Lipstick in Afghanistan

by Roberta Gately

  “What is this?” he said as he entered their room and smelled—and then saw—the special meal, a roasted chicken lying atop a bed of rice.

  “Raziq,” she said, blushing and unable to contain her excitement, “I am with child.” She almost sang the words, she was so happy.

  Raziq took her hands in his and kissed them. “Today, you have given me all I’ve ever hoped for. Is it a son? Can you tell?”

  “No, no, I cannot know, but I am thinking that it will be a big, healthy boy.”

  As the pregnancy progressed, she felt the stirring low in her abdomen. She guided Raziq’s fingers over the swelling, so that he could feel the flutters and kicks that were beginning. Together, they delighted at the growing life in her belly.

  “It is surely a healthy boy, my dear,” Raziq said.

  One afternoon, not long after they’d felt those first flutters, she made her daily trek to the bazaar for lunch with Raziq.

  On her way home, she felt a stabbing pain and nearly doubled over there in the lane, but she managed to stagger back home.

  By the next morning, she lay on her sleeping pad, gripped by waves of throbbing agony.

  Drenched in sweat, she sent Raziq away.

  “Go to work,” she begged, pulling herself erect and doing her best to hide what she felt. “There is nothing you can do. It will pass soon.” Whatever was occurring, she didn’t want him there.

  Reluctantly, he agreed, but only after he’d fetched a doting Rahima, who sat by her side, rubbing her back.

  Parween folded into herself and tried to rub away the cramps, but they only grew stronger. Though it was too early, her baby was coming.

  Rahima summoned the midwife, but there was nothing to be done. Parween delivered a tiny baby—their wished-for boy—but he never breathed his first breath. She saw him, a tiny, perfectly formed baby tethered to her by a bloody cord. Parween asked to have him wrapped in a blanket, so that she might hold him for a moment. She held her baby tight and then handed him to Rahima.

  “Take care with him, my mother; do not let the earth touch his tiny body.” And she turned away and cried.

  Raziq had been called home, and he stayed by Parween’s side. “I have seen him and he was a fine baby. Do not cry, my wife. Inshallah, we will have another baby, a healthy one.” They prayed together to Allah, asking for a healthy baby, and they swore that they didn’t even mind if it was a girl.

  Raziq was right, though it took three years and hundreds of prayers to Allah before Parween was delighted to finally announce that she was pregnant again.

  “You see,” Raziq said as if it had been only a day. “I knew we would be blessed.”

  This pregnancy continued long after she felt the baby quickening. In the end, Parween delivered a healthy baby girl who arrived with a lusty cry.

  From the very first moment, Parween was in love with the perfect child they’d created, and they named her Zahra, for the little flower that she was.

  Raziq took great joy in his baby girl. As soon as she could walk, she toddled about after him, and when he hoisted her onto his shoulders she shrieked with delight. It made no difference to Raziq that she was a daughter, and he proudly showed her off in the bazaar. He loved her as much as he would any son, and he said as much.

  Parween had never known that married life could be so sweet, yet her own joy was tempered by the knowledge that marriage had not been kind to Mariam. Word had trickled back through visitors from Mashaal that Mariam had delivered two stillborn boys. Her inability to produce a son for her aging husband had made him a laughingstock in the village. Humiliated, he took out his anger on Mariam by beating her regularly.

  Her status as the lowliest wife also meant that the older wives, jealous of her youth, would target her as well. She was already their servant and she became their easy prey. It was said that they kicked her as she bent to clean, threw out the water she’d trudged so far to collect, and tainted her rice with mealy bugs. Though covered in bruises that would last for days, she suffered in silence and prayed to Allah to give her a son.

  Parween ached for her dear friend.

  One night as they sat to supper, the baby sleeping at Parween’s side, she spoke.

  “You remember Mariam, my friend? She married the old man from Mashaal.”

  “Of course I remember her. She was like your shadow, or perhaps you were hers.”

