At the time Reza had high hopes for an anticolonialist and democratic Islamic revolution in Iran. He soon fled Iran for Canada.
After a few months Abdul-Kareem takes a new tack. He insists that “Afghan society now allows a great deal of individualism.” He promises to “provide the freedom in which you can grow intellectually.”
This cannot be possible.
As I’ve already noted, King Amanullah tried that—he unveiled the women and ordered public education for both girls and boys—and the mullahs and tribal chieftains exiled him. According to Talley Stewart, in the late 1920s Amanullah addressed a crowd in Kandahar, telling them, “If you are not educated, try hard to make your children educated. An uneducated person can do nothing. This education is not only for your sons but also for your wives and daughters. If the prevailing views regarding purdah remain unchanged, then there is no possibility of any progress in the life of the Eastern people, particularly among Moslems.”
As we have seen, Afghans excel at fighting Afghans.
This is what Afghans do, even when they are not being invaded by foreign powers: They fight each other, tribe against tribe, brother against brother, half-brother against half-brother, cousin against cousin, uncle against nephew, father against son.
In his beloved novel The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini writes about the Shahnameh of Firdausi, a collection of Persian stories written in Afghanistan: There is no Oedipal drama in Iran or Afghanistan; instead, here Oedipus, the son, dies; his father kills him. “In ‘the tale of the great warrior Rostam and his fleet-footed horse, Rakhsh,’ Rostam mortally wounds his valiant nemesis, Sohrab, in battle, only to discover that Sohrab is his long-lost son.”
At the time I was in Kabul, I knew nothing about Afghanistan’s long and bloody history of never-ending tribal warfare, the lengths to which cousins and brothers would go to dethrone a relative. How could I? Abdul-Kareem never mentioned it. He was my measure of Afghanistan, and he was a genteel, dapper, hopeful, soft-spoken fellow, convinced that he and a small group of other men would soon be able to Westernize and modernize the country.
But now that I’ve done a bit of reading, I better understand where I was and what Abdul-Kareem and all the other reformers were truly up against.
When the Afghan leader Mirwais died in 1715, his son, Mahmud Mir, assassinated his uncle and declared himself leader. In turn Mahmud, a sadistic ruler, was assassinated by his cousin Ashraf, who then paraded Mahmud’s head through the streets of Isfahan. Nadir Shah, a Persian leader, blinded his favorite son—and was himself assassinated under mysterious conditions. In 1747 Ahmad Khan was accepted as the new Afghan leader; he called himself Ahmad Shah Durrani (Pearl of Pearls).
This Ahmad Shah is considered the first king of the modern Afghan state. In The Wars of Afghanistan: Messianic Terrorism, Tribal Conflicts, and the Failures of Great Powers, the diplomat and author
Peter Tomsen writes, “Ahmad Shah did designate his second son, Timur Khan, to succeed him but that did not deter some of his other sons from declaring themselves king. Ahmad Shah’s multiple wives each championed their child’s right to the throne. . . . Succession struggles resumed with a vengeance among Timur’s twenty-three sons after his death in 1793.”
This pattern continued through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, right up until the Soviet invasion. Tomsen writes that Emir Abdur Rahman (1880–1901) “spent most of his twenty-one-year rule at war with [his] Mohammadzai relatives seeking the throne.” Abdur Rahman prepared his son, Habibullah (1901–1919), to become the next emir—which he did, but Habibullah was similarly assassinated under mysterious conditions. Most likely either his brother or one of his sons was behind Habibullah’s assassination. His son, the next emir, Amanullah (1919–1929), was lucky—he was at least allowed to flee and live out his life in relative poverty and bitter exile in Italy.
But the pattern continued. Thereafter Nadir Shah and his Musahiben brothers ruled. Nadir was assassinated by a student (in a complicated revenge plot), and his brother, Hashim Khan, served as regent for Nadir’s nineteen-year-old son, Zahir Shah. Sometime later Zahir’s cousin Daoud Khan got rid of Zahir in a military coup and, with Soviet Russia’s help, ruled in his place. Well, at least he did not assassinate Zahir.
