The Underground Girls of Kabul (14 page)

W
ITH THE PERMISSION
of Zahra’s parents, my female translator Setareh and I begin to stroll around Zahra’s Kabul neighborhood with her on some afternoons after she has finished school. She has an exaggerated and clunky way of walking, as if there were something between her legs. With high, tense shoulders, and hands hanging by the thumbs in her pockets, she strides forward in broad, duck-footed steps, in her preferred outfit of an oversize hooded plaid shirt, jeans, and flip-flops. She keeps her head low, face close to her chest, and looks up only if someone directly calls her name. She knows her power is in the exterior, and her walk successfully signals that she is a typical teenage boy with some attitude.

Through this small masquerade, Zahra constitutes a provocation and a challenge to the order of her entire society.

Fashion has always been a way to communicate class, gender, and power. In Afghanistan, gender and power are one and the same. A pair of pants, a haircut, the right walk, and a teenage girl can reach for all kinds of things she is not supposed to have. Just as the Taliban strictly controlled how both men and women looked during their reign—when women could appear in public only when covered from head to toe—specific rules on clothing have been used throughout history by those who want to make sure the patriarchal order stays in place.

King James I of England denounced women dressing like men during his reign in the 1600s to ensure women did not see any undue advantages.
France implemented a law in 1800 that said women could not wear pants; it was not formally removed until 2013. The Taliban explicitly forbade women wearing men’s clothing, and also for girls to dress as boys, which may indicate that there were enough transgressions of Zahra’s kind, and enough
bacha posh
, for them to see a need to ban the practice. Today, there is no official decree that makes any mention of dressing girls as boys.

The Taliban’s dress police is also gone, but dress codes for women from puberty onward are still subjected to a strict social control, with many freelance enforcers. A woman must clearly signal her gender
through her dress, but there are fluid limits to
how much
of a woman she is allowed to be.

One day just outside Zahra’s house, a teenager rides by us on his bike, smacking his lips, uttering something in Dari. Setareh’s face twitches in an impulse to yell back, but instead she pulls back, lowering her gaze like a good girl. But Zahra’s reaction is swift: First, she hurls some profanities after the biker. Then she turns to Setareh and apologizes profusely on the cyclist’s behalf. Both of them refuse to translate the original insult, but soon it creeps out that the offensive line was “I can see the shape of your body,” followed by speculation about what kind of woman Setareh might be. No feminine shape should be noticeable when she moves, and her dark green, loose Punjabi-style pants, tunic, and scarf cover everything but her face and her hands. But her tunic is cut with the slightest hint of a waist in the middle, and the ensemble, which is not unusual for a current-day Kabul woman in her twenties, is less conservative than an all-black cloak. Adding to that, in the eyes of the cyclist, she is a lone woman in the company of a foreigner and a young boy—in other words, both suspect and possibly inappropriate company.

I look down at my wide black pants and knee-length black trench coat. “So what am I? Not another woman?”

Zahra and Setareh both look at me. “You,” they agree, “are just a foreigner. Nobody cares about you. It is Afghan women they harass. Even the small boys are like the religious police, trained in telling women what they should wear.”

A
S A FOREIGN
, non-Muslim female, I am by definition a different species. Therefore, I am in some ways a neuter, which may be just as well under these circumstances. But what I wear still matters, and I am expertly styled to draw a minimum of attention to myself. A few days before the street incident, Setareh had given me a loving makeover. After observing me on our various excursions throughout Kabul, she finally decided to offer some commentary. My clothes
were simply not loose
enough
, or wide
enough
, or dark
enough
. The sleeves were a little too short, showing a hint of wrist, and the delicate fabric of my tunic tended to cling to my thighs when I walked. Plus, bare feet in sandals? Everybody was looking at my white feet.

Ten minutes later, after we had dived into my sparse closet, all that was deemed sexual had been removed, and I had been fully turned into a black blob. I had to look almost Afghan? I wondered. Not exactly, Setareh scoffed: “You will never look Afghan.”

