The Lovers Read Free Page B

brothers. For two and a half years before that, they had managed to find glimpses of each other and some stolen minutes together on the farm and along village lanes and footpaths, and they had managed to speak many, many times by telephone. Ever since she entered the shelter six months earlier, however, even telephone calls were difficult; phones were forbidden to the girls. Zakia and Ali had been able to meet, with chaperones, only once during that time. Now here they were holding hands.
    It may sound like a small thing, but people who had never heard their parents address each other by name, have certainly never seen them hold hands, even in private, let alone in a public place. Courtship even among engaged couples is usually forbidden. Modernized Afghan families might allow a fiancé and fiancée to meet, but only strictly chaperoned and never alone, and not with any sort of physical contact; more often the couple first meet on their wedding night. Both the wedding ceremony and the accompanying celebration are nearly always segregated by gender. Afghan soldiers often hold hands. Children hold hands. Young Afghans of the opposite sex, married or unmarried, in public, never. Where did Zakia get the idea? Neither Zakia nor Ali had ever been to a movie theater—there wasn’t a single one in the entire province—and in their villages there was no electricity, let alone television. Although larger villages would sometimes have one shared TV, usually it would be watched only by men, since women were not allowed to attend public gatherings. What gave Zakia the boldness to take his hand in hers? Is holding hands just an innate human impulse? That, like so much else about their story, was a mystery.
    Perhaps it was just as simple as this: Having defied one set of grand conventions, to openly and publicly declare her love for Aliand now to elope with him in defiance of her family, her culture, her tribe, and her sect, Zakia was not now going to be bound by any of her society’s petty strictures. If she wanted to hold his hand, she would. When I had an occasion to ask her, much later, why she had done so, Zakia’s response was this: “Why not?”
    Rahmatullah, in the driver’s seat, was stunned to see them sit together so intimately. “He was scared, but he’s my friend, so he went along,” Ali said. The two lovers in the back, finally together after so many months, didn’t know what to say to each other. “We hadn’t expected this to happen—we didn’t really know what would happen,” Ali said. The pack of dogs surrounded the car and barked furiously as it pulled away. The couple lay down in the backseat as the car passed the shelter and headed out of town.
    The escape had been so unexpected that they still had to arrange the next leg of their flight. Two days later, after the Persian New Year’s Day holiday, Zakia’s court case was to be moved to Kabul. Bamiyan is a mostly Hazara place, so they felt safer there—the courts were dominated by Tajiks who sympathized with Zakia’s family, but the police and the governor, the women’s ministry, and the majority of the people were Hazaras and could be expected to sympathize with them. That would not be the case in Kabul, they worried; there were many more Tajiks and Pashtuns than Hazaras there. In Kabul, they feared, Zakia could easily be ordered returned to her family, for what would then become the last few days of her life.
    Now they were on their way to the home of a distant relative of Ali’s in the Foladi Valley, which cut southwest up into the Koh-i-Baba range, rugged, fifteen-thousand-foot-high mountains running from east to west and framing the southern reaches of the Bamiyan Valley. The relative’s name was Salman, and Ali’s father and his uncle had only just called him as Ali was driving off to get Zakia; now Ali called him from the car. Salman was reluctant at first, partly because he shared his home with four brothers and he would have to get the