From behind the window in the private quarters, I saw the groom outside the guest rooms—the man who was to become my husband. Considering the large price he had paid for me, he must have been, like my brother Mushtaq, the prince of the house and the master of the street. I could only see him from the back: he was wearing a blue shirt and trousers and a gray turban, the tail end of which reached his knees. I was wishing desperately that he’d turn around so I could see his face, the size of his beard, and the color of his eyes. My father and Baba-jan shook hands with each of the men in the party. Mushtaq, who had hurriedly gathered the men’s teacups in the living room, joined them; like other grown-ups, he pushed his way to shake hands with the groom of the family. When the groom turned around, I froze.
He looked very much like Commander Moosa. His gray turban dominated his entire forehead. He had eyes and eyebrows so black he appeared to have used a kohl eyeliner. His lips were pressed together and his long nose protruded out of his face. Like the Taliban I had seen, he was thin, but unlike most Taliban who were tall and thin, he was only of medium height.
Still, I was shocked. Why was he so strikingly similar to Commander Moosa?
I don’t know how long I stood there. The courtyard had emptied and the weather had changed. I didn’t want to talk to anyone. Not even my mother. I noticed that she was going back and forth between the kitchen and the other rooms. She had wrapped her face in her scarf and her eyes were red. I heard Nanah-jan’s voice: “Tonight, you are the bride’s mother. You should be happy.”
“These are not tears,” Madar said. “They’re from the smoke of the wet fire logs.”
Before the week ended more men got together and there was the talk of nekah, the matrimonial ceremony. Once again, I was no more than a little lamb listening to all the talk from behind the door. How many people should be invited? Which maulawi should perform the betrothal ritual? What should we serve and what amount of the first installment of the bride price should the groom bring?
In the evening Agha informed Madar and Nanah-jan: “The nekah is on Monday and we will have fifty guests.”
On Monday morning, I picked up the broom and swept the entire courtyard. Anger, depression, hopelessness, and fear of the man who was to become my husband were heating up every vein in my body. If I had no choice in the matter, what difference did it make whether it was Commander Moosa or this man? Neither one of them knew anything important about me as a person. What difference did it make whether I followed one man and became a refugee in Iran or married another one and ended up in Pakistan or some other part of the world? I sat in the middle of that dust cloud and wished it could become the kind of cloud that would lift me up from the courtyard and carry me in its fluff to a faraway land. I wished for King Solomon’s flying carpet. What if the jinni of Aladdin’s lamp was real? Once again, I felt the taste of earth on my tongue.
They decorated the men’s guest quarters with plastic flowers. Before noon, my aunts arrived separately, all made up. They kissed me on the face and congratulated the men of the house with joy that another girl from the household was getting married and heading off with dignity and pride. Aunt Azizah held me in her embrace. She was pregnant and looked heavier than usual. Nanah-jan joyfully said, “May God always make you a boy-bearing mother.”
I didn’t know anything. The whole city was spinning around my head. I remembered the frogs the Russians were eating.
I felt like throwing up.
My dear Siawash,
If I knew it was you I would bear, I wouldn’t have been so afraid. And I wouldn’t have cried for hours that day under the mulberry tree. But at seventeen, I was afraid of experiencing the feeling of another being in my womb and I was afraid of becoming like most of the other seventeen-year-old pregnant girls in Herat. I had seen women in the city who lost their identities when they bore boys. Instead of their own names, they were called by the name of their older son: the mother of Ahmad, the mother of Mahmoud. Of course, if the first child was a girl, they would wait to give birth to a boy and then they would be referred to as the mother of that boy. My fear overtook my anger—I hope you can forgive me. I waited for years to have you because I was afraid that becoming a mother would make me lose myself, or that I would bleed to death in the process, or that I would give birth to a girl, or that your existence would prevent me from writing my stories. I am afraid I was really a woman with no strength of will and courage.
