The Favored Daughter Read online

  The people of Badakhshan felt they had suffered years of neglect from the central government and were thrilled at the opportunity to finally have their voices heard. When the elections came, my father was voted in as the first-ever member of parliament from Darwaz.

  He was representing some of the poorest people not just in Afghanistan but in the world. A huge responsibility.

  But these are also people who have their pride, who stick to their values. People who can be as wild and angry as the ever-changing mountain climate, but also as fragile and strong as the wild flowers that grow on the granite river banks.

  Abdul Rahman, being one of them, knew this better than anyone, and took on his new role with nothing short of dedication.

  On the day of his first address to parliament in Kabul, local people gathered at our house in the village of Koof to listen to his speech. In those days radio was the only contact with the outside world. My father had inherited the radio, a chunky wooden Russian wireless with brass controls, from my grandfather. It was the only radio in our village.

  No one in Koof, except my elder brother Jamalshah, knew how to turn on the radio or even how to increase the volume. My mother was bursting with pride that her husband was a member of parliament. She threw open the gates of the hooli to allow the public in to hear the speech and called for Jamalshah to turn on the radio for her.

  But he was nowhere to be seen. In panic she ran through the village calling him but couldn’t find him anywhere.

  The speech was about to start, and back at the hooli a crowd was gathering. Cousins, village elders, women, and children, some of whom had never heard a radio before—all wanted to hear their new representative address the parliament. She knew she couldn’t let my father down but had not the faintest idea how the contraption worked.

  She went close to the radio and tried all the knobs but nothing worked. As the crowd watched her in anticipation she felt a sense of rising panic and fear, and started to cry. Her husband was going to be humiliated and it would be her fault. If only she had found Jamalshah. Where was that boy? In pure frustration she brought her fist down hard on the top of the radio. Amazingly, the thump worked, and the thing spluttered and crackled to life.

  She couldn’t quite believe her luck. But still, no one could hear it, as the volume was too low. She hadn’t the faintest idea what to do. Her friend, my father’s fourth wife, suggested bringing in the loudspeaker. The women had no idea what it did or how it worked but had seen the men use it before. They carried it over and placed it next to the radio, doing what they could to connect it. It worked. The parliament proceedings were live. The entire village heard my father’s speech. My mother beamed with joy.

  My father soon gained a reputation as one of the hardest-working members in the king’s parliament. Although Badakhshan remained desperately poor, these were good days for Afghanistan overall. The nation was secure, the economy and society were generally stable, but this wasn’t something our neighboring countries could easily accept. It was the height of the cold war, and Afghanistan’s strategic and geographical importance was already defining the tragic fate that would come later.

  My father was outspoken, straightforward, and hard working, respected not only in Badakhshan but across the country for his generosity, honesty, faith, and fierce belief in traditional Islamic values. Yet he was unpopular with some in the king’s court for refusing to kowtow to the elites or to play the political power games so many of his political peers took delight in. He was an old-fashioned politician, one who believed in the nobility of public service and helping the poor.

  He spent long months in Kabul advocating for roads, hospitals, and schools. Some projects he was successful in getting funds to complete, others evaded him. The Kabul-based rulers did not see our province as a particularly important one and it was hard to get funding for major projects, something that constantly angered my father.

  My mother recalled how before the annual parliamentary recess, she took the whole month to prepare for his arrival—preparing different kinds of sweetmeats and dried fruits for him, cleaning the house, sending the servants to the mountains to collect wood for all the cooking his arrival would inevitably involve. In the evenings, a long queue of donkeys loaded with wood entered the hooli gates, my mother giving directions stating how high or how big to make the piles in the wood store at the corner of the garden. In her own way she worked as hard as my father did, never accepting second best and always seeking perfection. But my father barely thanked her for it. At home he could be a terrifying tyrant. My mother’s bruises were testament to that.

  Each one of his wives was a political match. By marrying the favored daughter of a nearby tribe or local power holder he strategically consolidated and secured the power base of his own local empire. My mother’s father was an important local elder from the next district who had previously fought with my father’s village. By marrying her he essentially secured a local peace treaty.

  A few of his wives he loved, two he divorced, most he ignored. Throughout his life he took a total of seven wives. My mother was without a doubt his favorite. She was petite with a pretty oval-shaped face and pale skin, big black eyes, shiny long black hair, and neatly arched eyebrows.

  It was she he trusted the most, she who kept the keys to the safe and the food stores. She he entrusted to coordinate the cooking at his huge political dinners. It was she who took charge of the servants and other wives as they cooked endless supplies of scented pilau rice, gosht (lamb stew), and fresh hot naan in the hooli’s kitchen.

  A row of servants and brothers would stand from the kitchen entrance into the entrance of the guest house next door where my father entertained the guests, passing piping hot pots along. Women were not allowed to enter these exclusively male areas. In our culture a married woman should not be seen by a man who is not her relative, so on these occasions my brothers, who would never otherwise be expected to do any housework, had to help.

  My father expected everything to be perfect for such celebrations. The rice was to be fluffy, and each grain individually separated. If it was, he smiled with satisfaction at his good fortune and his most excellent choice of wife. If he found a few grains stuck together his face would darken, and he would politely excuse himself from his guests, walk into the kitchen, and, without saying a word, grab my mother by the hair, wrench the metal ladle from her hands, and beat her across the head with it. Her hands—already scarred and misshapen from previous beatings—would fly to her head to try and protect herself. Sometimes she’d be knocked unconscious, only to get up again and, ignoring the servant’s frightened stares, rub hot ash into her head to stop the bleeding, then ensure that in the next batch of rice, the grains fell apart perfectly.

  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.

  Dear Shuhra and Shaharzad,

  Early in my life I learned how difficult is it to be a child in Afghanistan, especially a girl child.

  The first words a newborn daughter will often hear are the commiserations given to her mother. “It’s a poor girl, just a girl.”

  It isn’t much of a welcome to the world.

  Then when a girl reaches school age, she faces the problem of whether or not she will get permission to go to school. Will her family be brave or rich enough to send her to school? When a brother grows up he will represent the family and his salary will help feed the family so everyone wants to educate their sons. But in our society girls usually get married and join the husband’s family, so many people see no point in educating them.

  When the girl reaches the age of 12, relatives and neighbors may start to gossip about why she isn’t married yet. “Has someone asked her for marriage?” “Is anyone ready to marry her?” “She may not be a good girl, which is why no one wants to marry her.”

  If the family doesn’t care about this gossip and lets the girl reach 16, the legal age for marriage, and allows her to marry someone of her choice or at least agree to the choice her parents have made, then she will have, at least in part, a happy life.

  But if the family is under financial pressure or listens to other’s gossip and marries their daughter off before she’s 15, then this little girl who heard “poor girl” at her birth will become a mother herself. And if she gives birth to a girl child then her little girl will hear the same words, “poor girl,” at birth, and so it goes on to her daughters’ daughters and their daughters.

  This is how I was born. The “poor girl” of an illiterate woman.

  “Just a girl” would have been my life story, and probably yours too. But the bravery of my mother changed our path. She is the hero of my dreams.

  With love,

  Your mother

  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.