I Am a Bacha Posh Page 6

  Kamala collapsed; there were not enough rivers to contain her tears. I took her in my arms. There was nothing to say, nothing to do. Girls like us will always be put aside. Girls who have grown up as boys cannot become women like the others, the invisibles who keep silent.

  After a long time, Kamala stopped crying. She cleaned up the kohl on her face with great skill. She looked at me and smiled.

  “Thank you. Thank you, Ukmina, I needed this. Since Shabina, I have never trusted another person. It has been years since I have been able to speak my heart, since I have been able to be myself. And you, Ukmina, are you happy to be able to live as a man?”

  “I do not know, Kamala. I do not live as a man. As you can see, I am hiding in my home, I avoid going out. You said yourself that I am putting my own life in danger. But I will not change. Only you can understand that it’s too late, I cannot do it. I cannot, tomorrow, put on a burqa and go out in the street. I still prefer the prison of my home and my lie, because I am at peace with myself. You said earlier that I am lucky to be still a bacha posh. It’s not luck, Kamala—it takes courage. And I do not want to abandon that.”

  “You are right, Ukmina. I need courage to continue to live this way. We are all courageous, Ukmina. And I am going to continue as well. And I will have children, and my daughters, I will offer them the best education possible so that they can have a life other than the one I had, and I will have the courage to confront their father, who no doubt will be against it. One day, our country will change. Thank you, Ukmina, I will come back to see you. And be careful.”

  The door closed, and my throat tightened. I was crying. Kamala’s story had stirred me; she had taken me back to our childhood, and I was familiar with her suffering. How many times had I imagined what my life would have been like had I followed the will of the mullahs and of my father? I pulled my prayer carpet out, and I knelt down, trembling. I spoke to Allah, and I asked him to bless my father for not having me forcibly married. What a poor wife I would have been! I asked Him for His kindness and His protection for the years to come, because I would not give in. No.

  I rolled up my carpet, but I was not yet calm. I lay on my bed and I talked to Badgai, my heroine: she, too, would not give in to the fear and threats. Only she consoled me and allowed me to get some sleep. During these empty hours, I thought about the future: one day, like the English, the Russians, and other invaders, the Taliban would leave. I could then live again and make myself useful. I had wanted to live like a man, but to do what? To be free like them, but I was not. The Taliban referred to me as having a condition of my kind. To fulfill my life, I needed to help women, make the invisible visible. I made this a promise to Badgai.

  In the meantime, I stayed with my mother. My younger brother had grown up; he was the man of the family now, since I could no longer assume this role. He had the right to go out and work. He accompanied my mother during the rare times that she left the house, for her visits to the doctor especially, because her health was declining. And then she died. A few days later, the Americans bombed Khost.

  7

  THE FIRST VOTE

  2004

  We were sitting cross-legged around the carpet where the evening meal was placed. Almonds, dried apricots, tomatoes, meatballs, kofta, and rice. It was nearly 7:00 p.m., and I had already plunged my fingers in the dish of lamb with yogurt and grapes. The whole family was together: my two brothers and their wives, my sister and her husband. After the death of my mother, they tried to be around me more. I did not form my own family; I have only them and their children.

  The shorwa burned our lips, but it was good! My mother gave the recipe for this vegetable soup to my sister; she had a special way of cooking. With every sip, a pang of nostalgia hit me. I missed her.

  We spoke very little, absorbed in our thoughts. Even I, usually so chatty, was quiet. The radio was turned on, as it always was during meals, and we listened to it absent-mindedly. It was our only link with the rest of the world. It was 2004, and electricity had still not been restored to the villages of the district. The Pashtun sounds of the provincial radio lull us: prayers and long radio talks about the political situation.

  Once the Taliban “officially” left (though they were still there—I’d see them), Hamid Karzai ran the country. Sometimes we heard that he was working with the Americans, but he was a Pashtun, and, for that reason alone, we trusted him. We were tired of war: ten years of Soviet invasion, four years of conflict between the Mujahideen factions, years of anarchy of which the warlords, local mafia, and tyrants took advantage. Six years of Taliban rule, and then the American bombs.

  I was lost in all of this, savoring a piece of Naan je Afghani, our bread, when all of the sudden my younger brother touched my arm: “Have you heard, Ukmina?”

  No, I had not been listening. My ears perked up. According to the voice on the radio, there would soon be an election. We were going to vote twice: once to elect a president and another to choose the members of the parliament, the representatives of the people. The voice uses the word democracy, in English. There is no translation for this word in Pashto or Dari. However, we know this word, thanks to the Russians and their “Democratic Party”—not exactly a good memory.

  But joy soon took over us. We were all standing around the radio, feeling that a great moment in history was taking place. We had all the reason in the world to feel skeptical, and yet we gave way to hope.

  I stayed up late in the night to talk with my brothers and one of my sisters-in-law, and we drank gallons of tea. This was great news, even if we had few details. How was this vote going to work? Could women vote? They had had the right since 1963 but had never had the opportunity to exercise it. Words that had empty meanings for years came back into our discussion: peace, stability, human rights. We wanted to believe that our lives might change.

