An American Bride in Kabul: A Memoir (25 page)

And so I ask, “Abdul-Kareem, don’t you think that Atatürk [who modernized Turkey] is turning over in his grave?”

Abdul-Kareem responds rather savagely: “Let Atatürk spin. He was a fool. He wanted the West to like him so he became superficially like the West. He forced women to smoke, drink alcohol, and wear Western clothing. What is good about any of that? Granted, women deserve to go to school, but what Erdo
g
ˇ
an is doing is much better. He is letting women go to school and allowing them to wear hijab. And he has freed Turkey from the military.”

Perhaps Abdul-Kareem has a point, yet what is his real point? Kamile smokes, drinks, and wears Western clothing. Her long-ago demonstration of her ability to earn a living, drive a car, and live independent of her family is an accomplishment that signifies her hard-won dignity.

Abdul-Kareem sees these personal freedoms as forms of Western imperialism. He is saying that Kamile has been duped by Atatürk, who only wanted to please the West. What Abdul-Kareem says may be specifically calculated to challenge my feminist views or to shame Kamile, who vocally idolizes Atatürk.

But Abdul-Kareem has stood by her loyally. In his way he is quite devoted to her. They are each other’s constant companions.

A
bdul-Kareem usually spends hours conjuring up an Afghan feast. Today, on 9/11/11, he orders a meal from the local Turkish restaurant. As we pass around the rice dishes, Kamile is quiet and Abdul-Kareem continues to criticize American foreign policy—even as he expresses his admiration, even love, for President Obama.

As we begin to eat, I look directly at Kamile and begin to talk about my research into honor killing.

Abdul-Kareem interrupts me, stating that such research is racist in that it singles out one ethnicity when all ethnicities are equally to blame.

“If you want to tackle something important, research racism, look at America itself. That’s something that the Phyllis I once knew would be doing.”

As usual I say, “Abdul-Kareem, I am not talking about racism in America or about the history of African slavery in America. I am talking about honor killings.”

The elegant Mr. Abdul-Kareem turns nasty. In a harsh and scornful tone he says, “Did you personally interview the allegedly murdered girls? No. Did you perform the autopsies yourself? No. Did you talk to their families, understand their point of view? No. Did you work with the police? No. So you are just guessing.”

“I am not on trial,” I respond, “and I do not have to answer hostile questions at a family dinner.”

Whenever the subject of honor killings comes up, Abdul-Kareem always says that he has never known any to have taken place in Afghanistan.

When I name names, dates, cite a particular newspaper story (his favorite medium) on this topic, Abdul-Kareem ultimately says, “I will not talk about that.”

Or he says, “Well, there are so many crimes of this nature happening around the world, this is only a very small part of that.”

A
bdul-Kareem pretends that he has not read my work, including whatever I have written about Afghanistan in the past. But I know that he has read every word because every so often, right out of the blue, Abdul-Kareem will either concede that I finally got something right or he’ll criticize me on some small detail that I presumably got wrong.

Once, when I was studying custody battles worldwide, I asked him about custody in Afghanistan. Our conversation was hilarious but instructive.

Phyllis:
Has any Afghan mother ever lost custody of her children?

Abdul-Kareem:
Never. Not once. Not that I know of.

Phyllis:
According to the Sharia, a father is entitled to his children when the boy is seven and the girl is twelve.

Abdul-Kareem:
No, no. It is only “at puberty.” But what father would remove children from a good wife? What would he do with them?

Phyllis:
What if the mother did something unheard of—like commit adultery?

Abdul-Kareem:
Under Sharia women can also sue for divorce if their husbands commit adultery or are impotent or refuse to support them or are cruel.

Phyllis:
I don’t think this is true, but you have not answered my question. Alright, when the rare divorce does occur, who keeps the children?

Abdul-Kareem:
Divorce never occurs. It doesn’t have to. Even when the men of my father’s generation took a second wife, they didn’t divorce or abandon their first wives and children. That would be too Western.

Phyllis:
What if a woman really disobeys her husband? Can that lead to divorce or to her loss of custody?

