The Underground Girls of Kabul Read Free Page A

now cease to wag about this unlucky man burdened with four daughters, who would need to find husbands for all of them, and have his line end with him. In Pashto, Afghanistan’s second official language, there is even a deprecating name for a man who has no sons: He is a
meraat
, referring to the system where an inheritance, such as land assets, is almost exclusively passed on through a male lineage. But since the family’s youngest took on the role of a son the child has become a source of pride to her father. Mehran’s revised status has also afforded her siblings considerably more freedom, as they can leave the house, go to the playground, and even wander to the next block, if Mehran is along as an escort.
    There was one additional reason for the transition. Azita says it with a burst of low laughter, leaning in a little closer to disclose her small act of rebellion: “I wanted to show my youngest what life is like on the other side.”
    That life can include flying a kite, running as fast as you can, laughing hysterically, jumping up and down because it feels good, climbing trees to feel the thrill of hanging on. It is to speak to another boy, to sit with your father and his friends, to ride in the front seat of a car and watch people out on the street. To look them in the eye. To speak up without fear and to be listened to, and rarely have anyone question why you are out on your own in comfortable clothes that allow for any kind of movement. All unthinkable for an Afghan girl.
    But what will happen when puberty hits?
    “You mean when he grows up?” Azita says, her hands tracing the shape of a woman in the air. “It’s not a problem. We change her into a girl again.”

CHAPTER TWO
THE FOREIGNER
    Carol
    T HERE IS A small restaurant favored by Kabul’s unlikely ladies who lunch, where local riffs on quiche lorraine and delicate little sandwiches are served as a war rages on unseen in the provinces. The yellow house with a small garden is tucked into a small alleyway behind a government ministry and flanked by enough roadblocks to make it an acceptable outing for foreign diplomats and aid professionals. As in many other places, the electricity goes out every half hour or so, but guests quickly pick up the habit of carrying on their conversations in absolute darkness until the switch between generators brings the small lamps up again—all while keeping calm when small creatures occasionally skitter past their feet under the table. I had come here to meet the grande dame of Kabul expatriates in the hope that she could shed some light on what seemed to be yet another of Afghanistan’s many secrets.
    Thus far, I had mostly met resistance.
    After my first visit to Azita’s family, I scoured the Internet and newspaper archives, thinking that I had missed something fundamental in my homework on the country. But my searches turned up nothing on any other girls who dressed as boys in Afghanistan. Was Azita just an unusually creative woman? Or could it be, as I still suspected,that more Afghan families turned their daughters into sons, as a way of both conceding to and defying an impossibly rigid society?
    I had also consulted the experts. There were many to choose from.
    Girls and women had become one of several urgent causes to the international aid community after the fall of the Taliban, with numerous specialists on the topic of Afghan women shuttling in and out of the country on short-term rotations from Washington, D.C., and various European capitals. Since many donor countries required development projects—from agriculture to politics—to consider specifically how thelives of Afghan women were to be improved, Kabul had turned into a place brimming with “gender experts”—a term encompassing many of the foreign-born aid workers, sociologists, consultants, and researchers with degrees in everything from conflict resolution to feminist theory.
    After observing, but largely ignoring, the Taliban’s vicious