Kabul Beauty School (4 page)

Then the music changes and the dancing becomes more suggestive. The groom’s sisters pump their hips and draw their hands across their faces as if feigning sexual ecstasy. Even the mother does an exaggerated bump and grind for a second; then she laughs and sinks into a chair someone has pushed toward her. And then all the women join the sisters on the dance floor; I am included—the woman with the rhinestone headdress and her friends insist. There, I’m surrounded by the kind of dancing I would never have expected from these women who dart down the city streets—when they go out at all—draped in dark colors with their eyes down. This is dirty dancing, Kabul style: they shimmy, they shake, they arch their backs and thrust their hips. The ones with long hair whip it around, drape it over their faces, then lift it to reveal parted lips and smoldering eyes. They snake their arms behind their backs, to the sides, over their heads, and their hands move as if they’re stroking imaginary lovers. They dance together and then break apart, but when they’re together they move their hands along the sides of one anothers’ bodies, sink to the floor, and sway back up again, grazing cheeks, arms, hips. And then I peer into the crowd, startled: I notice that there are men on the women’s side of the room, holding them around the waist, spinning them, and pressing their hips against them. I wonder if the police will storm the room and drag them off for sexual mingling. But then I realize that they’re not men but women dressed as men, acting as men, standing in for men.

I back off the dance floor, because this scene is almost too much to take in when I’m right in the middle of it; then I notice that another man has stuck his head through the curtain to watch. Sure enough, a big hand quickly appears to grasp him by the hair and pull him back, but this makes me curious. I make my way over to the split in the curtain and arrange a tiny peephole so that I can look through. It’s almost the same wild scene on the other side, only with a different set of clothes and less glitz and the powerful aroma of male sweat. The men are dancing with one another, snaking their arms, thrusting their hips, holding one another close, shimmying to the ground while running their hands down one anothers’ sides—all of it. I’m stunned, and I let the curtain flap open a little more so that I can watch.

The men are obviously very comfortable touching one another, dancing with one another. They show one another not only affection but also sexual vigor. I wonder what would happen if the two sides of the room ever got together, wonder if any of the men and women ever find a way to sneak off together, and then suddenly I don’t have any more time to wonder about it. Some of the men have seen me peering through the curtain, and they pull it open wider. There I am, my face poked into their side of the room, looking very much like a woman with her head in a guillotine. It seems as if all the men in the room turn around to look and shout. Blushing, I pull my head back and move away.

The dancing on the women’s side has begun to slow down, because the food is on its way. Each of the red-clothed tables seats around twenty people, but enough food is brought for forty or more. Piles of kebabs on platters, pasta stuffed with leeks and covered with a meat sauce, bowls with every known method of food preparation applied to eggplant, rice with nuts and raisins. The delivery of food goes on for what seems like hours, as the family makes sure no one leaves the feast without having stuffed themselves ten times over. There are no utensils on the tables, and everyone eats with her hands. I admire the way the other women are able to eat without spilling so much as a drop of sauce or a grain of rice. A thread of cabbage coated with yogurt falls in my lap, and I whisk it away quickly, but I soon wind up wearing more of my dinner than I eat. I drop so much that I’m actually still hungry when the servers come back to take away the plates. Once the food is gone, the women around me stand, kiss my cheeks, and begin to leave.

I’m not sure how I’m going to get home, but finally I see one of Roshanna’s sisters rushing toward me. She tells me that Roshanna wants me to come to her parents’ house with some of the other honored guests and the groom’s family. So we go outside, and I squeeze back into the bridal car with a dazed Roshanna and about six other women in tight dresses and high heels. As we start driving, a car behind us honks and pulls up, and a man with a video camera leans out the passenger side window. Then an insane race begins as the driver of the wedding car tries to make it as hard as possible for the video car to keep up with us. We race up and down Kabul’s streets, dodging people on foot and on bicycle, screeching around corners. We pass a bus and, incredibly, wind up driving on the other side of the oncoming traffic, almost on the sidewalk. We almost sideswipe a patient, dusty water buffalo that’s standing near a group of men having an argument. The driver guffaws that he’s lost the videographer and we turn a corner, but there the other man is, facing us. He leans so far out of his window that I’m sure he’s going to fall, but he wins the game: he’s able to film our driver frantically backing out into traffic again as the women in the back of the car—except Roshanna—scream with laughter. Driving in Kabul is never a walk in the park, let me tell you, but I truly thought we were all going to die on the way to Roshanna’s house.