  Shortly after, the census began. Registration offices opened throughout the country to deliver the electoral maps, and all the men and women of voting age were requested to go there.

  One morning in the spring of 2004, I left with my two nephews and a few men from the village of Tanai, where the electoral commission in our district was located. We did not have a vehicle, so we walked for a good hour. None of the women of the village went. The Pashtun women had internalized the principle of the inferiority of their gender, the prohibition to show themselves in public, and to have their picture taken. Moreover, so that it would not offend the Pashtun population, the regulation stipulated that the identity photographs were optional for women.

  When we arrived at the registration office, a long line of men blocked us from entering. At the back of the building, women took their turn, out of sight. There were very few of them. Democracy was not socially acceptable. A new word appeared: amakrasi. To the Afghan people, this meant: “anyone can do anything.” And, by extension, it also meant the emancipation of women. Democracy was Western, and in the West, they did not control their women. But on this day, in my village, they stayed at home.

  I made the move, because I am a man! I am part of the visible—it doesn’t bother me to have my picture taken. I sensed this was the beginning of a big story for me.

  I went to the men’s side. When my turn came, I registered myself on the electoral list of men with my birth name, Ukmina. Nobody objected. I had my picture taken: I showed my best smile, showing my two golden teeth. Then I gave my thumbprint in ink. After that, I slid down the side of women to register fifteen villagers who gave me their proxy. They were added to the list, under their husbands’ names.

  A few weeks later, the officers of the bureau of accreditation came to the village to check the identity of the women who were absent from the registration. And then one day, some other officers brought the cards. This was, I believe, one of the most beautiful days of my life. I held between my hands my first voter card. I wanted to keep it safe and hide it. I put it in a portfolio that I enclosed in a plastic bag and buried it in the garden, under an almond tree. I could not keep the card with me. I did not want to lose it, but it was also dangerous.

  The Taliban were no longer hidden. Three years after their defeat, they paraded again through the region. They controlled some roads and stopped vehicles. If they found electoral cards on Afghans, they beat them and ripped up the cards; they saw the cards as symbols of the American enemy. Rumors circulated that they had killed villagers in another district for having these cards. I did not want to take the risk, and when you love something above all, you guard it preciously, no?

  October 9, 2004

  I remember this day as if it were yesterday. We took the same path to Tanai, with my brothers and my two nephews. This fall day was gentle and calm in appearance. All the authorities of the country were on alert. The Taliban had vowed to sabotage the electoral process, to terrorize the population. Hamid Karzai had recently escaped two assassination attempts.

  My whole family voted for him. As good Pashtuns, they still follow the representatives of their tribe. Otherwise, who would give you the money to build hospitals, schools, and roads? It is our conception of the amakrasi! I put my left thumb into the indelible blue ink, and then an officer brought me to a poster with the pictures of the eighteen candidates on it. We had to memorize their names. Then we went behind a curtain with a card in hand that contained the same faces. Seventeen men and one woman, Massouda Jala. I did not know who she was, but I was pleased that she was there among them. I put a mark opposite the face of Hamid Karzai and folded the card in half before depositing it in the box.

  Some fifty women made this journey; they came to vote, underneath their chador, through another door in the school where the offices were located. I joined them. A certain excitement was spreading. They talked and laughed; some had lifted up the front of their chadors, broad smiles upon their faces. I showed the electoral cards of my sister and my sister-in-law, and I voted for them. They would have come if we had had a vehicle, but the idea of walking an hour on the road stopped them. Other women had been barred by their husbands, who did not want them to show themselves in public. Those who were there had the courage and the slight disarray that reflects the uniqueness of the moment.

  On the outside, a festive atmosphere had invaded the court of the school. Some families had come from their village with drums, real wedding orchestras! You could never imagine how happy the people were!

  Our hearts filled with hope and pride. On the way back, I realized that the ink had faded; therefore, any fraud was possible. The blue of the democracy, of our first vote, had not held. A bad omen.

  The government of Hamid Karzai was very ambitious, especially because they wanted to enforce the new conditions of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan. Article 22 stipulated that men and women were equal in rights. But between the paper and the reality, there was as much distance as there was from Kabul to America!

  In Khost, at the office of the Ministry of Women, Suadiqua explained to me why she had made me come there. She had the same first name as my mother; I concluded immediately that it must also be a “disavowed person,” therefore, I listened with attention.

  “We have heard about you, and you can help us. You are a free woman, but you are very respected. You can come and go as you wish; you have the ear of men and women. This is what I propose to you: we want to put women in place of the shuras in the districts of the provinces. You could take care of Tanai. You must go to every village and every house, to convince the women to take part in these shuras.”

  The shuras, the village assemblies, are composed exclusively of men. They discuss the problems of the village, neighborhood, land, and of the ongoing projects. My father had been the head of the Shura of Dragi for years.

