The Underground Girls of Kabul (17 page)

A
FTER PAYING THE
photographer one hundred dollars in cash—just as in many other unstable countries, the U.S. dollar is the currency that buys most things—Azita puts out fresh tea and cookies in preparation for her next visitor. The UN office called earlier in the day; their gender unit has offered to coach her on campaigning. It’s not the first time Azita has heard from them, but every house call has been canceled in the course of her five years in parliament. Azita knows the UN rotation schedule better than most: Each time they call, it’s a new articulate woman on the phone, saying she wants to “reach out,” offering to teach Azita the basics of the parliamentary system, the importance of female participation in the election process, and how women can gain more self-confidence to do so.

A few hours later, when the official has yet to show up, there is another call. The United Nations is under “lockdown” and its staff have a strict curfew after a drive-by shooting in another part of Kabul. No “internationals” are allowed to exit the fortified compounds as long as the “White City” status is in effect. But a local employee, an assistant, will be available to come over the next day, the caller says.

“Because it doesn’t matter if Afghans are shot,” Azita mutters as she hangs up, showing a flash of temper toward those whom she usually welcomes. “They all say they want to help women politicians, but they never say how. And I never hear back from them.”

Or, rather, she feels there is little follow-through.

At one point, Azita imagined she would have more power and perhaps be recognized as a real player on the political stage in Kabul. But Badghis, with its Pashtun minority, never held much interest for the national stage. The reality is that she represents a small province and she lacks a powerful lineage and a personal fortune: the two most important ingredients for getting things done in Kabul. And she is a woman—a provocation to many of her colleagues, who would rather she not be there at all. Still, she sometimes fantasizes about being the minister of the interior.

A female minister does run the Ministry of Women’s Affairs,
which foreign delegations often ask to tour. But those involved in Afghan politics pay little attention to it. The Ministry of Interior Affairs, on the other hand, is what aims to hold the country together, as it controls security for the government, as well as the national police and their counternarcotics division. The problem with any man—and it is always a man—holding the post, in Azita’s view, is that he inevitably owes someone favors. The Taliban may not be openly represented in Afghanistan’s top leadership, but unofficially, many politicians are well connected to the Taliban as well as organized crime through their business dealings. Lucrative arrangements have made it possible for multiple well-known officials and elected politicians to secure both capital and visas for an escape to Dubai or to Europe, for vacations or more permanent stays. That is considered by many politicians to be a reasonable safety precaution and a necessary privilege, should the government be as short-lived as those in previous decades.

It frustrates Azita that foreigners call on her to discuss “women’s issues,” but when it comes to other topics that matter as much to women as to men, such as how the state is actually run, neither Afghans nor foreigners show much interest in her opinions.

“The foreigners think they are helping women in Afghanistan, but it is so corrupt,” she blurts out. “All this money coming in, but we still suffer. They think it’s all about the burka. I’m ready to wear two burkas if my government can provide security and rule of law. That’s okay with me. If that is the only freedom I have to give up, I am ready.”

T
HE NEXT CALL
is a threat, but not of the usual death variety. Instead, the anonymous caller warns that he intends to make sure everyone in Badghis knows that she’s a Communist, unless she withdraws from the race. Azita cuts him off and makes a quick call to her father, giving him the caller’s cell phone number as shown on her display.

Being likened to or called a Communist is as grave an insult in
Afghanistan as it once was, and may still be, in U.S. politics. The label “Communist” still today translates as “traitor,”
from the war that killed one million Afghans. In current-day Afghanistan it also has a few added twists: “Communist” is a slur indicating someone is not a proper Muslim, but rather a suspicious, Westernized character who drinks wine and fails to pray. For a politician to be branded a Communist or rumored to have Communist sympathies must be avoided, even though several known former Afghan Communists sit in the current parliament. Their legacy is such that other powerful liaisons have the effect of declaring void the former Communist label.

The default Communist-bashing has its contradictions, of course. In the occasional angry rants about Americans—“the new occupiers”—Afghans in Kabul can sometimes speak longingly of the Soviet era, when they say there was order, infrastructure improvements, and social programs that seemed to work better than those put in place by
Amrican
, which includes all foreign countries that make up the coalition. Also, the Russians may have been occupiers, but they are often described by Kabulis as the lesser evil compared to the destruction and mayhem that arrived with the mujahideen infighting. That same reluctant praise is rarely bestowed on the Taliban rule that followed, however, whom those in the capital almost uniformly seem to have detested when they were in government.

Over the phone, Azita’s father assures her he will find out who the caller is and prevent any rumor from taking root. He has taken on the role of her adviser and stand-in campaign manager, mostly for his own sake. He enjoys his unofficial and self-imposed status as Azita’s local spokesperson, and having a daughter in parliament boosts his reputation as a wise old man who can give advice and resolve conflicts.

It was Mourtaza who convinced Azita’s husband to let her run again. He was reluctant at first. Life in Kabul was stressful, he had complained to his father-in-law, and the constant stream of visitors had become taxing. He would prefer to support his own family back home in Badghis, rather than be what increasingly felt like a servant
to his powerful wife in Kabul. But eventually he conceded to his father-in-law’s arguments that his and Azita’s standard of living in Kabul and the educational opportunities available to their children far surpassed what was offered in the province.

Azita is grateful for her father’s support. She thinks of it as his way of compensating for the marriage he forced her into. He is a strict man, she says, and rarely shows any feelings toward her, but she hopes he is proud of her. Fortunately, people cannot complain his daughter is imperfect these days, with Mehran representing the requisite grandson in the family.