When we arrive, we take off our shoes at the door and go into the living room. Roshanna and her new husband sit on the only chairs in the room, and the rest of us drop onto cushions. I wave and put on my biggest smile for Roshanna, but she doesn’t respond. She and her husband sit without touching, without smiling, like bride and groom mannequins propped in the chairs. Roshanna’s sister takes my arm and leads me to her, pats the cushion next to her, and I sit near my friend, who only glances at me and then resumes staring into space. For a moment, it’s hard to believe that this woman with the dead eyes and rigid body is my Roshanna. But I know that the consummation ceremony is the next event on the marital agenda. I realize she’s so stunned with fear that she can’t do anything other than stare. I don’t even see her breathing.

We are all served tea and sweets. There is much talking among the guests and families. I can’t understand them because my Dari—the Persian dialect spoken in Afghanistan—is not so good, and the one person in the room who speaks English well—Roshanna—isn’t talking. Then the groom’s family and the other guests begin leaving in little groups, and I stand, both relieved to go and guilty about leaving my friend. But again, her sister clamps herself to my arm. She shakes her head while she keeps talking. Her mother comes over, too, and tugs on my arm. I don’t know what’s going on until Roshanna turns to me. “Please stay,” she whispers, and then she lays her own cold fingers on my wrist.

Roshanna’s mother turns to the bride and groom. She beckons them and they rise, although Roshanna catches her heel on the cushion and staggers forward. They follow her mother down the hall, Roshanna still a little shaky on her feet. She bumps into the wall, as if she’s been drinking, but this has been a strictly traditional Muslim affair with no drinking—as for myself, I’m thinking fondly of the bottle of Johnnie Walker Red in my room at home. I hear a door slam in the back of the house; then I’m led to a guest room with four of the other women. We lie down on the cushions in our party clothes, and one by one, we fall asleep. I’m the last to go. I keep listening for noises from down the hall, but all is quiet and I finally let go of my fear. Or it lets me go. Anyway, I sleep.

And awake to someone shaking me. Roshanna’s mother is standing over me, waving a white handkerchief, her long black braid swinging over my head. She’s talking rapidly and clutching the Koran to her chest. Every once in a while, she stops talking and covers the Koran with kisses. I look over at one of Roshanna’s sisters, who winces and tries to explain. “No blood,” she whispers. I remember that this is supposed to be the proof of Roshanna’s virginity: a bloody handkerchief, dropped outside the door of the consummation room.

Roshanna’s mother is still talking away, rapid, frantic words that might not make any sense in Dari, either; then she grabs my hand and works the handkerchief into my clenched fist. She and the sister start pulling me down the hall. I protest, but it doesn’t do me any good. They open the door to the consummation room, and in the dim light, I see Roshanna crouching on one of the cushions at the side of the room. Her husband is sitting on the bed. He turns his face away from the door, and then Roshanna’s mother pulls her from the room and closes the door.

“It is not working,” the husband says suddenly. I didn’t think he spoke English, but he does, at least a little. “It’s not working.”

I’m not sure what he means, but he seems troubled, not angry. Is he having a hard time getting an erection? Is she having a hard time with lubrication? Even though he’s forty years old, is it possible that he doesn’t know what to do in here? That he’s been told all his life that sex is so dirty and shameful he’s never tried it? I decide these questions are too big for me to tackle, even though many of the Afghans I’ve met seem to think Americans can figure anything out. I try a different angle.

“Sometimes there is no blood, even if the girl is a virgin,” I say. “If she works too hard or even falls down a flight of stairs, there is sometimes no blood.”

He nods, his dark eyes on the ground.

“Sometimes, it’s hard to have sex if the girl is nervous,” I continue. “You have to be gentle. You have to touch her very gently so she can relax.”

He doesn’t say anything. I don’t want to use body language to show him where he should touch her. Instead, I stroke my arm. “Like the way you’d pat a dog if it’s scared,” I add desperately. It’s the only thing I can think of, but he gives me a funny look. Then I remember what an Afghan friend told me the other day, that Muslims don’t like dogs because one of them was supposed to have bitten the Prophet.

“I know all these things,” he says with sudden agitation. “But it’s not working.”