With a history like this—how could Abdul-Kareem have succeeded? This is Afghan-on-Afghan history, and it concerns only the major historical power struggles. This brief summary does not include the endless wars between villages, tribes, and clans, and between family members in the isolated mountains whose internecine warfare has not made its way into history books.
So too this brief history does not concern the Great Game, that is, the colonial powers vying for Afghanistan as the buffer state between England (in India) and Russia. In a sense Afghanistan was defeated first by thousands of years of endless invasions that utterly destroyed the country and its people and, second, by never having been colonized. No central government, no national infrastructure or railway, no educational and hygiene programs such as those Britain imposed upon India were ever imposed upon Afghanistan. The country remained a series of isolated snowbound tribal units perpetually at war with each other and with anyone who would dare try to rule them.
Perhaps Abdul-Kareem is an even greater dreamer than I am.
On the other hand Abdul-Kareem is too realistic, cautious, political, and cynical to take dangerous personal risks for the sake of “the people.” He is an enlightened elitist surrounded by medieval customs. Like me, he is an artiste—but in Afghanistan he must become a civil servant. Abdul-Kareem is well aware of his country’s history in terms of its corruption, nepotism, infuriating incompetence, and rule by rumor. But he is unable to face the truth that, as the refined and foreign-educated son of one of Afghanistan’s wealthiest families, he lacks the bloody barbarism that might be required to tackle any of these hard injustices.
Until now no one has succeeded who has tried to do so. He knows this.
From the last days of 1961 to the last days of 1964, Abdul-Kareem refuses to take no for an answer. I write, saying that I will never return and that we must divorce. He responds, “It is important to know your decision because I am going mad in this limbo.”
It is as if I have not spoken or as if whatever I—or what any woman—might say can be overruled by persistence and force. Abdul-Kareem begins to experience my desire to divorce him as a form of persecution. He also believes that we are still one, that what he feels is what I feel, too.
Abdul-Kareem thinks to instruct me: “Marriage is sacred.”
Six months later Abdul-Kareem writes to my college president (!) to inform him that I am expected “back home” in Kabul. He does so with the authority of an Afghan husband, as if I am his chattel.
I am apoplectic and a little afraid. What power does this man think he has over me? Does he believe it extends to America?
Abdul-Kareem tells me that I should use my American passport when I travel to Europe but that I should use my Afghan passport when I enter Afghanistan.
But I do not have an American passport. It was never returned to me. Why does he think I have it? Abdul-Kareem also orders me to cut off all contact with our Afghan friends in New York. They will gossip and it will be used against him. I write another letter to Abdul-Kareem:
Dear Abdul-Kareem:
My decision is final.
I am not interested in your philosophies of divorce. You could divorce me in an Afghan religious court in a matter of minutes, and you could take three other wives before that.
You write about love, love, love. Please try to think of me confined upstairs in bed, cold, lonely, hungry, sick, and frightened while you are hiding from me as I keep crying for orange juice. . . . Try to imagine me as I limp downstairs, doubled over, to find you, and find you giggling and tittering behind a door, hiding from me. . . . Do you remember the first night you attacked me, telling m
e bitter little nothings in my ear, and then how you cried, said you hated yourself and wanted to die, and then fell asleep—as I remained awake, and the dogs howled in hunger, and the stars were close enough to touch? The next morning, you acted as if nothing had happened.
Abdul-Kareem, don’t evade the truth any longer. I will not return to Kabul, I will not return to you.
Nevertheless Abdul-Kareem continues to ask me to “give our marriage another chance.” He views divorce as “an amputation of a limb.” He believes that my parents have influenced my decision to terminate our marriage. He has the audacity to write to them, to call their attention to “their moral duties.”
Meanwhile he implores me to make up your own mind and then stick to it, adding, “Please let me know how soon you can come home!”
