The Favored Daughter (3 page)

She endured this because in her world the beatings meant love. “If a man does not beat his wife then he does not love her,” she explained to me. “He has such expectations from me and he only beats me when I fail him.”

I appreciate that this may sound strange to modern ears, but it was what she genuinely believed, and it sustained her.

Obeying my father was not only done out of a sense of duty or fear, it was done for love, because she truly and utterly adored him.

So on the day that wife number seven came home, my mother watched with sadness as the wedding procession wound its way through the village. She stood on the terrace next to a servant woman who was grinding flour in a giant stone mortar and pestle. Normally, as the lady of the house, she wouldn't take on the grinding herself, but today she grabbed the pestle and ground it into the mortar stone furiously, fighting back her tears. Self-pity, even on this day, was not a luxury she was allowed. She was responsible for cooking the new bride's feast, and she had to ensure that the young wife's first meal in this home would be of the finest delicacies and treats, befitting the status of Abdul Rahman's home. If she didn't prepare a delicious feast, he would be angry.

There was one part of the ceremony, however, that was just for her. As head wife she was to greet the party and place her fist firmly on top of the new bride's head to denote her superiority and the new bride's submission as a wife lower down the scale. She looked on as, once safely in the hooli gates, three women—the mother, bride, and her sister—were helped to dismount. They removed their burqas, and the beauty of the two younger women was displayed for all to see. Both of them had long black hair down to their waists. One stared directly at my mother, all confident green eyes and raven locks. My mother put her fist down firmly and calmly on the woman's head. The woman looked aghast, my father coughed and laughed, and the other girl turned scarlet with embarrassment. My mother had picked the wrong woman, placing her fist on the sister's head instead. Her hands flew to her mouth in consternation, but it was too late, the wedding party had moved inside to begin the feast. Her one chance to officially show this young woman just who was in charge was gone.

Now, 13 months later, my mother was giving birth in a remote mountain shack. Bereft at the loss of favor of the man she loved, she was alone and wretched. The young wife had given birth to a son three months earlier, a healthy bouncing baby boy called Ennayat with beautiful large eyes as wide as saucers. My mother hadn't wanted any more children and knew this one would be her last. For the entire pregnancy she was sick, pale, and exhausted, her body simply giving up on bearing children. Ennayat's mother, however, was glowing and even more beautiful with first pregnancy happiness, her breasts firm, her cheeks flushed.

While six months pregnant herself, my mother helped deliver Ennayat into the world. As his lungs filled with his first breath and he screamed out loud his arrival, Bibi jan held her hands to her stomach and prayed silently that she too would give birth to a boy, a chance of winning back my father's favor. Girl children in our village culture were considered nothing, worthless. Even today, women pray for sons because only a son gives them status and keeps their husbands happy.

For 30 hours my mother writhed in agony during my birth. She was semiconscious by the time I was delivered, with barely enough energy to muster her dismay at the news I was a girl.

When presented with me she turned away, refusing to hold me. I couldn't have been more different from Ennayat. He was a rosy-cheeked bundle of health. I was blue, mottled, and so tiny I was barely formed. My mother was so weak she was on the verge of death after the birth. No one cared if the new girl child lived, so while they focused on saving my mother, I was wrapped in cloth and placed outside in the baking sun.

I lay there for almost a day, screaming. No one came. They fully expected nature to take its course and for me to die. My tiny face was so badly burned by the sun that I still had the scars as a teenager.

By the time they took pity on me and brought me back inside, my mother was feeling better.

Amazed I had lived and horrified at the state of my burnt face, she gasped in horror as her initial coldness melted into maternal instinct. She took me in her arms and held me. When I finally stopped crying, she began to weep silently, promising herself that no more harm would ever come to me. She knew that for some reason God had chosen for me to live and that she should love me.

I don't know why God spared me that day.

Or why he has spared me on the several occasions since then, when I could have died, but he did.

But I know he has a purpose for me.

And I also know he truly blessed me by making me Bibi jan's favorite child from that moment on, forging an unbreakable bond between mother and daughter.

 

TWO

“JUST A GIRL”

The early part of my childhood was as golden as the mountain dawn—the light that tumbled directly from the sun across the Pamir mountain range down through the valley and onto the roofs of the mud houses in our village. My memories of that time are hazy, like images from a film, bathed in the colors of orange summer sun and white winter snow, the smells of the apple and plum trees outside our house, my mother's radiant smiles, and the scent of her long, dark, plaited hair.

Koof district, where we lived when I was a child, is one of the most remote corners of both Badakhshan and Afghanistan. The Koof valley is lush and fertile, banked with trees of rich greens and yellows, colors I've never seen anywhere else. Our house looked out at a sparkling blue river, pine and elm trees growing tall along the grassy banks that rose steeply into the mountains.

The noises I recall from my early childhood are of a donkey braying, the sound of hay swishing as it is cut, the sound of the trickling river water, and the peals of children's laughter. Even today my village sounds just the same. And Koof remains the only place in the world where I can close my eyes and fall blissfully, peacefully asleep within seconds.