On our wedding day, the guests arrived in the afternoon. From behind the window, I was looking at the shoes that were paired up all the way to the end of the veranda. The owners of those shoes had come to announce my departure from my family with the recitation of a few verses from the Qur’an. What color were the shoes of the man with whom I would be spending the rest of my life? The dusty black shoes all looked alike. I remembered the dusty feet of Commander Moosa and his black eyes and eyebrows.
I could hear the men’s conversation and their laughter. The dishes of tea and sweets were carried to the guest quarters and the men were congratulating one another in loud voices. The trail of kabob dishes followed. I could still hear the full-throated sounds of the gorging men satiating themselves. I was busy cleaning dishes in the corner of that same room when Nanah-jan came in and said that they are about to begin the nekah ritual now. I was fixing my scarf on my head and shoulders when one of the men announced his arrival with the invocation of “Ya Allah.” He stepped into the room and said: “I’ve come to ask who is the girl’s representative in the matter of the nekah.”
The nekah matrimonial ceremony is the recitation of some verses in Arabic by a maulawi that, in an instant, allows a total stranger to become your master. With just a few verses, a man can touch your hands, your body, and your feet. With a few short verses recited in our guest quarters, verses that I didn’t even hear, I became the property of the groom. A property for which the groom had paid a good price. I don’t remember what the wording of the verses was, but whatever it was, it apparently made everyone else very happy.
That day I would’ve liked to tell them that I represent myself, instead of my Agha or my Baba-jan, but I didn’t have the nerve. I would risk embarrassing Baba-jan, Agha-jan, and my uncles. And, rebel though I was, I still felt bound by the cultural norms of the time and place.
Soon, Nanah-jan spoke up: “Her representative is her Baba-jan, who is the head of the household.”
The man left without even looking at me. I would have preferred for war to break out again, because at least then I could go and take refuge in the underground hideout and stay there forever. Sometimes I think I would have preferred the crackle of bullets to the jabber of men.
I heard them all congratulating themselves.
It was dead silent in the women’s guest quarters, where I was awaiting my destiny with Madar, Nanah-jan, and my aunts. Madar’s face had turn limestone white. Nanah-jan’s lips were shivering and my aunts were keeping themselves busy with their teacups. My fear had now been overtaken by hopelessness. Only the maulawi’s voice could be heard from the men’s guest quarters; he was preaching about the virtues of marriage as if this were the Friday congregational prayer sermon. The men were absorbing it in complete silence or perhaps with indifference.
Then the maulawi called: “May I ask the groom to come forward.”
I could not see either the groom or the maulawi or even the rest of the people who were looking at them. I wanted a spider to appear out of nowhere in the corner of this room and spin a web around me and to gobble up the maulawi if he came toward me. Now that the edge of Madar’s scarf did not protect me, I wanted to stay within the spider’s web forever. I heard the groom’s voice in the other room for the first time:
“I am the groom.”
Determined and strong. Without any trembling. Happy and proud.
He was asked: “Do you accept this woman as your wife?”
He repeated his response three times: “Yes, I asked for her hand in marriage to be my bride and I am accepting
her.”
But nobody asked whether I wanted him and was willing to accept him.
I heard my own voice within, saying: “I am the bride.”
When the groom accepted me as his bride, as an invocation of blessings in unison all the men said, Allah-u Akbar, “God is Greater.”
Nanah-jan took a fistful of noqol, the sugarcoated almonds, and ceremoniously poured them over me. I put my hand on my head as I sensed a bitter taste on my tongue. I felt a prickling on my face as if a swarm of the most vicious worms in the world were attacking my teeth and chewing my cheeks. Azizah looked at me and mumbled under her breath:
“Congratulations, you dear one to your aunt’s heart.”
After the nekah, there was a commotion as the men encouraged the groom to take a tour of the house of which he had just become a mahram, a lawfully permitted household member, and to see the bride alone for a moment.
