alarm. In fact he refused to discuss it. How could I have known that the loss of my American passport in Kabul might lead to further unimaginable difficulties in America?
In 1959 Edward Hunter, who had been an American intelligence agent in World War II, published a book, The Past Present: A Year in Afghanistan. It is a psychologically brilliant work; few people seem to have read it. Hunter writes that the only way an Afghan man could have a “love marriage” (in the 1940s and 1950s) was if he “found a foreign girl.” If he did, it often constituted a scandal. According to Hunter, “The foreign wives had no idea of what sort of life they were coming into, of the discrimination they would come up against. The government made a point of seizing their foreign passports. Their children did not belong to them, but had to be brought up in accordance with the so-called customs of the country. . . . It was an open secret that many of these young wives were kept pregnant year after year under primitive conditions.”
In 1961, the very year I was trapped in Kabul, British-born Robin Jenkins published a novel, Dust on the Paw, which describes the hands-off diplomacy practiced by European and American diplomats. Jenkins’s narrator describes the fate of a foreign wife whom the British and Americans refuse to help because, as a wife, “she comes under Afghan jurisdiction; we’ve got no responsibility for her at all . . . by marrying this chap, she virtually put herself beyond our protection.” The wife in question does not wear a burqa, “but the rest of the family do, and because she refused, they make her life a hell. She’s kept more or less a prisoner. She’s not allowed to visit other foreigners. She never has a penny of her own.”
At the time I knew nothing about the existence of either book.
The point is this: In 1961 I am a young girl who loves and trusts my husband. I have no way of understanding what the smooth removal of my passport might mean.
I also have absolutely no idea what kind of relationship I am expected to have with my father-in-law or with each of my mothers-in-law.
I have no time to think about these matters right now. The cars are waiting. I am too tired, too wired, and far too excited. We leave the barracks-like airport in a black cavalcade of Mercedes-Benzes.
In 1937 the marvelous British traveler Rosita Forbes wrote, “Kabul has a beauty like nothing else on Earth. Around the plain there are mountains. . . . They are rugged under snow. But on a clear day they are white, and I have never looked at them without surprise. They are nearer to the city than most mountains, and more final. The country needs no other defense.”
She was right about the mountains. They are majestic and as never ending as the sea. One is immediately humbled, relieved of responsibility. Here humanity is not in charge of, but is instead embraced by, eternity. Here Nature and God are the main protagonists.
Not that many cars are on the street. I see no tall modern hotels or dazzling modern restaurants. I do see a few ramshackle tea shops (choi chanas) along the way, filled with men. No women are on the street—not even women wearing burqas. Kabul seems at least fifty years behind Teheran and not that cosmopolitan.
As yet no nomads and no camels are in view. Small adobe mud dwellings tumble down the side of the mountain, but they are far away. We pass a lovely mosque.
Abdul-Kareem’s family has a compound, comprised of a number of whitewashed, two-story European-style houses with patios, verandas, and overflowing flower beds. There are fruit trees. A tiny picturesque garden stream runs through the property, and three cows, a cow herder, and some chickens live behind one of the dwellings.
The property also has a seemingly endless number of small one-story structures. An unheated one-room building is where the servants sleep, apparently right on the dirt floor.
My mother-in-law, Bebegul, has converted a series of unheated two-room buildings into quarters for her and her two youngest teenaged sons, Sami and Rafi.
Abdul-Kareem and I will be sleeping in the magnificent house of her oldest son, Hassan, where she once lived. We enter a large and quite formal European living room that’s the size of a ballroom. Velvet drapes, vast carpets, a number of couch-like benches line the walls; there are also a few large soft armchairs and small artisan-carved wooden coffee tables.
Turbaned male servants in poorly fitting Western jackets and baggy pants pass around plates of pistachios, raisins, and candies and cups of tea. Large, Russian-style samovars are bubbling merrily.