Even though the new look is much better, it is still decidedly foreign, she explained. The fabrics I wear look too expensive: Afghans wear shiny polyester, imported from Pakistan. My black coat is okay, but the cut is too modern, and not boxy enough. The pants are the worst—made from a high-tech breathable fabric, they look
sporty
. Since when does a proper Afghan woman practice sports? That is a men’s thing.

Even if I hid under a burka, my body language would give me away as all but an Afghan woman, Setareh warned. “You wave your hands around when you speak. You sound aggressive. Like you demand something. You put your hands on your hips, like you want to challenge people. It looks very rude for a woman to do that. You walk fast, and you don’t look down. You look into people’s faces as it pleases you.”

She smiled again—as what came next was almost too obvious—the black backpack I sometimes carry my camera in is just as bad as my khaki shoulder bag. They are both such Western giveaways—like I am about to go mountain climbing. No, Setareh explained: A modern Kabul woman strives to look cosmopolitan, like those in advertisements from Dubai, Pakistan, or Iran. She puts on makeup and carries a decent, feminine handbag, and wears heels—not so high that she could get stuck on rainy days when Kabul’s dust instantly turns to mud or be unable to jump over sewers, but still delicate enough to be feminine. Practicality in dress is for uncivilized people. And for men.

But the point is not to look good, or for me to resemble an Afghan.
In order to work efficiently, we need to blend in and just be as close to nothings—but still women—as possible. Show respect. Afghans make a sport of spotting foreign men in trimmed beards and traditional village garb who ride around together in groups of two or three in regular taxis as they give the native look their best shot. Their expensive sunglasses and hiking boots always give them away. Trying too hard is the ultimate embarrassment, in Setareh’s view.

Her friends all spend much time tweaking and trying to expand upon the female dress code, in which they must look like women, but at the same time, not to the point that they seem to be inviting any attention from men.

The hidden body is all about sex—which does not officially exist, other than in marriage for the purpose of procreation. It is why the smallest slip of a fabric can send a provocative signal. When most of the body is hidden, what follows is also that much more becomes sexualized. In an environment where sex is never discussed, where men and women are strictly separated, sex is, ironically and perhaps unfortunately, on everybody’s mind all the time. Body parts, fabric, gestures that elsewhere would never seem sexual become loaded. This frustrating contradiction means everyone must be hyperaware.

As a woman, you must shrink both your physical body and any energy that surrounds it, in speech, movement, and gaze. Touching someone of the opposite sex in public, by mistake or as a friendly gesture, must always be avoided. A Swedish diplomat had thoroughly rejected my attempt to grab his arm the week before: Such frivolous affection between foreigners of the opposite sex would be misinterpreted, and send the wrong signals. Afghan male friends, however, are frequently spotted holding hands in Kabul, often while holding the strap to a gun in the other hand.

The responsibility for men’s behavior, indeed for civilization itself, rests entirely with
women
here, and in how they dress and behave. Men’s animalistic impulses are presumed to be overwhelming and uncontrollable. And as men are brutal, brainless savages, women must hide their bodies to avoid being assaulted. In most societies, a
respectable woman, to varying degrees, is expected to cover up. If she doesn’t, she is inviting assault. Any woman who gets into “trouble” by drawing too much attention from men will have only herself to blame.

In essence, it is the tired old attempt to dismiss a rape victim—did she wear something provocative? If so, she is responsible, at least in part, for being attacked. The idea that men are savages who can never control themselves was always a great insult to men, as it implies that men have no functioning minds that at any time could overrule very aggressive impulses.

The Koran,
just as the Old Testament, has passages where modesty in clothing is advised for both men and women. But what exactly constitutes a modest, pious, and pure woman is nowhere explicitly prescribed in the Koran, and varies with its many interpreters.
Veiling predates Islam and was originally a privilege for noble women only, to symbolize their sexual exclusivity to one man. Setareh, like most women here, covers her head, but when she crosses the border to visit relatives in Pakistan, it is more important that the scarf also obscures her chest. Up north, women sweep big sheets of fabric, the
chadori
, around themselves, sometimes even as an additional layer under a burka. Around Kabul, young women let the scarf slip, and each time we are alone, Setareh shakes out her long, shiny hair and runs her fingers through it to make it come alive, in a gesture of relief and pleasure. Zahra, on the other hand, would have shaved her head, had her mother not forbidden her from doing it.