Abdul-Kareem:
Wives don’t disobey their husbands. Why would they? Now, if a mother is genuinely incompetent, if she completely neglects her children—

Phyllis:
Neglects her children?

Abdul-Kareem:
Perhaps a mother is overly devoted to her own family. Perhaps she insists on visiting her mother every single day. Perhaps she leaves her children in the hands of servants too much. Perhaps she is not making sure that the children are being kept from evil influences. Even such a terrible mother will be given time to change her behavior. The Kauzi [the mullah] might counsel her husband to give her six months to change her ways. Our mullahs are against divorce. Everyone is.

Phyllis:
There must be one Afghan woman who once lost custody of her children because she was married to a cruel man or because she disobeyed him in some way.

Abdul-Kareem:
Give me some time to research this minor question for you.

He was not always like this. Once, he laughed at hypocrisy among Afghans and condemned Afghans for stupid and incompetent behavior.
Sometimes he still does. A few years ago, when I invited him to join me at Asia House to hear President Hamid Karzai speak, I was afraid that Abdul-Kareem’s nonstop loudly whispered comments about the Afghan president would get us thrown out.

“What kind of costume is he wearing? He’s a Pushtun, not an Uzbeck. Why is he wearing an Uzbeck coat? Is he a clown of some kind? What has America bought and paid for?”

“Shh-hh,” I said, “they will ask us to leave or start taking photos of you.”

But he kept grumbling all the time Karzai was speaking.

W
hen I first saw homosexual men holding hands on the streets of Kabul, my Afghan family, including Abdul-Kareem, told me that I was exaggerating or misunderstanding what I had seen with my own eyes.

When I, and a handful of others, including Amnesty International and the author Khaled Hosseini, initially broke the stories of the gay male “dancing boys” of Afghanistan, the existence of Afghan warrior-pedophiles, orphaned Afghan boy sex slaves, and the inevitable epidemic of prison-like homosexuality in a woman-hating culture—Abdul-Kareem refused to discuss these matters with me.

But once he saw the 2010 PBS and BBC documentaries on dancing boys in Afghanistan, listened to NPR’s program, and read all about it in the
New York Times,
he simply acted as if he had known about this all along. Thus, without referring to any of our previous conversations (really nonconversations) on this very subject,
he
now told
me
all about the dancing boys.

“But,” he insisted, “you must realize that this is true only of Kandahar. It is true nowhere else.”

I understand why he needs to disagree with me. I’m the wife who got away, the wife who delivers public lectures all over the world and who writes books. He cannot take me on in public. The only place he can argue with me and attempt to assert dominance, superiority, is privately, when I am at my most vulnerable, because I am trying to be nice, trying to honor our family-like connection.

From his point of view it is bad enough that he has lost everything. He is also saddled with a feminist first wife who insists on exposing things that are meant to be hidden, certainly from infidel and non-Afghan eyes. Internal divisions, terrorists, and the world’s superpowers have laid waste to his country. Now the infidel destroyers are enjoying
themselves, criticizing and feeling superior to the country they failed to help.

W
e finish our dinner and are drinking our tea. But the atmosphere has gotten tense. It is not pleasant. I try to bring us together. Looking at Kamile, I say, “I want to toast again to your health and to our continued relationship.”

Kamile beams. “You are like family, like a sister to me,” she says.

In 2007, when Abdul-Kareem went back to Afghanistan to sell the best and the last of his family’s land “to rich and unbelievably vulgar drug lords,” he had Kamile call me right after he had called her, to assure me that he was alright. They both thanked me for my genuine concern.

In a strange way I am still a member of this family—a distant member to be sure, but my status as Abdul-Kareem’s first wife is an identity that will never change and one that is never challenged. Our relationship and my relationship to his family, including his second wife, did not conclude with an annulment. We have remained in contact.

In fact my biological son has grown up knowing Abdul-Kareem’s family. I attended the various graduations of Abdul-Kareem’s children. They attended my son’s wedding, I hosted some lovely dinners for us all.