Bebegul takes me on a tour. Every bedroom is large and is meant to function as a private family apartment, like a bed-sitting room. My brother-in-law Hassan has one. We have another. I believe a third such bed-sitting room is on the second floor—but I am not sure.
The living room, hallways, and bedroom floors are all covered with the most beautifully designed maroon Afghan wool carpets. I come to learn that the carpets are from Baluchistan, Turkmenistan, and Kazakhstan as well as from Afghanistan.
I want to take my shoes off so that I can walk on them in my bare feet.
Bebegul proudly shows me that she has a modern, utterly clean, totally electric kitchen. I will learn that no one ever uses it. The cooking is mainly done outdoors over an open fire or in a fire-breathing ancient wood stove. The house also has two all-marble bathrooms that work, although the water is not always hot.
My bedroom window on the second floor looks out on the Paghman Mountains, the foothills of the mighty Himalayas.
My second mother-in-law lives in her own house. A low fence or wall with a gate separates the first and second wives. Within the same enclosed property my father-in-law lives nearby with his younger third wife and their eight children.
Abdul-Kareem—who, I realize, has disappeared into a crowd of male relatives—manages to find me briefly to tell me that the family’s most beautiful house (and one that he covets for himself, for us) is nearby but is being rented by a foreign embassy. When I visit it, I see that the house has latticed, stained-glass windows, marble pillars in the living room, and a British-style library.
The house in which we will live is filled with people. They sit in a huge semicircle of liquid eyes. Abdul-Kareem must be related to all of Kabul, judging by the number of relatives who visit that first afternoon.
Holding my arm, Bebegul moves me around from one group of women to another. She is in a transport of joy and importance.
No conversations are private. This group is one body, one soul, one family, one clan. Whenever someone enters or leaves the room, everyone rises and chants, almost in unison: “Salom aleikum, khoob hastain chitoor hastam . . . enshallah.” (Greetings, peace be with you, are you well, are you good, as Allah wills it, so shall it be.) “Bamanakhoodah, Hodahafez.” (Good-bye, God be with you.)
My brothers- and sisters-in-law, many in their thirties, execute quick, cringing half-bows as they grab Ismail Mohammed’s hand to kiss it. This strikes me as embarrassing and infantile.
How little I understand!
He is their patriarch, their leader, their father, their chieftain who provides sustenance and status. He can do no wrong. He can have them killed. Whatever opportunities they or their children have or will have, beginning with the relatively good lives they enjoy compared to 99.9 percent of the rest of the country, are all thanks to him and none other.
I am unprepared for my first-ever Muslim prayer service. Suddenly, effortlessly, all the men drop to the floor; they are down on all fours, prostrating themselves, placing their foreheads to the ground, facing Mecca, as they begin the midday prayer.
I have never seen Abdul-Kareem pray. He has never gone to a mosque. He does not have a prayer rug or tasbeh (prayer beads).
The unified prayer service in the living room is accomplished gracefully but in a masculine way. Their bodies, their minds, their voices, and their souls are all involved in this rather physical spiritual practice. I am so mesmerized, so taken over, that I do not really notice whether the women pray. I am later told that women do not go to the mosque. I learn that women pray at home, alone.
This religion seems very public. It assumes that everyone obeys the laws. Prayer takes place at the appointed hour at home, at work, at school, on the street—as well as in the mosque.
Somehow prayer in America seems more private, certainly for Jews who pray discreetly at home but mainly in synagogues. True, Christians in America begin meals with religious prayers and everyone swears on the Bible when they testify in a courtroom—but neither Abdul-Kareem nor I take religion very seriously. We do not know anyone who does. The major thinkers and artists whom we read and quote are atheists.
Hours pass. I do not see Abdul-Kareem anywhere.
I find myself surrounded by smiling, friendly women. The non-English speakers pat me in a warm and motherly way or simply hug me. This is nice. The French, English, and German speakers ask me what I think of Kabul (who knows? I have yet to see it), where we shopped in Europe, and whether I miss my family.
