Dear Zari: Hidden Stories from Women of Afghanistan (6 page)

Before the fighting broke out in Afghanistan, my father wouldn’t have entertained the idea of arranged marriages for any of his daughters, but
war changes every aspect of life. The basics of survival, food, shelter and safety end up taking priority over education. Our lives – like those of so many other refugee families – had changed forever, and there was no doubt that it was really hard for my father to be responsible for four daughters. He had not only to ensure our safety, but also our moral well-being. Many fathers ended up dealing with these problems by arranging for their daughters to be married to men living in Europe, where they would enjoy a better standard of living than in Pakistan. Meanwhile, Afghan men who had settled in the West were starting to come back to Pakistan in search of Afghan girls to marry. I consider myself lucky to have got an education before getting married.

Once we were properly settled in Pakistan, I was able to think about my future and my ambition to become a journalist. Many years before, I’d dreamt of becoming a professional singer, but as it’s not a career choice held in high regard by my culture, I decided to become a radio presenter. While I was studying, the BBC World Service introduced a free five-day course in journalism for young Afghan refugees in Peshawar. Thrilled, I enrolled on it together with two of my university friends. When the course was over, I started work on an educational programme for Afghans. The programme was an international aid project set up by the BBC World Service Trust. I started to make short radio packages on subjects of interest to Afghan women in the refugee camps. I visited these women regularly and asked them specifically what kind of information they needed to hear about, and they told me they wanted guidance on a variety of health issues and more information about contraception. Some of these women had particular skills – like weaving – and I would interview them about their craft-making. After recording these interviews in the camps I would add in some material from relevant experts before editing the material into a radio report that was then broadcast on the BBC’s Afghan Service from London.

It felt so good to hear my work on the radio. In fact, I loved it, although when I first heard my voice on the radio I was embarrassed, because it sounded so small and young, rather like a bird chirping. That didn’t stop
my father being proud of me though. My sisters, meanwhile, were all busy studying and my not-so-baby brother was at a private school and doing well. My father also had a good job writing for the BBC’s ‘New Home, New Life’ educational drama, similar to Radio 4’s soap ‘The Archers’. The series has been on air for more than ten years, and is the most listened-to BBC programme in the whole of Afghanistan.

Despite things continuing to get easier and life becoming more comfortable, it still wasn’t safe for us to be living in Pakistan. My father was far from secure in a city where both the Taliban and the fundamental Mujahedeen forces were free to pursue their particular agendas, and Pakistan was not a country that gave sanctuary to political exiles. A couple of Afghan politicians from my father’s era had already been murdered in Pakistan by fundamentalist Jihadis – those who had a vendetta against politicians from the Soviet era – and with the Taliban in control in Afghanistan we knew we weren’t safe in Peshawar. We worried every morning when my father left for work, and would remain anxious until he returned in the evening. In those days mobile phones were few and far between, so he couldn’t let us know he was okay during the day. Pakistan was only ever a temporary stopping point for us; we didn’t ever expect it to become our home. We’d always imagined we would eventually return to Afghanistan, but had gradually come to realise that going back to our homeland would prove impossible.

When the Taliban came to power, Afghanistan became a state forgotten by the international community. By this time we’d spent more than six years in Pakistan, and many of our relatives were starting to ask my father if they could marry me or one of my sisters. We were now all in our teens, and in Peshawar it’s perfectly normal for people to get married at the age of sixteen or seventeen. Such was the prevailing culture then, that my parents accepted offers both for me and for one of my sisters to get engaged. I was just seventeen years old at the time, and was happy to do whatever my parents thought was best. In fact, I didn’t really stop to think about what I was agreeing to because I was so busy studying and working full time for the BBC as a writer and producer in a children’s radio drama.

Towards the end of 1999 my father’s brother helped him get to the United Kingdom as an asylum seeker. Meanwhile my mother went back to Afghanistan with her brother to sell our damaged apartment in Kabul, even though it wasn’t safe for her to go back there as a former minister’s wife. Fortunately, though, my mother was not well-known and my uncle was just an ordinary young man whom the Taliban considered to be my mother’s
mahram
(someone who is legally related to the woman, as a brother, husband, father or uncle) and therefore a suitable companion for her. They went back to Kabul for just four days. At this time property prices were at their very lowest, as people had lost all hope of Afghanistan having a bright future. Unemployment was high, people were poor and my mother was not able to secure a particularly good price for our property. When she returned to Pakistan, though, we knew we had cut our last physical tie to our old country.

Two years after my father had left us to go and live in England he was able to get a family reunion visa so we could join him there. The day I knew I was going to London I went back to dressing in the way I had in Kabul. I bought a new pair of jeans and left my big scarf behind in Peshawar. I felt like a bird being let out of its cage as I shed my
hijab
for ever. I had always complained about the strict dress code in Pakistan, threatening to throw off my
hijab
and wear a mini-skirt, and my older sister had warned me that as an Afghan girl I could never do such a thing as people would say I had lost all sense of my cultural values. Every time I would argue back: ‘My culture is not the
shalwar kamiz
, my culture is my clothes.’

My mother would get angry with me for my defiance, but really she didn’t bother much about how I dressed.

