The Underground Girls of Kabul (32 page)

According to Professor Nahid Pirnazar, a lecturer of Iranian studies at the University of California in Los Angeles, chapter 16 of the
Avesta
, the Zoroastrian collection of sacred scripture, is
a primer for how boys and girls are conceived, respectively.

It reads like a tutorial with Dr. Fareiba, detailing how elements of hot and cold in the body affect conception of either a male or a female child:

The belief in magic trickery for conceiving sons is also illustrated by the legend of the rainbow in Afghanistan. The rainbow, a favorite element in every mythology from the Norse to the Navajo people, often symbolizes wish fulfillment. In Afghanistan, finding a rainbow promises a very special reward: It holds magical powers to turn an unborn child into a boy when a pregnant woman walks under it. Afghan girls are also told that they can become boys by walking under a rainbow, and many little girls have tried. As a child, Setareh did it too, she confesses when I probe her on it. All her girlfriends tried to find the rainbow so they could become boys.

The name for the rainbow,
Kaman-e-Rostam
, is a reference to the mythical hero Rostam from
the Persian epic
Shahnameh
, which tells the history of greater Persia from that time when Zoroastrianism was the dominant religion and Afghanistan was part of the empire. The Persian epic even has its own
bacha posh
: the warrior woman Gordafarid, an Amazon who disguises herself as a man to intervene in battle and defend her land. Interestingly,
the same rainbow myth of gender-changing is told in parts of Eastern Europe, including Albania and Montenegro.

W
ITH EVERY NEW
conqueror—Alexander, the Parthians, and the Sassanids—the Zoroastrian faith was tweaked and expanded upon in Afghanistan. At the height of its reach, the faith had around fifty million followers across the empires. Zoroastrianism and its practices took hold in many places beyond Afghanistan, including Pakistan, India, Iran, parts of Iraq and Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Israel and Palestine, Jordan, Chechnya, Kuwait, Egypt, parts of Libya and Sudan, and the current-day -stans of the former Soviet Union. Parts of the Balkans—where the “sworn virgins” are found—were also influenced by the Sassanid Empire, with Zoroastrianism as its dominant religion.

As Arabs, Mongols, and Turks arrived and introduced Islam, Zoroastrians were tolerated at first, but eventually temples were
burned, priests were killed, and the defeated were forced to convert to Islam. Today, Zoroastrianism officially only has a few thousand followers in the United States, Canada, England, and the Gulf nations. The official number of Zoroastrians in Afghanistan today is zero.

But it is more than coincidental that old myths and remnants of another religion appear in several different places on earth with both a history and some present-day occurrences of girls living as boys. Louis Duprée named the architectural site Surkh Kotal, where a gigantic Zoroastrian fire temple has been excavated in the Afghan province of Balkh, a meeting point between East and West. Greek script has been found on limestone blocks there, indicating Zoroastrian rituals may have spread in both directions from Afghanistan. It also shows how Zoroastrianism has parallels to other prehistoric faiths and cultures, including
Norse mythology from the Middle Ages, which also happens to be riddled with women taking the roles of men.

Sweden’s Viktor Rydberg, a scholar of comparative mythology, suggested that Zoroastrianism and Old Norse beliefs might have
a common Indo-European origin. Zoroastrian scholar Mary Boyce also noted that
the earliest recorded prayers of Zoroaster’s match Norse religious practices, pointing to an ancient connection between the two worlds.

To those who want to exert absolute control through religion, remnants of other faiths were always a problem, and shreds of Zoroastrianism are a provocation. Religious leaders in Iran, for instance, attempted to abolish Nowruz, but reconsidered when Iranians mounted too much of a protest.

More than just dress codes were enforced by the Taliban’s Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice; they worked hard to destroy ancient Zoroastrian and other archaeological sites in Afghanistan during their rule and banned “sorcery,” to make sure no “magic” was employed. Visiting shrines was not permitted, and the Nowruz holiday was abolished. As soon as the Taliban was driven from power, Nowruz was celebrated again.

