Dear Zari: Hidden Stories from Women of Afghanistan (32 page)

I’m pleased I’ve created a successful business. I’ve gained the skills and so have my children. In the spring, autumn and summer we sell more kites, but in the winter no one wants to buy them so we have to survive on the savings we’ve made during the rest of the year
.

Kite-making gives hope to me and it gives hope to my children, too. I also like to think that our kites bring joy to the men and boys who play with them
.

From what Mahgul told us on Afghan Woman’s Hour, and also from what I have experienced here in the UK, it is clear to me that having independence is very important in Afghan women’s lives. Mahgul, a widow who once thought her life had ended when her husband died, has proved it is possible to take control and secure a happy and economically independent life, even for an illiterate woman. She used her skill and imagination and started living a new life with her children.

During my work on the programme I realised how important economic independence was for me and for other Afghan women. Having a good job, earning my own money and not being a financial burden on my family has proved crucial to me. It has enabled me to make very difficult decisions in life and it has allowed me to become a free and independent individual who can choose the life she wants to live.

When I think about how much hardship I could have faced if I wasn’t able to be independent and work, I am thankful for the luck that’s come my way. I consider myself a very fortunate woman to have had the opportunity of having an education, being able to get a job and use my talent in a positive way, just like Mahgul.

As Bakhtawara strode along the road, her steps created a trail of dust in her wake. It was starting to get dark, and people were hurrying home. Bakhtawara took long strides, her gun slung over her shoulder, as she hurried home as quickly as possible. Along the way, a few male villagers waved to her, shouting that they wouldn’t be late for tomorrow’s meeting of the village elders.

Bakhtawara lived in Gurbuz in Khost Province, in south-eastern Afghanistan. It’s a harsh place to live: the winters are freezing cold and the summers scorching hot. The Khosties are known to be tall, broad-shouldered and good-looking. They are renowned for being hard-working people who enjoy dancing and music. A Khosti friend of mine, who loves his dancing and drumming, once told me that even the Taliban couldn’t prevent Khosties from celebrating by dance and
dohl
(drum). Every special occasion in a Khosti family is marked with their local dance called
attan
, where the men in the family dance, dressed in their local
shalwar kamiz
and a turban with a high
shamla
(the part of the turban which fans out like a peacock’s tail). The women dance together in circles sweeping their long embroidered dresses along the floor. The Khosties also have a reputation for being particularly wealthy compared to other tribes in Afghanistan. And they speak Pashtu with a strong dialect difficult for someone like me, who speaks Pashtu from eastern Afghanistan, to understand.

Afghans are, in general, very hospitable but Pashtuns are considered the most generous and welcoming to strangers. If you find yourself in a village in Afghanistan late at night you will almost certainly be offered somewhere to stay. Your hosts will share whatever food they have with you – they will tear a piece of bread they have for themselves and offer it to you. Pashtuns believe in respecting guests and honouring the person who chooses to take shelter in their home. My mother used to tell me tales of growing up in Kunar Province and how they would often have more than ten guests to stay every night. Most of them were people who’d met my grandfather in the fields and were on their way to Pakistan, but needed to break their journey and rest. My grandfather, a farmer, would bring all the guests home and tell the women in the family to cook for them. My mother said it didn’t matter to him if those people remembered him or not; he was just happy to have helped them. My grandmother used to complain that these strangers were eating all their food and leaving her children hungry, but my grandfather would just shrug his shoulders and say he was a Pashtun man and it was part of the code. Like many thousands of Pashtun village men, he believed that a guest is a friend of God and must be treated well.

Pashtuns are mainly farmers, which means most of their disputes are over water or land. Throughout history there have been bitter fights. People have been killed and families have been divided because of these disputes. In this mountainous province people solve their daily problems by calling a
jirgah
, or meeting, of the local elders. If a family has a money quarrel or a family argument over land they won’t go to the government but instead will summon the
jirgah
.

Gurbuz, Bakhtawara’s birthplace, is one of the twelve districts of Khost Province, and is located in an area near South Waziristan on the border with Pakistan. Gurbuz is made up of many small villages, and the tribal culture and traditions have strong roots there; but the land is dry and mountainous, which makes it difficult to cultivate for farming. Many young
men travel to Pakistan, the United Arab Emirates or Saudi Arabia in search of work, not just from Gurbuz but from all over Khost province. Most of these men are illiterate, from very poor families, and the trend of going abroad has come into Afghanistan from neighbouring Pakistan. It is why many families are wealthy because their men are working abroad. Their wives and children are often left behind for long periods of time. Some of these women have said that they would prefer to be poor rather than live apart from their husbands and sons for so long, but the lure of big money is too much for some men to resist. As a result, many women have a great deal of responsibility within the family. They do everything that the man of the family would usually do. They take care of the farm work and provide for the remaining family – almost treated as if they were men.

Bakhtawara was one such woman. Her story was brought to us by Fawzia Khosti, an Afghan Woman’s Hour reporter who was herself from Khost province. Fawzia was a medical student, and had attended one of the training workshops we run for women at the BBC’s Kabul office. She grabbed our attention on the first day of training with descriptions of life in her province. She told us about the women in her village, their wedding outfits and about fascinating local characters like Bakhtawara. Fawzia was a regular listener to the programme and knew her compelling stories would appeal to us. Although I had heard about women from Pashtun villages who had been forced to act like men, we had never had a woman like this on our radio programme, so Bakhtawara’s story was particularly special.