We arrived at Heathrow airport on 14 August 2001 – the air was clean and fresh compared to the polluted humidity of Peshawar, but I couldn’t enjoy my newfound freedom because my fiancé was waiting to meet me. I had no idea what he looked like, and knew only that he was the son of a family friend. When I saw Javed for the first time, I realised the engagement was real; it wasn’t something I could ignore. I was disappointed that
he wasn’t the tall, handsome man I had imagined, and angry with my parents for arranging the marriage. I didn’t like Javed, didn’t want to talk to him and I spent a lot of time crying. Of course I knew that having a handsome husband was no guarantee of happiness, but I couldn’t help my naïve, idealised expectations. Ultimately, though, it didn’t matter how I felt, because in my culture once it has been decided that a girl should marry a particular man, it would cause immense problems if that agreement was not honoured. My mother used to tell me stories of families who’d changed their minds about an arranged marriage and then found that a close male relative of theirs had been killed. My mother reminded me that I only have one brother, and warned that she didn’t want him to inherit a dispute with another family.

I used to believe in marriage. When I was a girl I thought it, and everything it entailed, was simply to be accepted. So when my parents chose a husband for me, I accepted their decision, telling myself, ‘Zarghuna, you’re a Pashtun girl and you should marry the man your family has chosen for you.’ I remembered the saying that a girl who accepts the wishes of her parents will never be unhappy in her future life. When I voiced any doubts, my parents told me to be a good Afghan girl and marry Javed. If I didn’t go through with the marriage, I would have to leave the family and become someone else’s daughter and never ask anything of them ever again. No matter how much I cried and told my parents that I couldn’t marry Javed because I didn’t like him, their response was always the same: ‘Hush! It’s not for a Pashtun girl to say whom she likes or wants to marry. In our family no girl has ever chosen their partner. If anyone in our family finds out you’ve been talking this way, they’ll gossip about us and we’ll never be able to show our faces amongst decent people again.’

I was too young to make any drastic decisions of my own; new to Great Britain and the whole Western way of life, I was frightened and didn’t know what to do. I had a good job but it involved working with Afghans, most of whom knew my family; my social life revolved around going to Afghans’ houses where people would routinely curse girls who had rejected their families’ wishes and married a man of their choice. I felt like I had
no choice, and decided it was best if I married Javed. I wasn’t to know that years later I would deeply regret this decision, or that I’d eventually find the strength to confront my family and community about my feelings. But it was July 2003 and I was only twenty-one years old.

Like so many other Afghan brides, my wedding day began in the beauty parlour. At seven o’clock in the morning my hair was curled, my eyebrows threaded, my nails polished and I had proper make-up put on for the first time. When she had finished, the beautician picked up a mirror and held it in front of me. She told me to stand up and look at myself, said I was a beautiful bride and that the groom was a lucky man. I looked at my reflection and saw the pretty white wedding dress and the way the eye-liner and mascara made my eyes look larger. I was no longer the short, dark-skinned, plain Zarghuna but a taller, more sophisticated-looking person. The beautician insisted I looked beautiful, but I didn’t believe her. I had darker skin than any of my sisters, and I had always been considered the least good-looking in my family. After the beautician took the mirror from me, I looked down. ‘One thing I should say is that even though you’re a very beautiful bride, you’re a very miserable one. You should cheer up a bit and smile on your wedding day.’ I said nothing and waited for Javed to arrive and take me to the wedding in the specially decorated car, a ‘gulposh’.

About two hundred and fifty guests came to the wedding ceremony, and I sat up high on a dais with Javed. It was the most unhappy day of my life. Here I was, perched on a highly decorated sofa for everyone to see, embarking on a marriage that I did not want but had accepted; all because I was an Afghan woman.

In Afghanistan, women usually become mothers a year or so after marriage. It’s perfectly normal for Afghan women to have up to four or five children; in fact, even that would be considered a small family. For most Afghan women the purpose of marriage is simply to have a family, but her family is not considered complete until she produces a son. Any woman who manages to give birth to a succession of sons is cherished by her husband, praised by her mother-in-law and respected by her community. In this way, the mother feels proud of having achieved what she believes she was born to do. If on the other hand a woman is unable to produce a boy, she feels a failure and her life is made miserable.

As a result, Afghan women tend to go on having babies one after another until a son is born; some women will even give birth to more than ten children in order to achieve their goal. Any woman who gives birth to a boy soon after her marriage is considered to be very fortunate, so many women spend much of their pregnancy praying and worrying about whether or not they will have a son. At special occasions families will ask God to bless them with a son, and it is customary at wedding ceremonies for older Afghans to approach the young bride saying, ‘May you become the mother of sons.’ In my Pashtun community, there are even special songs that reinforce the desire for male children, such as ‘A Son Is Gold’ and ‘God Only Gives Sons to Those Who Are Loved’.

Sons are so important in our culture that some mothers will go so far as to neglect their daughters in favour of their sons. I’ve spoken to girls who’ve told me that at Eid their parents will buy new clothes for their brothers but not for them, and in some houses I have seen how mothers will serve their sons a large piece of meat while only giving their daughters a bowl of soup. I remember an Afghan relative who once visited us with her two daughters and son. She looked at me and my four sisters and exclaimed, ‘Oh my God, seeing so many girls together is very frightening. I wouldn’t know how to cope with so many of them.’

I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve wished I’d been born a boy; I know my older sister feels the same. Before my brother was born, when female friends and neighbours asked my mother about her children, she would look sad and they would sympathise with her for not having a son. Some women in our family would deliberately make spiteful comments about her lack of male children. I remember when one relative – who enjoyed none of the social and professional advantages our family did – had just given birth to a baby boy. She said in a cruel way to my mother, ‘Oh, this is the will of God. Some women have all life’s luxuries while others don’t. But a wife who is able to give birth to a boy really completes a family, and that makes her a proper woman.’ At this my mother became very upset; I could see the pain in her eyes, and thought that she felt she was to blame for not giving the family a son. We comforted her and wiped away her tears, although she tried to mask her distress.