The Favored Daughter (18 page)

It all happened so quickly. One second I was sitting under the tree and the next second I realized the tree was not there. Once again, I had narrowly escaped death.

As we walked on we passed bodies of women and children who hadn't been so lucky when the rockets hit. My brother saw the dead bodies and screamed at us to keep moving.

After two more hours of walking we came to what had once been a popular picnic stop by the river Sayad—an idyllic little stop with a fast-flowing stream and trickling waterfalls.

We were exhausted. The heels were beginning to hurt my feet. A family saw us and came out of their house. They beckoned us inside and offered us tea, bread, and mulberries. These little moments of kindnesses by strangers I will remember forever. They even gave me a pair of sandals to replace the heels.

After we'd refreshed we thanked the family and moved on again. We needed to cross the river now, and the only way over was a handmade, shaky footbridge. It was made of planks crudely held together with wire and string. There were big gaps in some of the planks and the whole thing looked like it could collapse at any moment. One of my brother's bodyguards was holding all the passports and documents for all of us in his pocket. He stood at the edge of the bridge and began to help us across one by one.

He grabbed my hand and urged me to step onto the first plank. It was evening by now, and the wind was so strong it was hard to even stand properly. Holding the man's hand I managed to get over, as did my sister-in-law, still holding the baby. But as she stepped off she lost one of her sandals. She started to cry loudly.

Finally the bodyguard started to cross. But there was no one to hold his hand as he did so. I was watching him as he got to the middle, then a plank gave a little sway and he fell.

We watched in horror, the sickening thought going through my mind that if he drowned, all our passports drowned with him. But this poor guy suddenly resurfaced with one hand above the water. He was holding the passports aloft. Somehow he managed to work his way to shore and my brother dragged him out. He'd managed to keep the passports totally dry. We all fell about laughing, even him.

My brother hugged him and thanked him. This man had always been one of my brother's favorite staff. He was very loyal. Sadly after my brother left the country, his former bodyguard later joined the Taliban. With no income he had no choice. Thousands of Afghan men have joined the Taliban for this reason. They might not share the ideology, but if the Taliban are the only people willing to pay the wages they need to feed their families, then they join.

After walking another 30 minutes we reached a Taliban-controlled area and found another taxi. I collapsed into the backseat and fell asleep. When I next woke up it was dark and the car was driving through the streets of my beloved Kabul.

Mirshakay asked the taxi to take us to his house in Makrorian. His relatives had been staying there for him and they knew we were coming. I can't describe the relief I felt at taking a shower in hot water and eating a proper meal. The simplest dish is so much tastier after having spent the day dodging rockets and bullets in a pair of ridiculous high heels
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TWELVE

A TALIBAN WEDDING

Every girl dreams of her wedding day and I was no different.

I always think life is simply a series of important moments. Moments that define us as the individuals we are. And the best moments we cherish all our lives, such as an enjoyable party, fresh grass after the rain, a picnic by a river, an evening spent laughing with loved ones, the birth of a precious child, or graduation from a university.

The day a bride goes to choose her wedding dress should be one of those moments.

But as I put on my coat to go to the bazaar that morning, I felt like a walking ghost.

My sisters and my mother had always taken great delight in discussing what kind of wedding I would eventually have. Over the years they had gossiped and giggled about all of it, from what I might wear, to how my hair would look, to what food we'd serve. In those pre-war days we were a relatively rich family, and so the assumption was always that I would have a big wedding, with people coming from far and wide to see me. When I was a little girl I'd always found this a bit annoying, but now that I was finally getting married I so very much wanted that dream day. I wanted to hear my mother talk about her plans again more than anything in the world. The loss of her was still like a dull, constant ache.

I had also never imagined that the most important day of my life would be taking place under the rule of the Taliban.

Because of their rules, there would be no music, no video, and no dancing. All the restaurants and wedding halls were closed and joyous ceremonies now prohibited. Wherever you live in the world, a wedding day only comes once in your life and you want it to be perfect. I know it sounds so girlish and silly to admit it now, but most nights before the wedding that I cried myself to sleep, I cried for both my mother and my lost moment to shine as a beautiful bride.

Despite the wearing of the burqa now being law, I still hadn't been able to bring myself to buy one. When I did have to go outside I had taken to wearing my mother's old one. Her burqa was far more beautiful and with finer detailing than the blue nylon ones that are so common today. Those blue ones are a Pakistani design, cheap and mass produced. In my mother's era women saw the burqa as a sign of status, and my mother had one befitting her rank as the wife of a powerful and rich man. It was made of green silk with soft folds that rustled gently as she walked, and was lightly embroidered with a fine silver mesh panel covering the face. When it got dirty she took it to a specialist cleaner who steamed and pressed each individual fold into place. For her it was a thing of pride. For me, wearing it felt like shame. Even after my marriage I continued to wear my mother's burqa, thinking that if I must wear one, at least let it be one that reminded me of her.