As part of her training, Fawzia spent two weeks learning how to collect and record stories. We lent her some recording equipment and she promised us reports on child mortality, the traditions and culture of Khosties and, of course, Bakhtawara’s life story. I wanted to go to Khost and meet Bakhtawara for myself but the security situation there was too dangerous at the time. Instead, I had to be content with hearing Bakhtawara’s voice through my headphones back in London. I asked Fawzia for a fuller picture of Bakhtawara: what she wore, how she walked, what she ate. As I listened to Bakhtawara speak, she struck me
as a woman whose feelings had been stolen from her long ago, and then imprisoned in a place even she couldn’t access. The society she lives in has taken away her right to live as a woman; yet on the other hand she has gained a kind of freedom no other Afghan woman could ever hope to attain.

After a long dusty walk, Bakhtawara reached home and the children rushed out to greet her. She handed her gun to Shah Mahmoud, her young nephew, to put away safely, and took off her dusty leather shoes. She wore
chapli
, a sort of sandal imported from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in Pakistan. One of her nieces poured water over Bakhtawara’s shoes and feet. Each of the children had a different chore.

Bakhtawara walked into the house and the women and girls greeted her. Her sister-in-law stood up and offered her seat to Bakhtawara as a mark of respect. She sat on the thin mattress near the window in the room, took off her large black turban, heavy with the scent of fresh sweat, and put it on the window shelf. In its place Bakhtawara wore a white-embroidered cap, although the dust and dirt had given it a yellow tinge. The children gathered around their auntie, eagerly waiting for her to hand out sweets, as she often did when she got home. They giggled around Bakhtawara, their hands delving into the pockets of her black waistcoat, which she wore over her
shalwar kamiz
.

The family gathered around the
desterkhan
, and plates and bowls of food were placed on it. A mouth-watering aroma of meaty soup rose from the bowls. Bakhtawara tore a large chunk of bread and dipped it into one of the bowls. The children were also tearing up the bread – everyone was throwing it into the soup! They tore up the bread until the bowl was full and Bakhtawara told them to stop.

‘That’s enough! It will be very dry if we put in any more.’

Bakhtawara’s hands were rough and dry after years spent working in the fields. Her sister-in-law brought out the meat on a separate plate with some onions and fiery fresh green chillies on a side plate. The meat was put in front of Bakhtawara. As head of the family she was expected
to distribute it fairly amongst everyone. After the family had finished eating, Shah Mahmoud brought water for the family to clean their hands. It was offered first to Bakhtawara and then to the rest of the family. Bakhtawara would usually tell everyone what she had been up to that day; the women would listen carefully to every word.

‘Tomorrow, I have to get up early as the
jirgah
hasn’t finished hearing the dispute between the two families.’

Her sister-in-law asked, ‘Tell me,
Hajiani
, what does Khan Mohammad’s family want?’

Bakhtawara sipped green tea from the cup before speaking.

‘Khan Mohammad wants his brother to divide the house equally, but his brother wants more than he has been allocated.’

‘Why does one brother want more? Surely they should both inherit the same amount of land from their parents?’ Bakhtawara’s sister-in-law asked.

‘The brother wants more land because he has done more work on the house than Khan Mohammad and he also has a bigger family.’

‘So what does the
jirgah
suggest?’

Bakhtawara cleared her throat. ‘Well, we have suggested that they should divide it equally. The older brother must accept that Khan Mohammad has to share the same amount of land on which the house is built. But they also need to build a wall to separate the two sides. We have suggested that Khan Mohammad pay a sum of money to the older brother.’

Bakhtawara’s sister-in-law got the feeling from the way Bakhtawara responded that she had been asked enough questions and was tired after a long day working hard on the land and trying to resolve other people’s problems. So she quietly said, ‘
Hajiani
, may God give you strength and blessing for doing all this and looking after my family too. I will let you rest and sleep now.’

Bakhtawara said to her sister-in-law, ‘You are my family. If I don’t look after you and the children God won’t forgive me. When Father died he gave me this responsibility. He asked me to promise that I would
stand shoulder to shoulder with my only brother and help my family in any way possible, and I am obeying my father’s wishes.’

Bakhtawara put her cup on the floor and got up to get some much-needed rest. Alone in her room, she took off her cap and her long brown hair fell onto her shoulders. She then took off her waistcoat and
shalwar kamiz
. As she stood near the open window a cool breeze brushed her skin; the body of an untouched woman was emerging from her male clothing.

Bakhtawara’s parents had transformed her appearance from female to male by dressing her as a boy, even as a baby. To dress baby girls as boys in childhood is a common practice among some families all across Afghanistan. Having a son is vital for every Afghan family. A son represents the future prosperity of a family; he perpetuates the family name, and he is the one that his parents will eventually rely on to look after them in their old age. Girls are looked on as temporary guests in the family because when they grow up and marry they will make a family for someone else’s son and take their skills to another family.

Bakhtawara looked at her reflection in the small mirror hanging by the door. Her green eyes felt like those of a woman and yet they looked back at her with the unswerving determination and stoicism of a man. She stroked her cheeks and lips, which felt like those of a normal woman but her hands were rough where her skin had been burnt after working long days outside in the sun. Like any other woman, Bakhtawara craved love. She looked in the mirror at her broad shoulders and stocky body and sighed. She was tired of always caring for others and wanted someone to care for her. She wanted a dashing young man to hold her hand; she wanted to be the special person on her wedding day. Bakhtawara would often conjure up her own wedding scene in her head. The man of her dreams would come to her family to ask for her hand and her parents would demand a lot of money for her because she was so valuable. In her fantasies her suitor wants to marry Bakhtawara so badly that he doesn’t care how much he has to pay. Then she thinks about children: her first child would be a baby boy, then the next child would be a girl,
and the girl would be dressed and treated like a girl by the whole family. Bakhtawara smiled as she enjoyed the dream world she had conjured up. She only thought about this imaginary life alone in her room, unseen by others.