The Underground Girls of Kabul (42 page)

We should strongly desire such a development in Afghanistan, not just out of the goodness of our hearts or any idealist notions, but because research overwhelmingly shows that countries with increased equality are much less violent and more economically stable. In terms of “national security” and foreign affairs, Afghan women, as well as women globally, should be everyone’s concern, up to and including the military.

In
Sex and World Peace
, a study on
the relationship between gender
and violence, political science scholars conclude that violence on a micro level—for instance between a husband and wife—is directly reflected in how violent a
society
is. Both within its borders and against outsiders. Countries that suppress its women are more likely to threaten their neighbors as well as other countries farther away. So the more progress for women Afghanistan sees, the less of a threat the country is to the rest of the world.

Why, then, are women so often relegated to an “issue” and not standing at the top of every agenda on foreign policy?

Women were never an “issue.” Afghanistan’s history in the last decades is one example of how women—and control over them—were always at the very core of conflict. The authors of the study, which, together with the work of Gerda Lerner, should be required reading for students everywhere, go as far as to suggest that the “clash of civilizations” of the future will be based not on ethnopolitical differences but on gender beliefs. From that perspective, what is mistakenly referred to as “women’s rights” is not even just about human rights. It’s about evolution and building peaceful civilizations.

Gerda Lerner, after she had researched the origins of patriarchy, predicted that the construct would one day come to an end, since it is a human-made idea. There will perhaps always be sexism, just as there is racism today. But slavery is officially abolished in most places on earth. The journey toward freedom for Afghan women will continue for a long time yet. But it does not have to be endless.

S
OMEDAY IN OUR FUTURE
it may be possible for women everywhere not to be restricted to those roles society deems natural, God-given, or appropriately feminine. A woman will not need to be disguised as a man to go outside, to climb a tree, or to make money. She will not need to make an effort to resemble a man, or to think like one. Instead, she can speak a language that men will want to understand. She will be free to wear a suit or a skirt or something entirely different. She will not count as three-quarters of a man, and her
testimony will not be worth half of a man’s. She will be recognized as someone’s sister, mother, and daughter. And maybe, someday, her identity will not be confined to how she relates to a brother, a son, or a father. Instead, she will be recognized as an individual, whose life holds value only in itself.

It will not be the end of the world, the nation-state, or sexuality. It will not solve all the world’s problems. But it is an exciting promise of how we might continue to evolve, through small bursts of individual greatness alongside a slow overhaul of our civilization.

This possible future could only expand the human experience and be liberating to men and women alike. And it will be interesting to all. Because, maybe what Azita once said about why she was glad to have been born a girl holds some truth:

“We know what it’s like to be men. But they know nothing about us.”

I am no woman. I am a neuter
.
I am a child, a page-boy, and a bold decision
,
I am a laughing glimpse of a burning sun

I am a net for all voracious fish
,
I am a toast to every woman’s honor
,
I am a step toward chance and disaster
,
I am a leap in freedom and the self

I am the blood’s whisper in a man’s ear
,
I am the soul’s shiver, the flesh’s longing and denial
,
I am an entry sign to new paradises

I am a flame, seeking and jolly
,
I am a water, deep, but daring up to the knees
,
I am fire and water, in sincere context, on free terms

E
DITH
S
ÖDERGRAN
Finland, 1916

A
S SHE APPROACHED
her tenth birthday, Mehran became a student, along with her older sisters, at an all-girls school in Kabul. She wears the uniform for girls. In the afternoons, she is allowed to switch into boys’ clothing at home and when she is out in the neighborhood. She keeps her hair short and is still considered to be the wildest member of the family.

A
ZITA NEVER REENTERED
parliament. In late 2011, along with dozens of other candidates, her victory was acknowledged as valid by a court appointed to resolve the political impasse from the fraught elections of the year before. But Afghanistan’s president Hamid Karzai ultimately agreed only to reinstate ten parliamentarians in the lower house, with the blessing of the United Nations. Azita was not among them. Instead, she helped form a new political party in opposition to the government and eventually got a job with a European aid organization. Her modest salary allowed her to keep the family in Kabul and her daughters in school. The family of eight moved to a smaller apartment and now shares three rooms. In the summer of 2013, she sought medical treatment due to blunt strokes to her neck and chest, which were photographed and copies were forwarded to me. In an interview in Kabul, her husband confirmed that their marriage had again come to include violence.
In early 2014 Azita was let go from her job, as the funding for her organization was to expire.

A
T SEVENTEEN
, Z
AHRA
adopted a new hairstyle that she says is an attempt to replicate Justin Bieber’s. She still wears male clothing. She has dropped out of school; she could no longer bear exhortations by her Pashto teacher to dress like a woman. Her mother still insists she should get married. Her father says he will never force her. Zahra refuses to go to weddings, fearing she may be spotted by a future mother-in-law. She holds on to a dream of immigrating to another country, where there are more of her kind.

S
HUKRIA LIVES WITH
her three children in Kabul. She continues to work full-time as a nurse and is studying to become a doctor.

N
ADER STILL DRIVES
her car around Kabul and teaches tae kwon do in a basement.

I
N A FAILED
attempt to flee Afghanistan through Tajikistan, Shahed had all her savings stolen by a smuggler.

F
INALLY
,
A NOTE
on Setareh: She is the only character in the book who in reality is a construct of several people. I worked with several translators who, for an extra layer of protection and according to their wishes, I have called by a single name. For each character interviewed, and for different occasions, my translator needed to possess different skills and knowledge of different ethnicities, neighborhoods, and cities. So “Setareh” is Pashtun and she is Tajik and she is Hazara. She speaks several dialects of Dari, as well as Pashto, Urdu, and English. She has a degree in literature, in law, and in political science, and she is a very clever street kid. She is a poet, a teacher, an aspiring lawyer, and a budding businesswoman. She is upper class and middle class and she is a refugee. She is a student. She wears a full hijab and a sloppy head scarf; she prays
five times a day and not at all. And within each young woman who took the role of Setareh for me, there are many more who are constantly shape-shifting and adapting to whatever circumstances they are thrown into. The way Afghans always do.

New York, February 2014

@nordbergj

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