  Parween’s eyes filled with tears at the memory. “Well, her marriage did not go so well. She has been beaten and treated badly, by both her husband and his other wives. I want to help.”

  Raziq sighed.

  “This is business between a husband and wife,” he said softly. “We cannot interfere in their private matters.”

  Parween’s tears came freely then.

  “Please, Raziq, if what they say is true, he will kill her if this goes on. She is lower than a stray dog in his house. And I love her as a sister.” She fell silent and forced herself to stop crying. “If you can’t help, then I will do it alone.”

  Her voice was firm.

  Raziq sat silently for a time, and then he leaned toward her. “Try to get word to her to come here. If we can hide her, we can find a way to arrange a divorce.”

  His words warmed her. She felt such love for him that she blushed.

  “But you are not to go to Mashaal alone,” he said, continuing, his voice firmer now. “Do you hear me?”

  Parween nodded.

  The next day, she sent out word through the village’s women, begging Mariam to come back to Bamiyan, and then she waited for her friend to appear.

  11

  While she waited for word from Mariam, Parween continued to trek to the baker’s, eager to read the newspaper in which the naan was wrapped. These old newspapers, often from Kabul, offered her a glimpse at the changes that were taking place in Afghanistan. As soon as she delivered the warm bread to her mother, she hurried home to smooth out the paper and examine it for the latest news.

  She read about the fierce fighting in the countryside among the warlords for control of the nation. Little of that fight had come to Bamiyan, but the villagers followed the events with keen interest. The outcome, they knew, would affect them all.

  When the Taliban finally wrested control of Kabul from the Northern Alliance, it seemed as if peace might finally reign. But the longed-for peace would not last.

  The Taliban, it turned out, were strict followers of Islam. It was reported that they had enforced purdah, an old practice designed to keep women out of sight and out of the way. Under their rule, women were banned from walking outside without a man, and when they were outside they had to be cloaked in the full covering of the burqa—no strands of hair or glimpse of skin would be tolerated. Even women’s shoes had to be silent, no clicking heels or scuffing soles.

  Parween’s eyes grew wide as she read on.

  Punishment for offenders would be swift and final, the Taliban had announced, and to demonstrate their absolute authority, they had shot dead a young woman on the streets of Kabul after she was found walking alone with her head uncovered, her hands outstretched as she begged for food. Parween wondered if she’d begged for her life as well.

  But it would be Raziq, and not the newspapers, who brought home word of the latest and most ominous developments.

  “It’s happened—the Taliban have come,” Raziq announced one night, his eyes downcast.

  The news sent a shudder through Parween.

  “They have taken two houses just up the road. And today, four of them—all carrying Kalashnikovs—patrolled the bazaar. You should have seen them, young men really, but filthy, with matted beards and greasy turbans and stained shirts. They mean to enforce the old ways.” He reached out and gently touched Parween’s arm, looking at her so intently that she felt a hint of fear.

  “Things are not the same, my wife,” he said, his expression grim. “You must wear the burqa if you expect to walk outside of these walls.”

  Parween pulled away, her face flus
hed with anger. “I will not wear the burqa, Raziq. I will not be hidden and ignored.”

  He shook his head sadly.

  “That is your decision, and I will respect it, but it means that you won’t be allowed to walk through the bazaar. Is it worth that to you?”

  “It is,” she said. She glowered at him. “I will not give in to the Taliban. They are like mad dogs.” She folded her arms across her chest.

  Raziq drew in his breath, a frown wrinkling his face.

  “You must never speak like that beyond these walls. Do you understand? They would sooner kill us both than put up with a defiant woman.”

  “They are evil—”

  “That may be so, but they are here, and there is nothing to be done. We must accept their rule… for now.”

  Parween saw sadness in his eyes now, and her anger faded.