Azita does not speak of it, but she is deeply anxious about the risk of not being reelected. She does not fear only her competitors’ larger, more costly campaigns, or the gossip attacks she knows will be launched. She also fears the system itself: The ballots have already been printed, and her name has been smudged onto another candidate’s number, which will add another layer of complexity for her mostly illiterate voters. She is particularly nervous about the counting of those ballots: It will take days for the boxes to travel back to Kabul, and they will pass through many hands on the way. But she absolutely
needs
to win—so that her life does not slide backward again.

“I
THOUGHT OF
dying. But I never thought of divorce,” Azita says of her darkest years in the village. “If I had separated from my husband, I would have lost my children, and they would have had no rights. I am not one to quit.”

In the Taliban years, both Azita and her parents could have been arrested had she left her husband. But instead, on three different occasions, her father called for a form of family counseling performed by older men. It was done according to tribal custom, and Azita was allowed to make her case only through her father, by standing outside the door where negotiations took place among the men. Each time, Azita brought up the abuse by her husband and her mother-in-law. And each time, her husband promised the elders and her father that he would do better.

She could hardly hide the fighting with her husband from the children during the village years, either; they have all seen much more than Azita would have wished. But almost five years have passed since the family moved to Kabul, and she describes it as though something in their dynamic shifted, as her husband has not laid a hand on her since. Azita doesn’t think of herself as very forgiving—just that it is necessary to forgive for life to work: “My husband’s family is very poor. They do not think of a woman as an individual. He was under the control of his mother. He did not know better,” she explains.

So did her status as a parliamentarian put him on a new track? Can a woman’s increased power and status also quell domestic violence?

She laughs at my idealized suggestion. Perhaps. But she likes to take a more profound view of how she believes her husband has actually changed and become a better person: He realized he was wrong. Several factors contributed, she believes. In Kabul, his status as her husband improved. With his children growing up in a more urban context, where they were learning to read and write, he wanted to present an image of himself as a more modern man. Azita had always hoped that, with time, she and her husband would grow more alike and could become partners instead of adversaries. She prefers not to dwell on thoughts of what may happen if she loses the reelection. But she concedes that she has several reasons for wanting to stay in parliament. The opportunity to somewhat affect her country is only one of them.

Azita glances over to her husband, who is transfixed by a wrestling game on cable television. “Some people tell him to take a third wife.”

The family’s youngest daughter is important in Azita’s fragile house of cards. With Mehran playing the role of a son, her husband has stopped pushing her to get pregnant again and, at least not out loud, thinking of taking another wife. The prophet Muhammad had several wives;
in Afghanistan, a man is allowed up to four wives, whereas a woman can have only one husband. It is a display of wealth and prestige for a man in Afghanistan to have several wives; he is seen as someone who can afford to multiply his chances of male
offspring. Many of Azita’s male colleagues in parliament, especially those with extravagant security arrangements and many guns, have more than one wife. In her own family, it is hard enough that there are two already.

During Azita’s first year in parliament, the first wife—as Azita always refers to her—lived with them in Kabul with her daughter. Inside the family’s small apartment and with the designation as the family’s breadwinner with a high official status, Azita set many of the rules, and their relationship deteriorated from an initial friendship to loud fights. Eventually, the first wife moved back to Badghis. Now Azita’s husband travels to Badghis every other month to stay with his first wife and daughter. It is a bit of an embarrassment for him, as he can be suspected of having left one wife behind. He frequently complains to Azita that they should all be reunited as a family soon. But for now, with Mehran, Azita exerts some influence over the household as the mother of its only son. Just as in politics, she is a pragmatist at home: “We are fighting for human rights and democracy here. But I cannot change my husband.”

A
S
A
ZITA WINDS
down one evening and is soon to begin her nightly ritual of covering her face in cold cream, I challenge her on Mehran. I tell her about Zahra, and how hard she seems to resist her birth sex. What will time do to Mehran as she grows older? When will you change her? I ask. And what if that just
won’t work
?

“I don’t think it will be a problem,” Azita responds. “I don’t think that society will give her any problems. I have seen this many times, and I have so much experience from seeing it. These girls are just normal girls when they change back. I have not seen any bad examples.”

“How can it not be difficult for her when, later on, she has to become more limited, as a woman? How can you be so sure?”

Azita leans forward, smiling. “Should I share something with you, honestly? For some years, I have also been a boy.”

Of course. I should have guessed it.

In Azita’s case, it was a practical matter. During her childhood in Kabul, she was the eldest daughter in a family of all girls for several years before a baby brother arrived. Business had picked up in the family’s small store and her father needed help in the afternoons. Who could be more trusted than family?

But it needed to be a boy.

Azita’s parents approached her together to ask if she would be willing to do it. They already called her “the little manager” at home and wondered if she would take on some more work. How could she say no? The way ten-year-old Azita saw it, this was the chance to be her parents’ “best son and best daughter” in one. She put on pants, a shirt, and a pair of sneakers and went to work.

Her two long, dark braids had been her pride, but as soon as they were gone, she did not miss them. Her new short hair was mostly hidden under a baseball cap in the afternoons. She wore it with the brim in the back; that seemed cooler and resembled characters in Western films she had seen. In the store, she became the assistant runner, fetching goods and assisting customers. There was no name for her; Mourtaza just referred to her as the
bacha
, or his boy, while ordering her around before the customers. The store stayed open until one in the morning, since most people shopped in the evenings. Among the big sellers were her mother’s homemade yogurt, bread, pastry, cheese, and imported tea.

Azita likes to think her time in the store built character. In school, she had been told she was beautiful and was maybe a little bit too proud, but working taught her resilience. Already chosen to be captain of the girls’ volleyball team at school, she was strong and tall, which worked well, both in the store and when she joined the boys outside on the street.