Over the years Abdul-Kareem would always come to pick up me up to drive me back to his suburban home. If he could not do so, one of his grown children filled in for him. And then someone would insist on driving me back. Whether this was overly protective or not, it was an Afghan custom that I came to appreciate.

I was always proud that an American Jew could have a long-term tie to an Afghan Muslim.

I
t is still 9/11/11 and Kamile is still eager to talk about Turkey. The matter has been in the news quite a bit recently, and I am interested in her views on the subject. I ask, “When will Turkey admit to the Armenian genocide?”

Both Abdul-Kareem and Kamile speak at the same time and say exactly the same thing.

“Turkey will never do it. The Turkish Republic did not commit those crimes, the Ottoman Empire did. Why would they admit to a crime they didn’t commit?”

At this point Abdul-Kareem lowers his voice and says, almost in a whisper, “If Turkey does this it would be exposing itself to the kind of thing the Jews do.”

He rubs his thumb and index finger together, indicating moneygrubbing and greediness.

“The Armenians would demand reparations. It would be endless.”

I can barely breathe.

It gets worse—far worse—as Abdul-Kareem suddenly launches into a first-time tirade against Israel in a particularly ugly way. What he says is inaccurate, unoriginal, irrational, and practically anti-Semitic. Is this something he really believes? Or does he feel hurt by what I have said about honor killings? Is this his payback?

This is crazy. Abdul-Kareem married a Jewish woman. Many of his friends in Kabul were Jews, and most of the people who helped him escape the Soviet occupation and become established in America were Jews. What has poisoned his bloodstream against the Jewish state?

He is not a mosque goer. He gets his information only from the secular media. He reads the British newspapers, English editions of German and Arab newspapers, perhaps the Turkish press, the Afghan media, and of course the mainstream American media. He has not gotten his information from an Islamist mosque.

In many ways Abdul-Kareem is now another kind of stranger. When I first met him, he passed as Western, indeed as a version of a cultured and wealthy Brit or as an affable colonial-era chap. I had no idea he would be force marching me back into the tenth century. I am so sad we no longer talk about films and books; our most neutral discussions are about our various age-related medical problems. On politics . . . we now disagree.

It is getting dark now. It is still 9/11/11—and Abdul-Kareem has still not acknowledged the plain fact that one of Afghanistan’s ruling warlords was the man who provided Osama bin Laden with shelter, a hiding place, and the time to choreograph the 9/11 attacks.

But that is not the worst of it. Once again he has managed to silence both his first wife and his second wife.

I
n 2002 Asne Seierstad, the Norwegian journalist, published
The Bookseller of Kabul.
It is a best-selling expose of a commendably bookish and hospitable Afghan man, Shah Mohammed Rais, who liked to present himself as a Western-style liberal but who was quite the misogynist tyrant at home.

Seierstad lived with him and his two wives for four months.

At the age of fifty Rais took a second wife; she was sixteen at the time of her marriage. His first wife was inconsolable. Although he
constantly preached the importance of education, Rais refused to send any of his children to school; instead he forced them to work twelve-hour days in his various stores. Seierstad notes, “The family is the single most important institution in Afghan culture. . . . Family law—decided by the men in the household—is more important than government legislation. . . . If we can’t understand the Afghan family, we can’t understand Afghanistan.”

Like the bookseller of Kabul, Abdul-Kareem is a misogynist, a charming misogynist, an educated and seemingly assimilated misogynist, but awful where wives and feminism are concerned.

Abdul-Kareem is ruining the book I want to be able to write. What a triumph of the human spirit it would be if I could show that a relationship could flourish between an American and an Afghan, between a Jew and a Muslim, and especially between a feminist and a misogynist.

I have made it a point of honor to step gingerly around all these differences, pretending that they are not as important as my commitment to this connection. Abdul-Kareem has done so, too.

Since Abdul-Kareem came back to America, he has always called to see how I am, how my son is, how my family is, and to wish me happy holidays on both Jewish and national occasions. I rarely call him on Muslim holidays.