  Raziq reached his hand up and ran it over his chin. “Did you know that I will no longer be allowed to trim my beard? They have instructed us to let our beards grow long and matted. You see, we will all be forced to abide by their rules, even the children.” He let his gaze rest on Zahra as she stumbled about the room, laughing and babbling. “The Taliban have banned the games and joy of childhood. No kites, no sports, no laughter, no music. They say it will take us from our prayers and we will forget that it is Allah alone we should worship.”

  Though she didn’t press the matter, Parween knew in her heart that she could not yield to the new ways.

  As the days passed, her resentment grew like a fist twisting and curling in her stomach. She watched as her mother, who’d been forced to leave her job with the tailor, grew quieter and somehow older. And with each day Parween spent in the isolation of their compound, she became more certain that something had to be done.

  “We must fight back,” she whispered one day to Raziq.

  He took a deep breath and his expression said that he had dreaded this conversation.

  “These are not matters for you, my wife,” he said, pleading with her. “You must stay quiet; we don’t want them to notice us, any of us.”

  Parween was disappointed at his response.

  “But they have noticed us. They have stolen our lives and left us with only a shell of an existence. My mother and I are prisoners in our own home, and our daughter has no life ahead of her, save one of utter misery.”

  “But there is nothing we can do. They are everywhere, and none can stand against them.” He paused, then continued. “You must not allow yourself to be concerned with this. Concern yourself with our home and our child. This is not your trouble.”

  Parween felt anger bubbling up inside her. She’d never really argued with Raziq, yet this time, she was certain he was wrong. She started to answer him with a caustic remark, but she caught herself.

  He was her husband. He would know what to do.

  “I am sorry, Raziq. I will trust your words.”

  Each day, Raziq reported another thing that the Taliban had destroyed. In the bazaar, the music had stopped and the little twinkling lights had been taken down. Once a bustling and joyous community, Bamiyan became a living ghost town. Villagers hurried out for their errands and then hurried home again.

  Yet a hint of revolt remained, a trimmed beard here and a bit of music there.

  And the Taliban noticed.

  And so, on a sunny day in early October, they gathered up a handful of village men, some so old they had to be carried. Raziq was in the bazaar when the roundup occurred, and he watched as Parween’s brother Noori was pulled away from the engine he was working on. He hurried to a nearby shop to ask what was happening. There he met his friend Wazir and two shopkeepers, who were as puzzled as he, and the little group followed the Taliban and their prisoners to the end of a barren dirt airstrip at the edge of town, in full view of Bamiyan’s beloved Buddhas.

  A crowd of villagers had gathered, and they watched as a senior Taliban screamed at the frightened men.

  “Infidels! You have ridiculed Allah with your ways. Your women are not covered properly. Whores! Your mothers, your wives, your daughters, all whores!”

  The spectators murmured as he spoke, and then rifles were cocked, and the crowd stilled.

  Even the breeze seemed to quiet.

  With a chorus of “Allah u akbar” ringing in the air, the Taliban steadied their rifles and executed each prisoner with a single gunshot to the head. A few cried out, and when the sounds of killing had ceased, the gunmen moved through the rows of bodies and shot any who still seemed to have signs of life.

  Some of the onlookers were summoned and they were told to dig long trenches, then to push the dead into them.

  Terrified, the villagers dug as they were ordered. With tears in their eyes and pleas to Allah asking him to forgive them, they pushed the bodies of their family members, friends, and neighbors into the long trench and shoveled dirt over the bodies, erasing all signs of the massacre.

  Raziq, Wazir, and the others had watched it all in horror. Though he dared not speak, for fear of being overheard, Raziq knew that his wife had been right. Something had to be done to rescue Bamiyan from the misery the Taliban had brought.

  He hurried home. He wanted to be the one to break the news of Noori’s death and hoped he could find the words that might soften the blow. He ran the last few paces, and he was breathless as he opened the gate to Abdullah’s compound and stepped inside.

  There by the well, he saw Rahima and Parween, chatting and pulling up buckets of water. Zahra played at their feet, tipping the buckets and splashing the water.