Abdul-Kareem knows that I am struggling economically. Nevertheless, and rather heartlessly, he continues to boast about all his successes: His “institute is [becoming] a fine organization.” He intends to translate and adapt the American musical The King and I for an Afghan audience. The government is pleased with his work and has asked him to organize a repertory theater troupe. He will be paid only a civil servant’s salary but after a year his salary will be revisited.
He invites me to join him on vacation in France.
If I were an Afghan woman, I would never be able to withstand such pressure. Thank God I am an American and far away from Kabul.
Abdul-Kareem turns nasty and sarcastic about my first postcollege job as a secretary and go-fer at a television production company. He writes, “I am very happy to hear that you have found such an interesting and profitable occupation in New York. Well, it seems you have made it, after all. It must be worth a husband to you. You were magnanimous to wish to know what I am doing. Please feel assured that it is not as big or as important as what you are doing.”
He writes that he is busy working with Bob Joffrey of the Robert Joffrey Ballet and Rebekka Harkness, the multimillionaire.
His boasts, meant to tempt me to return to him, continue for years.
He mentions Elia Kazan, Helen Hayes, and the Moscow Film Festival. He also invites me to France and Germany, where he plans to meet with major film directors.
Later: “I have completed 80% of my film. . . . I am a little behind schedule because I co-sponsored and managed a concert tour for Duke Ellington in Kabul.”
The wily Afghan means to trap me.
After six months my Afghan visa expires and the US State Department contacts me. They say that I have to leave. I threaten to chain myself to the Statue of Liberty or go on a hunger strike. I am not going back to Afghanistan.
Has Ismail Mohammed’s gift of an Afghan passport with only a six-month visa been a Trojan horse, a way to ensure that I had to return?
My parents calmly hire a lawyer, who convinces the authorities that I am indeed an American citizen, born and bred here. The lawyer moves for a divorce. Abdul-Kareem insists that he will never agree to a divorce and that no New York divorce could ever cover “our situation.” In his letters Abdul-Kareem sounds as if he really believes that I am an Afghan wife and, as such, am subject to his decisions.
When I was in Kabul, I had expected the American embassy to come to my aid, to offer me advice and shelter, and help me leave the country. That did not happen.
When I returned home, I certainly did not expect the American government to question my right to remain here. Even though I am an American citizen, I had entered my country on an Afghan passport with a six-month visa. The lawyers my parents hired did not quite understand what was going on, either. This was a Kafkaesque experience. It was also uncharted territory.
Please remember: My Afghan sojourn and my fight to have my American citizenship rights recognized took place between 1961 and 1964—long before people began to write about what routinely happens to foreign wives in countries like Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Pakistan. And I had not yet amassed my own library about life in Muslim-majority countries.
Twenty years later, when I was researching international custody battles for my 1986 book, Mothers on Trial: The Battle for Children and Custody, I learned that most (if not all) Muslim-majority countries do not allow Western mothers to leave their husbands’ countries or to return to their countries of origin with their children—even if the children were born in the West and hold Western passports.
Such countries believe that children belong to their father and to their paternal relatives, and never to their European or North American mother. If a father is insane, violent, or completely absent, his children still belong to their paternal grandmother or paternal aunt.
Betty Mahmoody, the author of the acclaimed Not Without My Daughter, has written movingly about such custody cases in her second book, For the Love of a Child.
Nevertheless Western women continue to fall in love with and marry charming Westernized Muslim men. The women have absolutely no idea what they will face in terms of government bureaucracies and patriarchal customs.
For Abdul-Kareem, even though I’ve left him, nothing has changed; for me everything has changed.
I no longer feel married. The man I married put me in harm’s way and left me there. He then behaved as if my illness and possible death were not important; they were annoying developments that interfered with his grand plan. That’s how I felt after I left Kabul. I had been terrified. And that made me angry, and my anger made me strong.