I grow drowsy. It is a hot afternoon. The room has no air in it. Massive velvet drapes shield us from sunlight. I can’t remember anybody’s name. I sit quietly, half asleep and half awake. This seems to be quite alright.
The room continues to hum with greetings and tea sipping and comings and goings. After all the small talk has been exhausted, the women yawn, stretch, and look equally dazed. Some women have gone to relax in Bebegul’s quarters. They sit on their haunches, elbows on knees, smoking, spitting out nutshells, laughing, and gossiping.
I am only twenty years old, and I am now a member of this household, which consists of one patriarch, three wives, twenty-one children (who range in age from infancy to their thirties), two grandchildren, at least one son-in-law, one daughter-in-law, and an unknown number of servants and relatives.
Our first meal in Afghanistan is an unbelievable feast. As I will later learn, a special cook was hired for the occasion. It looks like every conceivable Afghan dish is on display. We eat on the floor, cross-legged, on lovely tablecloths placed over the carpets.
By now I am no stranger to this food. For two years, whenever Abdul-Kareem and his male countrymen would get homesick, they would cook traditional Afghan food for us. I have had my share of pilaus and chilaus (rice dishes) piled high, flavored with saffron or garlic, and eaten with yoghurt. From the moment we first met, Abdul-Kareem cooked for me, as did his friends, most of whom were unmarried or in New York City without their wives. They cooked hearty soups and turned simple vegetables, like cauliflower and eggplant, into dishes fit for a sultan.
The parade of platters is impressive and never ending. There is shish kebob, which, I learn, is rarely served at home but can be bought all over Kabul. There are maybe six different kinds of white and yellow and brown rice dishes. Hidden in one pilau one might find a whole boiled chicken, a roasted duck—even a goose. Some dishes are flavored with fried onions and topped with almonds and grapes. There are platters of fried eggplant served with rich gobs of sour cream; juicy fat stuffed cabbage; kofte (meatballs) served with spicy salads; stuffed
dumplings.
For dessert we have the most delicious fruit I have ever tasted: luscious grapes, hybrid melons, lemon-oranges, all of which are accompanied by cups of sweet custard topped with floating rose petals. Baklava, French pastries, and soft, sweet, and sticky candies end the meal.
And still, after all this, fresh offerings of pistachios are served, more tea is called for. We are also offered cold fruit juices.
At the appointed hour my father-in-law rises, and when he does, everyone else rises, too. He again embraces me and Abdul-Kareem and leaves with his third wife and their infant son. Not once have I seen him talk to Bebegul.
Thereafter the second wife and her set of children depart as well.
Bebegul’s own family remains: her sons, daughters, daughter-in-law, son-in-law, and grandchildren—all linger on. My new brothers- and sisters-in-law mimic Ismail Mohammed’s roving eye and crafty ways. I am captivated by their comic inventiveness. They put me at my ease by laughing about the three wives.
Abdul-Kareem has been talking nonstop in Dari (Afghan Persian) for at least ten hours now. Other than a few hurried whispers, we have not really spoken to each other or sat near each other. He is in his element. He seems happy to be with his family, happy that they have given him such a grand reception.
Finally we are alone in our rooms. The night is dark and almost completely silent. We are standing on what Abdul-Kareem tells me is “the roof of the world.” We are nearly 6,000 feet above sea level. The stars are clustered like golden grapes and literally seem within reach. We are too exhausted to speak. We fall asleep in our clothes.
When I awake the next morning, the sun is blazing into the room. I immediately look out the window—and there they still are: my white-peaked majestic mountains, part of the vast Himalayas.
Abdul-Kareem is gone. I am completely alone. I open the door and see that, hours ago, a servant left breakfast right outside the door. He is still sitting at the end of the hall, waiting for me to get up. I gesture: The tea is cold, and the bread is stiff. Can I have coffee? He smiles, rushes off, and returns bearing a new tray with warm flat bread (nan), coffee, a small pat of butter, and a selection of pastries from yesterday’s feast.
An American Bride in Kabul: A Memoir Page 3