  Parween turned at the sound of the gate opening. “You are home early today,” she said as she smiled. “Is the shop closed? Are you finished for the day?”

  Raziq was silent. The expression he wore sent a chill through Parween.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  Rahima stood and turned toward Raziq.

  “Che taklif?” she asked.

  Zahra ran to her father, and he bent to kiss her.

  “Go inside, my little one. I will follow in a minute.” Zahra obeyed and toddled away.

  Parween and Rahima stood perfectly still, their eyes pleading with him, and he finally spoke.

  “It is Noori. He is dead. The Taliban killed him, and many others, today. They shot them.” His voice broke.

  Rahima moaned and sank to her knees. “My son,” she cried as she covered her face with her hands.

  Parween was confused.

  “What do you mean, shot? Was it an accident?”

  “It was no accident; it was an execution. They shot twenty men today, Noori among them.”

  “But what had they done? Why Noori?” She couldn’t grasp what had occurred.

  “They took Noori and the others for no reason that we know. They hadn’t done anything. The old man Ali-Haq was among them. He couldn’t even stand there by himself. He had to lean on the man next to him.”

  At that, Parween cried out, and she reached for Raziq.

  “Oh, God, did Noori suffer? Where is he? Can we bury him?”

  “No, no, we cannot.” Raziq almost whispered his reply. “They have buried him with the others right where they were shot.” He paused and added, “I do not think he suffered. His death was instant.”

  Parween knelt by her crying mother and wrapped her arms around her.

  “Do not be sad, Mother. Noori is a martyr, as was Father, and they both reside in paradise now.” She struggled to keep her own voice from cracking and held back her tears.

  Raziq bent to whisper to Parween.

  “I must return to the market now. There is still work to do.” He stood and placed his hand on the gate’s heavy latch.

  Before he could open it, Parween appeared beside him.

  “Please do not go. There is danger out there. Stay here. We need you.”

  Raziq steadied his trembling hand.

  “I must go. I will be safe. I will return tonight. Perhaps there will be news. Perhaps it was just a terrible mistake.”


  Raziq strode quickly back to the bazaar, to the shop of Wazir, he of the twinkling lights and colorful veils. The lights had been dimmed, and the veils—too ornate these days—had been packed away. The men, six of them in all, sat in the back of the shop and talked, their voices low.

  Wazir, the eldest, spoke up first.

  “They have taken our freedoms, our property, our children’s laughter, and now this. They will murder us all if we don’t drive them away.”

  Faizir agreed.

  “We cannot just sit back. We fought against the Russians. We must fight back against our own invaders, as well.”

  “How many of you have weapons?” Wazir asked, and every hand shot up.

  Raziq stood.

  “It is true that we must act, but we must be careful, take our time, and take them by surprise. They will be expecting us to respond to today’s massacre. We must wait and act when they least expect it. Let us all give it some thought and meet again in a week’s time to discuss our options. Above all, we must take care not to arouse their suspicions.”

  There was a murmur of agreement, and the men elected to meet again in a week’s time. Raziq hurried back to his little office in the bazaar, where he took out his prayer mat, knelt toward Mecca, and asked for Allah’s guidance.

  Whispers of revolt bubbled through the village and the group of six grew, so that in just four weeks’ time there were more than twenty men crowded into Wazir’s tiny back room. Each man had at least one weapon of his own. Though their guns were old and poorly maintained, they would have to do.

  They met weekly, and their plans took shape slowly and secretly.

  Meanwhile, the Taliban rolled their heavy artillery and tanks into Bamiyan and claimed homes and property for their own. They shot people and animals alike, set fire to the potato crops and fields of sprouting wheat.

  The Taliban swaggered through the bazaar and pointed fingers at young men whose beards were trimmed. Many young men were snatched from the street without warning.

  They simply disappeared.

  By early winter of 2001, the men decided that they had to act soon. They risked discovery if they waited too long.