Then Roshanna’s mother is knocking on the door, and she brings Roshanna back into the room. She smoothes her hair and then smiles at me as if I’ve made everything right again. “Good-bye, good-bye, good-bye!” the mother says, pulling me out the door. Then one of the sisters leads me back to the guest room while the mother settles herself right outside the door of the consummation room.

The other women are awake and waiting for me in the guest room. I bet they’d kill to have a Dari-English dictionary right now so they could ask me what’s going on. I just wave my hand as if the problem down the hall is so minor that it need not concern them, then settle myself on my cushion again. I ignore them until they stop talking and fall asleep, and then, amazingly, I too fall asleep. It’s a bad sleep, though: I’m back in the car on the way to the wedding and the driver keeps smashing into other cars and I’m afraid, once again, that we’ll all die.

Then someone is shaking me. Roshanna’s mother is back, waving the clean white handkerchief, kissing the Koran, then hugging it to her chest, rocking back and forth, wailing and crying, talking rapidly to me and to her daughters, who are again urging me up off my cushion. This time, her mother looks even more terrified than before, if that’s possible. I don’t know how many trial runs Roshanna will be allowed before the groom decides his family has been cheated, that she is not a virgin, that she is a disgrace and a humiliation to both families. I try to act as if this is no big problem, that the couple just need a little bit more prompting. “Let me talk to Roshanna alone,” I say.

The groom leaves the room, and I settle my arms around my shivering friend. “I’m afraid,” she whispers. “It hurts so much when he pushes into me that I pull away. I can’t help it.”

“Try to relax,” I tell her. “Breathe slowly. It won’t hurt as much if you can relax.” Then I give her the advice that so many women who don’t really like sex cling to—just lean back, open your legs, and try to think of something else. I tell her that it won’t hurt after the first few times, that she might even find it as pleasurable as I do. She looks at me as if I’m trying to convince her that she will enjoy chewing broken glass someday.

“One more thing,” I tell her. “If this happens again, tell them that you want to talk to me one more time. But this time, don’t let your mother take the handkerchief.” Then I kiss her and leave. I check my watch, because I know that after the morning call to prayer the in-laws will be coming back to the house. They’ll want to see a bloody handkerchief.

This time, I can’t sleep. And sure enough, her mother is back in the room in a half hour or so, weeping, kissing the Koran, imploring me to talk to Roshanna again. I’m ready for her this time, with my purse tucked up inside my dress. Back in the consummation room, I ask Roshanna for the white handkerchief and pull a pair of fingernail clippers out of my purse.

“What are you doing?” she asks.

I grit my teeth and dig the clippers under one of my nails, then cut down to the quick until blood spurts out. I wipe my finger back and forth on the handkerchief, then hand it to her. “Here’s your virginity,” I tell her. “Hide it under your cushion and then pull it out the next time he enters you. Let your mother come in and find it.”

She puts her hands over her face again, and I leave the room.

Back in the guest room, I fall asleep once more and am awakened just as the sky is beginning to lighten. The house is in chaos. I can hear Roshanna’s mother wailing and screaming. Doors are slamming, people are crowding the hallway, everyone is talking at once. I stagger up from my cushion, filled with dread that the husband has discovered the bloody handkerchief under their bed or that it somehow doesn’t look the way it should.

But when I rush out into the hallway, I see that Roshanna’s mother is wailing for joy. “Virgin!” she shouts at me triumphantly, waving the handkerchief stained with my blood. “Virgin!”

I
left for Afghanistan in May 2002, that first spring after the fall of the Taliban. I didn’t have any idea that I’d still be here nearly five years later doing spiral perms and introducing the art of pubic waxing. I had taken emergency and disaster relief training two months before 9/11 with a nonprofit organization called the Care for All Foundation (CFAF). Then I talked myself into a place on the first team that the organization sent to Afghanistan. I imagined I would spend the month there bandaging wounds, splinting broken limbs, clambering over the rubble, and helping people who were still hiding from the Taliban climb into daylight. I bought my first-ever pair of rugged boots for that trip at the army surplus store. I figured I’d be staying in a tent the whole time and wouldn’t be able to take a shower, so half my suitcase was stuffed with Wet Ones so that I could tidy myself up every day behind a tree.

Very little of that trip met those expectations.