In front of our house was the garden, organized into market efficiency by my mother. We grew everything we needed: fruits of all kinds, peppers, olives, mulberries, peaches, apricots, apples, and huge yellow pumpkins; we even cultivated silk for weaving carpets. My father took great delight in importing trees and seeds from abroad, and our garden housed one of the only black cherry trees in all of Afghanistan. I remember the day it arrived and the sense of importance and occasion as the seedling was planted.

During the warmer months, in the late afternoon the women would come and sit among the mulberry trees for half an hour or so; this was the only time of day they could relax. Each one would bring a small dish of something to eat, and they would sit, gossiping and chatting while the children played around them.

In those days many villagers wore wooden shoes, as it was difficult for them to go to Faizabad and buy conventional shoes. The shoes were strong— there was an old man in the village who used to make wooden shoes, like carved gondola boats. He would put nails in the base so that when women went to fetch water in winter, they didn't fall over. My fondest dream was to own a pair of these shoes. They were not for children, as they were tough, and when women came to visit and left them at the door I'd put them on and go out to play in them. Once I was wearing a beautiful embroidered dress my mother's friend had made for me. I wasn't supposed to go out in it, but I didn't want to take it off, so I put on the wooden shoes and went to play with my friends near the water spring. Of course, I fell over in my big shoes and tore the dress.

But my world began with the hooli kitchen, a mud-plastered room with three large wood-fired ovens at one end, a deep bread oven called a
tanur
in the center, and a tiny high window at the other end.

Like most Afghan village women of her generation, my mother spent more than half her life in the kitchen, sleeping, cooking, and taking care of the little children. And in the kitchen she reigned supreme.

The women baked bread three times a day, sometimes 50 or 60 loaves a day, so the room was always full of smoke from fires. Then between bakes they had to prepare lunch and dinner. If my father had guests, the heat would become unbearable because wood was burning on all four ovens. On those occasions we would all feel the sense of excitement, and I would boost my popularity by bringing my friends into the kitchen to eat the leftovers. Most of the villagers were much poorer than our family, and the chance to taste unusual and fine foods was too good for them to pass up. We children were never allowed anywhere near the guest house, and if we ever thought to risk a peek inside, one quick glance from one of my father's security men guarding the doorway sent us running for cover.

But away from the eyes of the men of the house, the kitchen was a place of laughter and women's voices, a place where children were guaranteed treats from the many pots of dried fruit and sweets lining the shelves. A place where, on cold winter nights after the bread was finished, we would sit with our feet inside the dying embers of the
tanur,
a carpet over our legs to keep us warm.

At night we would unroll our mattresses and sleep there. And my mother would tell us stories. She would start with stories closer to home. She talked to us openly about her marriage and how she felt when she first met my father, about how hard it was for her leaving her childhood behind to become a wife, with all the duties that entailed. But then she would regale us with stories of faraway queens and kings, castles and warriors who gave all for honor. She told us love stories and stories about big wolves that used to make us scream. I would listen and look out the window at the moon and stars. I was certain I could see the entire sky.

I had no idea the rest of the world lay beyond the big mountain at the end of the valley, and I didn't care. My mother loved me and I loved her; we were inseparable. It was as if all the love she had lost from my father in those later years she recollected somehow and gave to me twice over. She had recovered from her initial disappointment in my being a girl, after a story was recounted to her by my aunt Gada, my father's eldest sister. Informing him of my birth upon his return to the village, the aunt declared: “Abdul Rahman, your wife has given birth to a mouse, a tiny red mouse.” He laughed and demanded to see me, the first time he'd ever asked to see a newborn girl child. Looking at my scarred face and the third-degree burns caused by the sun, he threw his head back and uncharacteristically laughed out loud: “Don't worry, my sister,” he told my aunt. “Her mother has good genes. And I know one day this little mouse will grow to be as beautiful as her mother.”

When my mother heard this story she cried tears of joy. For her it was my father's way of sending a message that he still loved her, and that she should not feel like a failure for providing him a last daughter instead of a son. She recounted that story often. I must have heard it hundreds of times.

But by then my father was a distant man, and politics was becoming a very dangerous game in Afghanistan. The regime had recently changed from a kingdom to a presidency. Dawoud Khan removed King Zahir Shah through a peaceful coup d'état while the king was abroad in 1973 and declared himself the first president of Afghanistan. When he took power, he suspended the constitution and abolished the parliament.

My father was soon imprisoned for disobeying the president. He was vocal in his criticisms of the new regime and put pressure on Dawoud to bring back the constitution and reinvest parliament with power. The rumblings of political discontent were heard across the country. Unemployment was rising, social problems were increasing, and Afghanistan's neighbors, Pakistan and the USSR in particular, were once more beginning to play out their own political strategies on our soil.

In these days my father was mostly needed in Kabul and was rarely home. When he was away our house was relaxed and children's laughter rang through the rooms. But when he was there, the women of our household nervously floated down corridors, preparing meals for his guests and trying to keep the children silent so as not to disturb him.