I now have three lawyers: Aaron Maze, Max Schorr, and Charles Koozman. Abdul-Kareem hires a lawyer, too: M. M. Shafiq Kanawi, Esq.
No, it does not add up to a good Jewish-Muslim joke.
Abdul-Kareem now promises to divorce me in Afghanistan and have the US Embassy certify it. He forgets that we were married in America, not in Afghanistan. He writes, “You can be sure that we in this part of the world are more civilized as far as getting divorces are concerned—we do not have to fabricate lies here in order to get a divorce—the truth is good enough.”
Oh, please. But he has a point. One must have cause for divorce in New York State. Adultery or cruelty or God knows what else.
I have no choice but to move for an annulment. Abdul-Kareem immediately threatens to come to America and fight it. The man refuses to let me go. He writes on: “Phyllis, dear, we cannot turn the clock backwards and pretend that our marriage did not happen because it has happened and legally we are still married and you are my wife. The Embassy has informed your lawyer that one cannot annul a marriage like ours. I believe we can make our marriage work. Therefore, I am quite against a divorce. I bet that if your own lawyer heard my side of the story, I am sure he’d prefer to represent me rather than you.” Abdul-Kareem threatens to fight all and any legal actions I may bring.
He further says, “My first proposition is that you should give our marriage and me another chance. I feel confident that I can give you the love and opportunities you need in life. I do not believe in divorce. My second proposition is actually not a proposition; rather it is a warning. On the basis of the charges you or your parents have pressed against me, I am forced to contest your charges.”
At the time I pay no attention to the grounds for the annulment. I want only to be free of this marriage that threatens my freedom and my life.
The lawyers question me closely. I tell them that Abdul-Kareem had presented himself in one way but then behaved in a radically different way. He is not Westernized, as I once believed him to be.
Only many years later do I understand why Abdul-Kareem might have felt quite endangered by the grounds my lawyers chose. The fraud he is alleged to have committed is as follows: “That prior to said marriage and in order to obtain the consent of plaintiff and induce her to enter into said marriage, defendant falsely and fraudulently stated and represented that he would convert to the Jewish Orthodox Faith and would apply for naturalization and become a citizen of the United States
and establish his marital domicile in the United States.”
I did not know it then, but I certainly know it now: Apostasy is a capital crime in Islam.
According to knowledgeable Muslim and ex-Muslim dissidents, apostasy is the most serious crime you can commit under Muslim religious (Sharia) law. The distinguished author Ibn Warraq is a pioneer in this area. In 2003 he edited the anthology Leaving Islam: Apostates Speak Out. The contributors are from Pakistan, Iran, Bangladesh, Turkey, the Far East, India, Tunisia—and the United States. They describe having to break with their families after being threatened with death, having to flee, adopt new identities—or having to keep their conversion, even their atheism, strictly secret.
I have submitted courtroom affidavits on behalf of a number of potential victims of honor killings. In these cases the families of girls and women who had converted to Christianity vowed to kill them for this perceived betrayal of faith.
In 2003 the courageous Egyptian-born Nonie Darwish, author of Now They Call Me Infidel: Why I Renounced Jihad for America, Israel, and the War on Terror, wrote and talked about having been rejected and demonized by her family, and the considerable danger and contempt she still faces because she converted away from Islam. She is a gracious and eloquent woman, and my heart breaks for her.
Back in the early 1960s no one—not I or my parents or my lawyers—understood anything about how some Muslims view apostates—that they view them as traitors to the faith who deserve to die.
I now believe that the grounds my parents chose for the annulment also represented a wishful fantasy on their part. Perhaps they needed to minimize my rejection of their way of life by arguing that Abdul-Kareem had at least promised to become an American and an Orthodox Jew.
But if this got out, if anyone—a jealous brother, a political rival—believed this was true, Abdul-Kareem could have been jailed, ostracized, impoverished, executed—exiled if he was lucky. The rumor that he had even considered becoming a Jew could ruin him.
An American Bride in Kabul: A Memoir Page 15