Leaving Kabul

April 24, 2009 Living in Kabul is hard. Leaving Kabul will be just as hard. I am accustomed in four swift months to the smell of Nan baking on an open fire on any city street, to the bumps and jostles on Street #3 as our armored car plows along to work, to the little altar of ironed laundry that greets me when I return to the Guest House after work. The muzzein’s call to prayer awakens me every morning, shakes me to awareness at noon, and ushers in the evening. I have friends here.

Some days the sensory overload knocks me out. Body odor, sewage, garbage, goats, meat, even the soot smells. I hold my breath and then I exhale. I don’t want to be one of those silly people who blanch at the slightest discomfort. I practice mindfulness. There is dust everywhere in Kabul. You can measure the passage of time in the layers of dust.

Much of the time, something here doesn’t work. Satellite TV flickers in and out. Channels switch, so what was once the BBC Lifestyle Channel is now the Peace Channel. Bollywood rules on the air waves. The generator flips on and off like clockwork every day at 4:00 PM. One stop light in Kabul City works from time to time, if you define “working” as maintaining a steady red or green light for 24 hours straight. Showerheads, made in China, work for a time and then they inexplicably explode, hurtling projectile parts in the direction of the bather.

The contrasts stack up: the Safi Landmark Hotel stands resplendent in the Shar-i-Naw district of Kabul, a glass and steel monument to 21st century form and function. The mud houses scaling the hillsides surrounding Kabul tenaciously cling to their dirt foundations. How do the owners get the building materials up those precipices, I wonder every time I look out my window?

Donkey carts cut in front of busses offering “Special for Tourists.” Cars dare each other to the brink, honk, and get on with it. School girls in clusters of a dozen or more, dressed identically in black suits and white chador, walk together giggling and holding hands. The children of Street #6 line up at the well to pump water to bring home. I wonder if they know that they live in the Afghanistan we hear about in U.S. media.

Three months is chump change in Afghanistan. Just enough time to pull back the veil and catch a glimpse of the antiquity that seeps into every corner of Afghan culture and holds this country hostage to a past century. Women in pale, dusty blue burkas shuffle through the streets, heads bowed low. Men in turbans, pakols, karakols (Karzai caps), plaid scarves, salwar kamiz. But then, just when you think you’re stuck in the last century, there are young women in tight jeans, sandals showcasing painted toenails, leather jackets, and head scarves, giving the lie to the burka. Men in Armani suits and Rolex watches straight off the cover of GQ.

Kabul’s bridal shops feature Anglo mannequins that stare off into the far horizon as if mortified to be caught in the 1950s style bridesmaid dresses they are hawking. In the Fancy Wedding Store, they are decked out in heavy satin floor length gowns in dark colors with intricate beading. Most of the mannequins lack complete arms, stopping at the elbows.

I have sunk roots here, but I have gotten tired. I have so much more than I need, while my Afghan friends struggle against such hardship, whether poverty, oppression, or violence. I am not courageous, nor brave compared to the Afghan women who put their lives on the line two weeks ago to protest a law that diminishes women. My simple acts of activism pale in comparison to young Afghan women who stood shoulder to shoulder to reject the notion that women should have to seek permission from their husbands when they want to leave the house, that women should have to “preen” at the whim of their husbands, that women should have to submit to sex on demand by their husbands. These young women stood up to the stones thrown at them and to the chants of “whores” issued by men and women alike who turned out in huge numbers to put the protestors on notice that they had better go home and submit in silence.

How am I going to leave my Afghan home? Who will tell me every morning that “you have beautiful eyes, Mum?” Who will put a dish of sweets outside my office before I arrive? Bring me hot tea? Serve me rice and Nan and fresh fruit at lunch? And who, when I thank them for all this abundance, will respond, “Why not, Miss?” which I figure is the first English phrase most of my Afghan colleagues have learned in the English course they are offered at our office. “Why not?”

These days, I dream of hugging my children. We have never been apart for this long. My beautiful Louisa who cares for her charges as a kind hearted, brilliant social worker, and on top of that worries that I am not safe, especially after hearing on the Today Show that Kabul is ‘the most dangerous city in the world today,’ who always makes sure her Ma and her brother are safe and sound. My handsome Alex whose creative passion is bursting into bloom, who quietly but surely cultivates extraordinary ideas from seed to film, who unfailingly loves his sister and his mother, who worries in his own way. I ache to hug them.

But it will be hard to leave Kabul. In some small ways – and this will sound grandiose, but I don’t know how else to say it – I see myself as a surrogate for my country. I was here the day Barack Obama was sworn in as President. That was the day my Afghan friends asked me if Barack Obama would help Afghanistan, and listed all that needs doing: security, poverty, infrastructure, employment, education, women’s rights. “Yes,” I told them, just short of a promise, “Barack Obama wants to help Afghanistan.” And I believe he does. But I also see that the proposition is enormous. I have toiled in these fields for too short a time.

A Child's Smile

April 6, 2009 This morning as the car pulled up to our office on Street #6, three children stood outside the compound watching the car ease forward. I asked them if I could take their photo, and the older girl quietly took the other two in tow.