I first met my team members at the airport in Chicago, where we identified one another at the gate by the little red hats we had been instructed to wear. Then we flew to Pakistan, where we boarded a United Nations flight for Kabul. I spent the next few hours sleeping, reading, and looking out the window. Mostly, it was too cloudy to see anything, but there were times when I could see the terrain we were crossing. The mountains jutted upward like pitted brown teeth, and the plane seemed frail against such a harsh landscape. As it finally cleared the mountains and started its descent for Kabul, everyone strained toward the windows to see what was coming. Below us was the vast bowl in the middle of the mountains where the city was located, an immense green plain—seven thousand feet above sea level—with large, irregular, brown splotches of habitation. At this height, I couldn’t really see the scars of war. I remember puzzling over the shapes below me, though. It was as if Kabul was laid out in boxes, like a crossword puzzle.

When we finally bumped down on the tarmac, that vision of sweeping green vanished. I couldn’t even see the mountains anymore because the air was so heavy with dust. Instead, I could see only the devastation surrounding the airport. On both sides of the runway, there were jagged holes in the ground from bombs and land mines. They looked like burst blisters, still raw and painful. Nearby, there was also a huge graveyard of tanks and planes that had been twisted and torn by the fighting. On the façade of the main airport building, what looked like a hand-painted sign said
WELCOME TO AFGHANISTAN.
The building looked as if it hadn’t welcomed visitors for many years, though—there were broken windows, scarred bricks, and piles of rubble heaped outside.

Before we climbed down the stairs from the plane, all the women quickly pulled the scarves we had been told to bring over our heads. On the ground, we passed by dozens of stern-looking men with machine guns. It looked more like we were being captured than like we were being welcomed, but I straightened my spine—aching from two days of travel—and followed the line of volunteers into the building. I wasn’t afraid. People still ask me if I was worried about the reception we’d get from the Afghan people. Whether they’d love us because America had driven away the Taliban or hate us because we had bombed the bejesus out of their capital and countryside to do it. Whether they shared the fanaticism that had propelled the 9/11 terrorists to kill three thousand people in New York City or whether they feared it even more than we did. But I didn’t think about any of these things. I was just excited to be there, and I was trying to make sure I didn’t lose track of our group.

Inside the airport was complete and total chaos. There was a crowd of people pressing up against a man who was checking passports before we could get through to baggage claim. When we finally squeezed through that bottleneck, we found that our bags and equipment were being tossed into a heap by men wearing long pieces of cloth twisted into ragged, mushroom-shaped turbans. Other men and boys swirled around us asking if we wanted them to help with the luggage, but we had been told beforehand by the group leaders that we should get our own bags—that the locals would charge us too much money. So when three men reached out for my luggage, I shook my head. They backed away, disappointed but respectful. I must say that, in all my time in their country, I’ve never met a rude Afghan. Even when they’re pointing a gun at you, they’re polite.

Outside, a van and a driver waited for us. Before we could leave, there was a confusing moment when one of the men carrying a machine gun—and there were plenty of them in front of the airport, too—was talking to the driver and shaking his head. I held my breath, wondering if they wouldn’t allow us to go, but finally we started to bump along the street leading away from the airport.

“Why was he shaking his head?” I asked the driver. I had to shake my own head to show him what I meant. “In America, this means no.”

He flashed a grin at me. “Here, it means ‘Okay—go ahead.’”

My overall impression of Kabul in those first moments was that it was a city of gray. Everything seemed to be the same color, from the crumbling gray walls of the mud-brick houses to the clothes that people were wearing to the sky filled with dust. The roads themselves were long strips of gray mud, with lots of holes and humps of rock and dirt and only occasional flat spaces. But against that basic palette of gray, I started to notice bright colors here and there. Once we got away from the airport, the street turned commercial. Along both sides and all crowded together, there were shops made from old shipping containers—like the kind I used to see going by on trains back in the States. There were shops made from burned-out trucks, shops made from tarps draped over wood or metal frames. Even the shabbiest of these stores had colorful signs above them, with the stores’ names written in elegantly flowing Dari—and here and there, an added sign in English. The first few blocks of stores seemed to be selling basic goods, such as tires and tin pipes and big rolls of cotton batting. Often the roofs were heaped with things like car parts or plastic jugs. Extra inventory, I guess.

