“And you should vanish your face from here.”
Bits and pieces from the street…
An Afghan friend and I went to lunch today at the beautiful Wakhan restaurant, a local place I had never discovered, just blocks from my guesthouse. I had not noticed it because there is only a Dari sign written on a chalkboard set up on the sidewalk and it was unintelligible to me. We ordered plates of mantu, an Afghan delicacy: meat-filled dumplings with a delicate yogurt sauce. As we ate, my friend filled me in on the situation in Afghanistan, and also some news from America I had not followed.
“The Americans are having a budget crisis so congress is cutting their aid to Afghanistan. Why are they doing this? They should be increasing their aid. The taliban will only return if the Americans leave.” (I’ve been on a news-break since coming here, but Afghans are very interested in everything the American govt is up to. Several of them have told me that our federal govt has declared a budget stand-still and no one is being paid at home. True? You tell me.)
I told him that I’d had dinner with the USAID representative to Afghanistan last night and she told me of plans to work deeply with the Afghan Education Ministry to build teacher capacity. He was happy to hear that, but added, “The Americans should not give their money directly to Afghans, because the money will not be spent properly. It will go into people’s pockets. The ministers here are making over $13,000 per month. $13,000 per month! That is wasted money.”
Then he told me about a bureaucrat here whom we both know. My friend works for an international NGO which has been providing scholarships to young women to go teacher-training colleges in the provinces. I wrote about this organization’s work in my blog last summer. It is a wonderful program. They send Afghan representatives to rural villages to speak with elders and parents, persuading them to send their daughters to the provincial teacher-training colleges. It is often difficult to persuade these villagers of the value of women-work and education, but they are successful partly because they pay the young women a scholarship to attend the teacher-training schools. Now this Afghan bureaucrat says the program will be discontinued unless the international NGO agrees to put it directly under the ownership of this bureaucrat’s agency. The international NGO says no, so the bureaucrat has declared that the scholarships will be discontinued, and the women “should vanish their faces from the teacher-training colleges.” My friend will probably have to find work elsewhere, since the two parties cannot find common ground. And the women…well, they will probably return to a quiet life indoors and their families will feel that once again they have been cheated by forces outside their control.
Changing the conversation, my friend said he was leaving for the weekend to go visit his family in a distant province. A fellow friend will travel on the bus with him. “My friend works in a mental health clinic,” he said.
“Ah,” I said. “Tell me about suicides here. Are there many?”
He misunderstood me, thinking I meant suicide bombers. “No, no, there are not many in Kabul.”
I clarified my question, “No, I’m talking about suicides. Not suicide bombers.”
“Oh, I see. Well, we don’t really have many of those either. Except women, of course. Women burn themselves many times here, because they are forced by their parents into a marriage they do not like. That is all. You see, this is a very bad thing. Fathers don’t ask a suitor, ‘Are you educated? Are you a good man? Are you an honest person?’ They only ask, ‘How much will you pay me for my daughter?’ If the price is high enough, they tell their daughter she must marry him. These girls have no choice! Then, when they kill themselves, only the parents are to blame! It is their fault!”
“Do you think the parents ever blame themselves?”
“No, no, of course not! And they never talk about it. They are ashamed.”
The issue of dowry payments has historically been a contentious issue in Afghanistan. When the Russians came, they outlawed dowries, believing girls would be treated more fairly. Even various Afghan regimes have tried over the years to control or eliminate dowries. But it is tradition. Some say that it is a good thing, because it means a young man cannot take a bride until he has saved enough to provide for her. But more modern Afghans say the bad outweighs the good. I can say personally that I know many young men who tell me they will not be able to marry for years because they have not saved enough money.
………
An American friend of mine who originally came from Afghanistan visited the Commission on Human Rights, headed by an Afghan woman here in Kabul. The director spoke in English in front of my friend and some other women she brought, and described the many programs for women here. Then my friend and the director continued their conversation in Dari, during which the director admitted, “But, you know, nothing has really changed here. It is still the same old story for women: no rights.”
……..
I met an American who has founded a small program working with intelligent girls to bring their English skills up-to-snuff so that they can then come to America as exchange students. He described one young woman, age 16, who founded a school in her village by persuading elders to donate land and fund teacher salaries. She is now at university in England but plans to return to Afghanistan to continue her work rebuilding the education system here. The American gentleman traveled to her village, deep within a taliban-infested region to meet her parents. He said to her father, “Thank you for letting your daughter come to my program for education.” and the father answered with tears in his eyes, “No, I thank YOU for taking my daughter into your program!”
……
Two young women work near my desk at the education center where I work on my book. They have both graduated from Kabul university, one in world history and the other in chemistry. Their jobs at the education center are dull, it seems to me, and I told them I thought they could be working at better jobs. “What would you rather be doing?” I asked during lunch the other day. “Nothing, really,” they answered with a small shrug. They are waiting for their parents to choose husbands for them.
…..
Most of the computer and graphics staff where I am editing my book are young men. You can almost point to the ones who are married. They are, as a rule, the ones who work steadily. The unmarried guys are frisky, sometimes reading text messages aloud to each other from girlfriends, sometimes playing computer games with pictures of steamy women on the side. There have been two parties for men who have recently become engaged. Everyone brings cookies (kolchas) and special tea and put a garland of flowers around the neck of the lucky young man.
There is alot of horseplay and joking among the younger men, in which sometimes they include me. Today they were joking about each other.
“His last name (here they pointed) is ‘garbage’! Don’t you think it suits him?”
“Well, his name is cauliflower head! Look at his face! Doesn’t it look like a cauliflower?” They pointed to a handsome guy with a roundish face, who just laughed along. I was trying unsuccessfully not to laugh.
“Well,” that man countered. “His head looks like a brush!” “Yeah, a toilet brush!” Lots more laughing.
“And, Camilla, you are sitting at someone else’s desk. You must pay rent for that space!”
I told them I would pay the rent in kolchas brought on the next work day, Saturday. They nodded approval. Kolcha rent.
…………
I learned for the first time, in a book I just finished on the subject, that musicians are considered a lower class in Afghanistan, almost pariahs. I confirmed this with an Afghan who grew up here in the 70′s. She said it was certainly true then, and even somewhat now. There are several theories on how this came to be. Some people say musicians originally came from a gypsy caste in India. Others say it is because Mohammed instructed followers to not associate with musicians, nor play music. Many professional musicians seem to have once, and not so long ago, been barbers or sieve-makers. Because of their work with skins (sieves were made of sinew) these professions were seen as the lowest of the low. Female singers were assumed as a matter of fact to be prostitutes. The taleban certainly forbid music of any kind and broke musical instrument wherever they found them. With increased exposure to Western media, this is changing. People here in Kabul play music on the car radios, buy CD’s, and watch TV musical programs. Still the idea that musicians are smutty remains a lingering idea.
That’s it for Kabul news tonight.