A
S WE PASS
a small vegetable stall on our walk around Zahra’s neighborhood, where dusty oranges, carrots, and apples are for sale, she proudly mentions that it was the scene of a fight last year, in which she took center stage. She had been walking with one of her younger sisters when they heard a hissing sound behind them; somebody was trying to snare the attention of the younger sister.
“Shht-shht-shht.… Shht-shht-shht.…”
The sister bowed her head and tried to walk faster,
but Zahra would not let the insult pass quietly. She flipped around and yelled at the young man.

“Shame on you—
shame, I say
—you almost have a beard, and you are flirting with a child.”

At first, the teenager seemed surprised and took a few steps back. But then he picked up a stone and threw it at Zahra. She ducked, and the stone hit a car behind her. Infuriated, Zahra went on the attack. She kicked him in the stomach and tried to punch his face. The boy fell to the ground but managed to throw another stone. That one hit the side mirror of the parked car. When two policemen from the park came running, Zahra explained the situation. Her eyes were angry and her heart was on fire when she spoke: The older boy had been inappropriate with her sister, who was only twelve.

The police agreed and shared Zahra’s indignation after taking a quick look at Zahra’s younger sister—she was properly dressed in black, with a head scarf tightly pinned over her hair. She could not be suspected of having provoked the young man’s behavior. Concluding that, they began to beat the young boy. A local shopkeeper also joined in. After a few kicks and punches, they dragged the boy away, in the direction of the police station. He would spend the night in jail.

I look to Setareh for guidance, who fills in the blanks as Zahra finishes the story: “It’s the role of the bigger brother to protect the honor of younger sisters. A brother should challenge those who are rude to them.”

The older brother would be Zahra, in this case. Young girls, in Zahra’s opinion, should have no contact with boys before they get engaged or married. A brother’s greatest fear can be that his sister will fall in love with some boy of her own choosing. Such a crush would be disastrous for the family. The sister could be tainted and unmarriageable later on.

Young men are not to be trusted, Zahra says. They can make promises to young girls, only to later withdraw them when the girl is already shamed and tarnished from speaking to a boy and thus suspected of no longer having a pure mind.

I ask Zahra, to make sure I understand: “So girls should not be friends with boys before they get married?”

She shakes her head no. Absolutely not.

“But you hang out with boys?”

“Only my neighbors.”

Even though Zahra plays the overprotective male with her sisters, she shares no loyalty with other boys. She is not one of them; she despises the way they treat girls.

There is an apparent duality in how she sees herself, and in how she sorts her different personas by tasks and traits: “When I am lifting a heavy carpet, my neighbors say I am strong. Then I feel like a boy. When I clean the house, I feel like a girl. Because I know that’s what girls do.”

Zahra is the one who moves around the most in her family. She runs all the errands, to the tailor and to the bazaar. She fills the heavy gas canisters and carries them home. Her male side is physical: “Boys are stronger than girls. They can do anything and they are free. When I was a child, everyone was beating me and I cried. But now, if anyone tries to beat me, I hit back. And when I am playing football, and do something wrong, they yell at me. Then, I yell back.”

“Why do you think you feel like both?”

“My mother always tells me that I am a girl. But my neighbors call me a boy. I feel like both. People see me as both. I feel happy I am both. If my mother had not told anybody, nobody would know. I say I am Naweed to those who don’t know.”

It is a name that means “good news.”

“What do you want us to call you?”

She shrugs. It would be impolite to ask anything of visitors.

Zahra has a very clear idea of what sets boys and girls apart. More than anything, she explains, it is in how they live their lives: “Girls dress up. They wear makeup. Boys are more simple. I like that. I hate the long hair that girls have. I wouldn’t have the patience to brush it, to clean it.… And girls talk too much. They gossip, you know? Men talk, but not as much as women. Women are always sitting between four walls and talk. Talk, talk. That is what they do. Because they
have no freedom. They can’t go outside and do things. So they just keep talking.”