The past week has taken a bite out of my hope for change in Afghanistan. Afghan television stations broadcast a news clip showing the public beating in Pakistan of a 17-year old widow for the "crime" of walking with a man in public. One man held her down while another flogged her, with a crowd of cheering men looking on. Then came the news that President Karzai had signed the bill I described in a previous post which demeans and objectifies Afghan women. Life should not be so hard. Women should not have to justify their place in the culture. Men should not enjoy such dominion.

The smile on the older girls' face in this photo seems to me to hold the mystery of life as an Afghan woman, handed down through the generations.

'Worse than the Taliban'

April 2, 2009 I have been in Afghanistan for three months. I have become accustomed to the sights, sounds, and smells of Kabul. I know my way to Shar-i-Naw Park, Chicken Street, and Parliament. I know a few stock phrases in Dari. ("chi gap as?" ""What's up?" "U ketab e kis?" "Whose book is this?" "manda nabAshen!" "May you not be tired!" "zenda bAshen!" "May you live long!") I have a novice's eye and ear for the culture. I understand that a woman must not ask a man the name of his wife. I know that only men pray in mosques, and on the rare occasions when women do enter a mosque, they sit in a separate room. I know that Shiite Personal Law Article 91 states that "Man can marry with four women." And Article 132 requires that "Wife is obliged to obey man if he wanted her for sexual matters."

Afghan women struggle to emerge from the long shadow cast by decades of Soviet occupation and Taliban repression. They chafe at the restraints of a culture that dictates their behavior and relegates them to second-class status. Many brave Afghan women have taken up the fight on behalf of their Afghan sisters. Theirs is a Sisyphean battle, doomed to repeat itself down the generations. The optimist in me says Afghan women can prevail. The skeptic in me says not without blood, sweat, and tears. The cynic in me says the obstacles are too great. My money is on the skeptic.

The news story below deals a vicious blow to the hope of equal rights for Afghan women. I understand that particulars of the law signed by President Karzai are especially galling in their detail and implications for the future of Afghan women.

The Guardian ~~ London ~~ Tuesday March 31, 2009
'Worse than the Taliban' - new law rolls back rights for Afghan women
Jon Boone in Kabul

Hamid Karzai has been accused of trying to win votes in Afghanistan's presidential election by backing a law the UN says legalises rape within marriage and bans wives from stepping outside their homes without their husbands' permission. The Afghan president signed the law earlier this month, despite condemnation by human rights activists and some MPs that it flouts the constitution's equal rights provisions.

The final document has not been published, but the law is believed to contain articles that rule women cannot leave the house without their husbands' permission, that they can only seek work, education or visit the doctor with their husbands' permission, and that they cannot refuse their husband sex. A briefing document prepared by the United Nations Development Fund for Women also warns that the law grants custody of children to fathers and grandfathers only.

Senator Humaira Namati, a member of the upper house of the Afghan parliament, said the law was "worse than during the Taliban". "Anyone who spoke out was accused of being against Islam," she said.The Afghan constitution allows for Shias, who are thought to represent about 10% of the population, to have a separate family law based on traditional Shia jurisprudence. But the constitution and various international treaties signed by Afghanistan guarantee equal rights for women. Shinkai Zahine Karokhail, like other female parliamentarians, complained that after an initial deal the law was passed with unprecedented speed and limited debate. "They wanted to pass it almost like a secret negotiation," she said. "There were lots of things that we wanted to change, but they didn't want to discuss it because Karzai wants to please the Shia before the election."

Although the ministry of justice confirmed the bill was signed by Karzai at some point this month, there is confusion about the full contents of the final law, which human rights activists have struggled to obtain a copy of. The justice ministry said the law would not be published until various "technical problems" had been ironed out.

After seven years leading Afghanistan, Karzai is increasingly unpopular at home and abroad and the presidential election in August is expected to be extremely closely fought. A western diplomat said the law represented a "big tick in the box" for the powerful council of Shia clerics.

Leaders of the Hazara minority, which is regarded as the most important bloc of swing voters in the election, also demanded the new law. Ustad Mohammad Akbari, an MP and the leader of a Hazara political party, said the president had supported the law in order to curry favour among the Hazaras. But he said the law actually protected women's rights."Men and women have equal rights under Islam but there are differences in the way men and women are created. Men are stronger and women are a little bit weaker; even in the west you do not see women working as firefighters."Akbari said the law gave a woman the right to refuse sexual intercourse with her husband if she was unwell or had another reasonable "excuse". And he said a woman would not be obliged to remain in her house if an emergency forced her to leave without permission.

The international community has so far shied away from publicly questioning such a politically sensitive issue. "It is going to be tricky to change because it gets us into territory of being accused of not respecting Afghan culture, which is always difficult," a western diplomat in Kabul admitted. Soraya Sobhrang, the head of women's affairs at the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission, said western silence had been "disastrous for women's rights in Afghanistan"."What the international community has done is really shameful. If they had got more involved in the process when it was discussed in parliament we could have stopped it. Because of the election I am not sure we can change it now. It's too late for that."But another senior western diplomat said foreign embassies would intervene when the law is finally published.

Some female politicians have taken a more pragmatic stance, saying their fight in parliament's lower house succeeded in improving the law, including raising the original proposed marriage age of girls from nine to 16 and removing completely provisions for temporary marriages."It's not really 100% perfect, but compared to the earlier drafts it's a huge improvement," said Shukria Barakzai, an MP. "Before this was passed family issues were decided by customary law, so this is a big improvement."

Karzai's spokesman declined to comment on the new law.