The day we went shopping my fiancé accompanied us. It was the first time I had seen him in months. The last time I saw his face properly was my last day at the university before the Taliban came to power. The day he came to visit us in Puli Khumri, when my brother had finally agreed to our marriage, I had only gotten to see the back of his head as I hid behind the curtain. That day at the university the mujahideen government had been in control, and he had sported a neatly trimmed small beard. But under Taliban rule his hair and beard were now longer. He didn't look nearly as handsome. Through the hated-burqa I kept sneaking sideways glances at his beard, thinking how much I disliked the look of it on his face. I had this over-powering feeling that Afghanistan was slipping back in time. No more progression, only the darkness of the uneducated men who now ruled our land.

The Taliban had another new regulation: Any woman who goes out of the family home, for whatever reason, must have a
muharram,
a male blood relative, with her. This, like so many of the Taliban's rules, was more akin to Arab culture than our own Afghan culture. In my grandmother's day women didn't go out alone, but these things were changing in Afghanistan with each new generation, as is the natural progression of any culture. But now the Taliban was plunging us back in time.

If they stopped your car at one of the many Taliban checkpoints that had sprung up all over the city, they would interrogate you for your family name, your father's name, and they would ask endless questions until they were satisfied that the man and woman were blood relatives, not just friends. A special department called the Ministry of Vice and Virtue was responsible for making sure people did not commit these crimes against morality. It seemed to me this department saw their day job as beating women.

In the wedding bazaar they were beating women who were, like me, trying to shop for bridal gowns. One poor girl had worn white trousers, which were now banned because wearing the color white was said to be disrespectful to the white Taliban flag. Perhaps this girl didn't know about the ban, maybe she was uneducated and poor, or maybe she had been too scared to leave the house until today. Whatever the reason, I heard someone yell at her in Arabic (by now many Arab fighters had come to join the Taliban and live in Kabul). The men took a rubber cable and held her down on the ground while they beat her legs with it. She yelped in pain. I turned away, biting so hard on my lip that it bled. I was consumed with anger at the injustice of it and at my failure to be able to stop it.

The sound of the Vice and Virtue car is one I will never forget. It was usually a Hilux, a pickup truck. It would drive through the streets, and always there was the music of the Holy Quran blasting from loudspeakers on the top. When they heard the sound of the car, women caught outside would rush to hide themselves. Even for the tiniest mistake or misdemeanor the men would start beating you. Sometimes they would just look at you and beat you for no reason. One day I saw a young girl getting beaten and watched as her mother and sister threw themselves on top of her to try and protect her. The Taliban just continued to beat all three of them. It was truly madness.

On this day there was a group of us, my sister, my fiancé, and his sister. Fortunately they ignored us. We bought the marriage rings, and at least we created one small memory from that. Through the mesh of the burqa I know Hamid could tell I was smiling as I watched him pay for the rings.

With weddings now under such strict rule, most of the shops in the bazaar hadn't bothered to buy new wedding dress stock. So little was available, and I struggled to find anything I liked. I had always imagined a short, puff sleeved dress, but bare arms were now banned.

Afghan brides wear three or four different dresses for their marriage ceremony. Each one is a different color and represents something different. For my henna night I went for a kind of light green dress. For
nikah,
the first part of the ceremony, people often have a dark green outfit. But I wanted something different, so I went for pink. It was a beautiful rosy pink and it felt like a shot of pure joy against all the misery of the Taliban. Just looking at that dress cheered me up. After nikah the bride then changes again for the reception party. Normally this is a white wedding dress and veil, similar to the styles worn by brides in the West.

A big difference between Afghan weddings and Western weddings is the size. In Afghan weddings the guest list can sometimes run to many thousands. In normal times my wedding would have most definitely been this size. Family and friends would have been invited, but also political allies, supporters, and villagers from Badakhshan. In our culture, and particularly in a political family like mine, a wedding becomes a networking affair.

But because the wedding halls were closed, we had nowhere to host a large party. In our reduced financial circumstances, I doubt we could have paid for it anyway. Even so, my family invited over 1,000 people to my ceremony. In the end closer to 1,500 came, more people than we had invited.

Afghan weddings are also segregated—women and children on one side and men in the other. So we had it in two houses, in my brother's house and in one of his neighbor's houses. The men went to the neighbor's and the women came to ours. The night before the wedding we have a traditional henna ceremony where the bride has her hands decorated with henna. For that we went to a beauty parlor. Normally I loved a trip to a beauty salon, but even that didn't cheer me up. Not a thing about this wedding was my choice or what I would have wanted it to be like; not the quality of the dresses, nor even my hairstyle. I'd done my best, but deep down it all felt so cheap and make do.

The henna night lasts most of the night. Usually it's done a few days before the actual wedding so the bride can rest before the big day, but we didn't have a choice but to do it the night before. The whole night long there was music with what's called
daira,
which is a circle where the ladies sit and sing and play music. So when my wedding day came I was exhausted, having been up half the night. In the morning when I went to the beauty parlor to get my bridal makeup, the women admonished me and told me I needed more sleep because I looked so rough. But in truth, I would not have slept anyway, even if the henna night had been a whole week before.