I still think of that day with fear. The groom’s sister, your aunt, was telling me that the groom was very handsome and that I was fortunate. But your aunt was your father’s half sister from his father’s first wife and cared little for me. I felt like hiding behind my mother’s skirt. Not only did your father resemble Commander Moosa, but his lifestyle was also like a Talib’s. He was born in a family and culture that prized polygamy and thought women were to be bargained for with money.
“Don’t be so ungrateful,” Nanah-jan said. “A man who has two wives must have the money to take care of them. In other words, if he can afford the expenses of two wives, he must be rich.”
Siawash, I did not care if he was rich. In fact, I didn’t know what rich was until the day I had you.
11
Herat—Dowgharun
I don’t remember the first time I really saw him up close—but it didn’t really matter what I thought of him or his looks, since now that we were married, I had to behave the way my husband wanted me to behave. I had to conduct myself the way he wanted. I had to dress in whatever way he suggested. I had to cook what he liked and do whatever satisfied him. I had to follow my husband wherever he went.
Afghan tradition demands that a new couple should not live alone, and therefore must live with the husband’s family. They must also live according to their household rules. My polygamous father-in-law and his two wives—known mostly as wife number one and wife number two—had left the country for Iran years earlier and we were expected to join them.
Because my husband frequently traveled across the border unrestricted, the Iranian embassy gave me an entry visa.
So, on an autumnal day when the yellowing mulberry leaves covered the courtyard, Baba-jan tied a loaf of bread around my waist so that I would leave for my husband’s house symbolically with my own provisions. I was the last girl of my generation from our neighborhood to leave town. Nanah-jan hugged me and whispered in my ear:
“This man is your fortune and your destiny. Learn how to live with your fortune and destiny.”
My fortune and destiny was walking several steps ahead of me. I hugged Nanah-jan, but the words I was trying to whisper back to her that day have clumped into a knot in my throat, even now. Mushtaq waved at me as he turned away his face so I wouldn’t see his tears. In Afghanistan men don’t cry. Mushtaq had become a man now.
After three and a half hours of driving from Herat through dusty trails and along a rocky road we arrived in Dowgharun, a town I had visited years earlier. This time around there was no sign of the camps welcoming refugees. This time, there was a man who until very recently was a mere stranger, and this time Dowgharun greeted me joyfully as the new bride from Herat.
At the Afghan-Iranian border, my husband stood in front of the Immigration Office and I stood behind him, as was required. The immigration clerk first checked my husband’s passport and then looked him up and down carefully. Then it was my turn. My husband gave my passport to the immigration clerk. The clerk asked loudly, “The owner of the passport?” My husband said, “It is my wife’s.” The clerk asked even louder, “Why isn’t she coming forward herself? Give the passport to her. She should approach the window herself.”
My husband stepped back and handed me the passport that the clerk had returned to him. Down deep I felt a strange kind of joy. Herself . . . Me. Me. I felt a sense of respect that the clerk had accorded me. I stepped forward. The clerk took the passport. He thumbed through its blank pages, which had no exit or entrance stamps on them. He then raised his head and said, “Abji, lift up your veil . . .” Suddenly my knees began to shake.
I lifted up my veil; I knew I was blushing. The clerk said, “Sister, raise your head.”
I complied. It had been a long while since I had seen a man without a beard. He must have noticed my sudden blush. The clerk looked first at the photo and then at me. He then stamped the page and held the passport out to me. I was hesitant whether I should take the passport myself or let my husband do it. The clerk smiled; I stepped forward and picked up my passport.
My husband had fifteen brothers and sisters living in this overcrowded house, and so as often as I could I would escape to my favorite place in Tehran, Revolution Boulevard. I quickly found my way around the bookstores that sold the latest Iranian and foreign novels. I no longer had to wear the frilled burqas of Herat, so every time I could, I would wrap my head in a black scarf and head to the boulevard. This was a major step forward. At home, books, free and abundant, were a mere dream, but here in Iran, they were plentiful.