A certain yearly gathering at the UN General Assembly in New
York also provides a snapshot of how difficult it is to kill an ancient faith and its traditional practices. Particularly, perhaps, when they contain creative elements for how to cope in hardline patriarchal societies.

At the United Nations, ambassadors of countries divided by languages, cultures, wars, religions, and even nuclear threats, stand side by side, taking part in the Nowruz celebration stemming from when they were all part of a Persian Empire. At the event, the UN ambassadors of Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, India, Iran, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Turkey, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan line up on stage at the headquarters in New York. All wear their best spring outfits, recognizing for a brief moment that they at one time had something in common.

And still do, since girls continue to be born in many places where they are not always welcomed.

Azita

She eats
.

When she is told a number of ballot boxes from her province are invalid, she eats. When the landlord of the family’s apartment gives her a week’s notice to move out and find somewhere else to live, she eats. When her husband announces that his first wife and daughter are to come and live with them again in Kabul—and that his decision is final—she eats.

Azita rips through the soft naan bread, she reaches for the rest of Mehran’s cookies, she scrapes spoonfuls of rice from pots before doing the dishes.

It’s embarrassing, and she cannot stop.

For a woman to become fat, in Afghanistan too, is seen as a sign of weak character; of someone who is no longer in control. But there is no other drug available, and it’s not like she can choose to fall apart now. She tries to quell the anxiety as best she can and she overdoses on what is closest and most accessible to her. She eats furiously and she eats mindlessly; she stops only when she is full to the point of feeling ill, allowing nausea to trump worry for a few moments, when blood has left the brain and heads for the stomach, when the sugar spews into every vein and dims the mind.

Azita is no longer the lawmaker for whom people rise to their feet
when she walks into a room. In the spring of 2011, almost a year after her failed reelection bid, she is without a salary, invitations from foreign dignitaries, or invitations to attend events abroad. There is not even a gun allowance. She never found the gun they gave her, but it does not matter now. Most of the diplomats and the international organizations have forgotten she even existed.

To them, Azita is not even marginally important anymore.

A
T FIRST SHE
won. Or at least she thought she had won.

The campaign had sucked the marrow right out of her, with the relentless Ramadan campaigning through desert lands of Badghis wearing a full-length chador and having an empty stomach between dawn and dusk, distributing her tapes and making speeches. Just as in other provinces, Taliban-affiliated groups had managed to retake some districts, which then became off-limits to her. Still, she spent three months knocking on doors, making her pitch to villagers, and feeding hundreds of prospective voters who showed up at her house in Badghis every day for a meal and to get a look at her.

Some of the competition had offered gifts, too, for supporters to show up at rallies, such as clothing, gas for motorbikes, or cash labeled “travel support.” Azita wished she could have afforded to give more, but she had only the tapes and her stern-looking posters.

After election day, in one of the primary election counts, she collected the most votes to again secure a seat in the “people’s house.” The count seemed certain, so victory was declared. She felt excitement paired with relief at the notion of returning to Kabul for a second term. She threw a large party in Badghis, basking in the glow from her proud parents and relatives. But a week later, in a very Afghan twist of politics, at a secondary election count declared even more valid than the first, Azita had suddenly and mysteriously fallen behind. As it turned out, the elections were riddled with fraud, and around the country nearly a fourth of the ballots cast were eventually declared invalid without much examination.

The victory declared then retracted left Azita feeling embarrassed at first. Then she felt numb. She had given the campaign her all; she had no plan B. Her job and her position were her identity, her self-respect, her emotional stability, and her income. It had made possible a somewhat functioning relationship with her husband. And it had promised her daughters a future. She did not know under what guise to step out next. Or if she could reinvent herself. The small expressions of respect her position had afforded her, being greeted by men and sometimes called by her name; these were privileges that would be no more.