Then we turned a corner, and suddenly, all the stores were selling food. Our driver swerved around a cluster of old men who were talking in the middle of the road and passed within inches of a huge dead sheep hanging from the front of a shop, its skin and head lying on the ground. A live sheep was tied up on a rope next to it. As we rolled by, I imagined that the live sheep was hoping that everyone would fill themselves on his dead, dried-up, fly-covered brother. There were brightly painted carts along the street heaped with fruits and vegetables that seemed bigger than any I’d ever seen. Were cauliflowers usually the size of basketballs? Were cantaloupes usually so large that you’d need two hands to carry them? We sped past shops that had big white plastic containers that held conical heaps of spices and nuts—red heaps, gold heaps, brown heaps—and shops with hundreds of things that looked like snowshoes hanging from their roofs. I found out later this was the flatbread that Afghans eat with just about every meal. We sped past shops that sold packaged goods in tins and boxes and bags, each colorful and so artistically displayed that the shops almost looked as if they were piled with beautifully wrapped presents. Even though we certainly weren’t here to shop, I wished the driver could pull over for a minute so I could wander around. Then we drove past a man who was shaking something in a big pan over an open fire. The smell of roasted corn floated into the van, and I realized I was famished.

Though the Afghans added lots of color to their environment—the painted signs, the vibrant store displays—they didn’t wear much in the way of color themselves. We passed people on foot, on bicycles, crowded into wagons, in cars; there were even a few young men who startled us by cantering on horses between the lines of cars. The clothing was almost always the same, either close to white or close to black. The only clothes that seemed to stand out were the blue burqas covering the women. These were just a whisper of color—soft, fluid ripples that moved through the black and white and gray and tan stream of men, usually with a few children attached to their blue fringes. It took me several minutes to realize that, aside from the few women in burqas, there weren’t many women on the streets at all. Even on the very busy blocks, there were hundreds of men walking, pushing wheelbarrows, dickering over prices, balancing long, curled-up rugs on their shoulders, calling out to customers, sniffing at bananas, inspecting pomegranates, nodding their heads in conversation, eating kebabs, and peering at us as we drove by, but aside from the few elusive puffs of blue, no women. It was chilling to see this visual proof of the absence of women from public life.

The driver turned another corner, and we were on a street where half the buildings had been blown apart. Some of them were still being used, at least on the lower level. We passed one building where there was a thriving business in metal pots on the first floor, storage on the second floor, and teetering spires of shattered brick on the third. As we kept going, I saw more and more empty spaces between the buildings. I wondered why there were so many children playing on the sidewalks and streets instead of in the open spaces. Later, I found out that these open spaces hadn’t been cleared of mines yet. The terrible inventions of war were still there waiting, buried just a few inches underground.

We kept driving until we left the stores and crowds behind. Now we were clattering along streets that were more like canyons—all the buildings on either side were surrounded by high walls made of either exposed mud bricks or bricks covered with stucco or concrete. I remembered all the little squares I had seen from the air and realized that I had been seeing walled compounds. The compounds looked pretty much the same, one after another, except for their colorful metal gates. It was a little like being in a room where everyone wore a gray suit but was allowed one fancy brooch. Some of the walls were topped with long snarls of barbed wire. Many had clusters of holes in them, as if they had been pecked by big, strong birds. I realized that they must have taken some bullet fire during the fighting. The walls often fluttered with glued-on papers that had pictures of stern-looking, bearded men in blue and black ink. Many of the compounds had little houses—not much bigger than phone booths—outside by the road with machine-gun-toting guards lounging against them. It was hard to see what was going on behind the walls. I could sometimes see roofs, sometimes trees with bits of colorful cloth clinging to them, and once in a while one of the big metal gates would be open and I could see gardens and cars inside. Finally, our driver pulled up to one of these walled compounds, honked the horn, and the gate swung open. Instead of living in a tent, I would be staying in a guesthouse—kind of like a bed-and-breakfast—for the foreign aid staff and volunteers.

“WHITES? DARKS?”
I called out as my teammates rose from one of their endless strategy sessions. “I’m filling a tub with hot water, and I actually have some detergent.”

Once we settled into the guesthouse, I finally got to know my six teammates better. They were lovely people, every one of them—and all of them had some sort of medical background. They were doctors, nurses, and dentists, some of whom had already done disaster work. I realized that they were probably wondering why the CFAF had bothered to send along a hairdresser. I started to wonder about this myself. I tried to find ways to be useful over the next few days while all the rest of them discussed the most pressing health care issues in the city and started making plans to open a clinic. At first, the only thing I could find to do was everyone else’s laundry. Then, when they started to go out to hold clinics in temporary spots—it would take a long time before they found a house to rent for a permanent clinic—I went along to take people’s blood pressure. But really, anyone can do that.