To me, Tehran was astonishingly modern in its attitudes toward women. In Tehran, almost on every street, there were swimming pools for women. Women could work; they could study. Streets were full of cars driven by women. In rush-hour traffic congestion, women were honking angrily. For a girl from Afghanistan, this was a dream.
On the long, tree-lined boulevards, women walked side by side with men or even ahead of them—here, women did not have to walk behind their husbands. It was no longer necessary to exhaust myself looking for a mahram when I had to leave the house. The city was shared equally between men and women.
I would walk down Revolution Boulevard and notice all the women walking around town without male guardians. I would study them closely to get a sense of their inner state of mind. I saw boys and girls strolling, holding hands. I was astounded by their daring.
My husband’s family lived on a street in Pai-Minar, an older part of the town. There was an old park near their house that was frequented by young couples. One day, I asked him if we could go to that park. I was a newlywed and I remember very well that I was wearing a green scarf with golden decorative patterns that matched my faintly visible greenish eye shadow. The whole time in the park, as we were supposed to be enjoying the lush and glorious surroundings, my husband was complaining about my eye shadow. Life might have been freer here, I thought, but still, I am expected to obey my husband. Reluctantly, I wiped off the eye shadow.
Nevertheless, in my time in Iran, I did so many things I could never have dreamed of back in Afghanistan. I joined a girls’ volleyball team that played in that park in the afternoons. I wondered what Nanah-jan would’ve said if she had seen me giggling and laughing out loud with the girls and experiencing life without the Taliban and without war. In those days, life outside Afghanistan seemed exotic and sometimes unbelievable.
I was amazed to see women hurrying on the streets of Tehran with smartphones in hand. I got very excited when I saw women nonchalantly chewing gum on the street. Watching women haggle with taxi drivers or girls sitting in the park eating ice cream and discussing foreign-made hair colors: all of that shocked me! Sometimes I was intimidated by women wearing tight jeans and discussing their college majors.
The streets of Tehran were empowering and validating but they also made me nervous and angry. I wanted to be what Madar would have considered these women: a bad girl. I wanted to be a bad girl who colored her hair and went to college.
In Afghanistan, a good woman was defined as a good mother. In Iran, a good woman could be an independen
t and educated woman. I vowed to myself that I would not have a baby until after I finished my studies. By night, I was afraid and embarrassed to let my husband know that I was trying not to get pregnant, but by day, among my books and my friends, I knew I was making the right decision. If I were to get pregnant, I would be expected to remain home, and I was nervous that I would have trouble ever resuming my education.
Women in Iran were more empowered; they had fought for equal opportunity to attend university, and that thrilled me. There was so much to live for. I wanted to read novels and learn about the world. But the women at home surely wouldn’t have understood. Zahra wrote to me that Nanah-jan had already chosen a name for my nonexistent son. Zahra would ask, “How do the women there live?”
I wrote to Zahra that there are many girls who attend Sharif University, who are very good at mathematics and want to pursue a career other than teaching. I wrote to her how this was not a segregated city, and that even the big black crows have their place strolling after the boys and girls on Wali-Asr Boulevard.
Zahra’s education had been interrupted in Afghanistan. She was good at mathematics, always doing addition and subtraction on Nanah-jan’s prayer beads. She had written that she was hoping to become a doctor someday, but didn’t see how she’d do it, now that they’d locked the school gate. I knew how frustrated she was so I didn’t tell her too much about Iran because I didn’t want to upset her.
But while education was easier in Iran, my husband’s family was still somewhat backward: they did not believe that a girl like me, a girl who had been suppressed in the Taliban era and who had been forbidden schooling, would have the ability to study in an Iranian university. But I insisted that I could, and eventually my sister-in-law—who was always waiting for the day that I would begin throwing up in the morning—began to lose hope. She couldn’t help but say, often, that a dry tree deserves to be sawed off.
Dancing in the Mosque Page 14