  “I know these women; they do not want to join, and they will not.”

  “That is what we have to change together, Ukmina. And for this we need you. What is the point of democracy if women do not benefit from it? Do you know what the chairman of Loya Jirga, the parliament in Kabul, said?”

  I did not know.

  “Well, to one of the members who wanted to be heard, he said ‘Don’t try to put yourself at the same level as men. God did not create you equal to them.”

  Suadiqua wanted me to react. But I agreed with the sentence!

  I replied: “Women and men are not similar. Men are brave and cruel. Women are good and weak. I am brave as a man, and I have the kindness of a woman. I can be cruel if I must, but never low. I will help them at least not suffer the cruelty of men.”

  I am not sure she really understood where I was coming from, but she seemed relieved to have my accordance.

  I got up to leave when she stopped me:

  “Ukmina, why do you dress this way? Why did you make the choice to be a bacha posh? Don’t you want to have a husband? Children? My sister’s daughter was a bacha posh also when she was young, but she has been wearing the clothes of a daughter now for twelve years, and now she has two beautiful boys. And in Kabul, I have a friend who was a bacha posh; she is my age, and it has been a long time since she has worn a shalwar kameez like you! The villagers seem to have accepted this, but the mullahs, do they say anything? And your family, they don’t mind it?”

  “The mullahs and the villagers, men and women, accept what I am. My family loves me as I am. They know that I am brave. No other bacha posh, as you say, is as brave as me. There were girls like me in my village who dressed themselves as boys, but they all gave it up. Me, I have the courage not to do that.”

  “But your life, Ukmina? Children?”

  “I do not like children. And I have nephews and nieces—that is good enough for me!”

  With this, I smiled and left, completely ready for my new job. And it was not easy. You cannot imagine the time and energy that it took. . . .

  I knocked on the door of every house and spoke to every woman. I spent about four or five days trying to convince them—them and their husbands. They were not educated, and they did not know how to think for themselves. The first objection concerned security: “If she becomes a member of the shura, it will concern the Taliban.”

  But we quickly arrived at the heart of the problem: their husbands. They were not prepared to let them go out and into the public, even to the homeless, in their burqas. The names of their wives would be included in a public document, and this—this is not acceptable. Shame—the word constantly comes back. The Pashtun traditions do not yield anything for the amakrasi. Quite the opposite! The amakrasi advocated the equality of women—many said this is anarchy and that it must be avoided at all costs.

  After four months of never-ending discussions, I lost my voice and gained weight. All over! In each home, I took advantage of the Afghan hospitality. I was greeted with trays of dried fruit: dried dates, apricots, grapes. With almonds—just the sound of the word—I love it! And delicious pastries. We emptied dozens of glasses of tea while talking about the situation of the country, the political and economical problems, foreign soldiers who we thought were really very strange.

  I never lost the weight that I gained during those four months, and yet I was walking! I was walking through all the villages in the district. I became even better known. I was Hukomkhan, the man at the heart of a woman, the woman who is as courageous as a man. The men let me enter their homes and talk to their women. The women would listen to me and gave me confidence. And in the end, 150 followed me! This seems small: 300,656 adults lived in the district of Tanai at that time, and approximately 200,000 of these were women. I think I met every one of them! But I was proud of the 150 women who had braved the eyes of judgment, the threats, and the fear. However, again, I was not finished.

  We created three groups, according to the tribes to which they belonged. It is impossible to confuse these three tribes, and you must speak to them separately. Two things nevertheless bring them together: they all wear the burqa, and they all have almost the same problems. After thirty years of war, women were even weaker than before. The conflicts had affected the whole of society, and women in particular. Many of them had lost their husbands—that was probably why they were able to come out! And they had no one to help them. These widows were the dregs of society: without protection, some had come to beg. They were asking for assistance from the government and the international community.

  I listened to them patiently. I could not take note of their concerns, because I did not know how to write, but I recorded everything in my head. I encouraged them when they were reluctant to deliver:

  “I’m here to listen to you. I will go talk to the government and ask for answers; I will convince them to help you. We will all get out of it. Today we are back, we women; we will rebuild our country, and we will rebuild ourselves.”

  I spoke to them as equals, and yet I was dressed as a man. But they did not have any problems—they knew that I was one of them. One day, an old woman said to me in front of the entire assembly:

  “Thank you for this that you have done for us, Ukmina. You remind me of someone, I must tell you. Have you heard of Badgai?”

  I believe that my heart stopped beating for a second. An eternity.

  “I know who Badgai is. Have you met her?”

  “Yes, she was a brave woman, like you.”

  “But you saw her—where and when?”

  “Oh it was a very long time ago! You were but a child then. She was already old; her face was very wrinkled, and her body was wearing out. She could no longer walk; she spent her days on a wooden chair surrounded by villagers who came to speak to her. Some came from very far to meet her; they asked her to tell her story. And she told them the story of her exploits; she still had a beautiful voice, strong and assured, and her eyes, even at that time, were illuminated.”