Read This! Not a Campaign Ad!

Today was a very interesting day. I went downtown with my section leader Gayle and my deputy section leader, who is a young Afghan woman I shall call Azizah. We had to leave early (Russ, I was the first one to the car!), and so our trip into town was very quiet, and I noticed that we were taking a different route to the same building we had visited before. I was able to see a completely different part of Kabul, but the people were driving just as badly in this part of town as they had in the other parts!

We turned a corner, and Azizah said, “I love this neighborhood in the city.” She is usually a quiet person, not saying much, and certainly not speaking unless spoken to, so this was a sign for me that I should begin asking her questions. I asked her why she likes it, and she told me that she had gone to high school in the neighborhood, and had worked her first job here, beginning when she was just 15. To me, the neighborhood looked like almost every other neighborhood we had gone through. It was, as usual, dusty, dirty, crowded, dilapidated, and littered with trash. But through Azizah’s eyes, the neighborhood took on new and vibrant characteristics.

This neighborhood, she said, was central to the city’s public transportation. I had not seen public transportation, so I asked her if she rode city buses. “No,” she said, “the city doesn’t have buses, but there are some vans.” She also pointed to our left, telling me that a shopping mall was on the next street over, and while the city has lots of shopping malls, this one is the best. Azizah, who spent a year in the United States in college, also told me that the other shopping in the area is very good, as well.

Then she pointed out the street where she had her first job, telling me that she had gone to work for an NGO (Non-Governmental Organization) that was sponsored by an outside agency, and that because schools in Afghanistan hold classes for half days only, she worked in the afternoons and went to school in the mornings. She said she was grateful to the woman who had given her the job, because most people didn’t put a lot of stock into students who wanted to work, because, as Azizah put it, “You are just a kid.” But this woman gave her a chance, and she took it. She told me that the woman to whom she owed so much died of a heart attack a couple of years ago, and she seemed sad to tell me even today.

Then, this remarkable young woman told me that in the job, she had eventually traveled out into the provinces, taking the message of clean water, good food, and birth control to families who lived in villages without, as Esman and Hasat had told me earlier, electricity or running water. At that time, Azizah was 17. I was, as you might imagine by now, curious about how a young woman would have been allowed to travel, and then how she would have been received as the bearer of news of birth control, and how she had gathered up the courage to talk about it and the gravitas to have been taken seriously. And so I asked.

The project traveled to the provinces in a group of 30 people – 15 men and 15 women (if you can count the 17-year-old girl a woman). In this way, appropriately chaperoned, the women were allowed to travel out into the provinces. The men would talk to the men in the villages and the women to the women. The message was that the people could do much to help their own lives by preparing and eating good, clean food, by drinking clean water, and by taking charge of how many babies they had and when they were born to protect and preserve the women’s bodies and health. I couldn’t help but think about how, over the past few months, the issue of birth control had become an issue in our national campaigns, and how very silly that sounds when compared with what happens in a country that must be educated about how birth control can make their lives, and the health of its women, much better. For heaven’s sake. Our country is supposed to be the one that leads in this kind of self-help so that people can determine their own destinies and have a more advanced society. But I digress.

Azizah told me this in a very matter-of-fact way, and I was again surprised at the “age beyond years” displayed by the young people I have met – first Esman and Hasat and the other wonderful staff members in Herat, and now this young woman, whose 24th birthday is today. She is the same age as my daughter, and though Emily is a mature 24-year-old, Azizah seems years older. Perhaps her experiences, such as the one she shared with me, have shown her that life is often hard. In fact, she said that her trips to the provinces had convinced her to be grateful for the things she has, because she had seen how people suffered and had so little. I was touched by her humility: I spent my time looking out the car window, seeing through my eyes a city filled with poverty and ever-present, choking dust, and she, in the midst of that city, has eyes that
see that she has much and feels for those who have little.

Just one more lesson for me.

And then we went to our meeting, which was with the head of a department within the Ministry of Women’s Affairs. Our hostess, a woman even tinier than I, came out to meet us and gave us a warm greeting, “New York” kissing the cheeks of Azizah and my team leader Gayle, and shaking my hand firmly and looking me squarely in the eye. We went into her office, which has a wall of windows looking out over what will soon be a lovely garden and arbor, and sat in the stuffed sofa and chairs to begin our discussions. We had not been there five minutes when a woman entered and poured each of us a cup of hot tea and set out two candy dishes (aside: I have discovered that Afghanistan is a candy-lovers paradise – the sugar bark from Herat is out of this world, and the little caramels we had today were nothing short of wonderful).

I stop here to describe the woman who poured tea only because I have seen other people in this country squatting in this way – at the side of the road while waiting for traffic, outside a storefront, tending goats or sheep. She brought over to us an electric pot that was full of steaming, steeped tea. In her traditional dress - which included trousers, a long dress over the trousers, and then a head covering – she dropped to a squatting position with both feet planted firmly and flatly on the floor, and poured the tea into the cups that she placed in front of her on the floor. When I squat to pick up something, I usually end up on my toes, because to keep my feet flat on the floor requires more flexibility than I have. This woman, who is probably 5’9” or taller, folded and unfolded herself with great ease, agility, and grace. I was fascinated.

Back to the meeting. We politely inquired about how our hostess was feeling. It turns out that she had a baby about five months ago, and she suffered from gestational diabetes during the pregnancy. I remembered what Esman and Hasat had told me about doing business in Afghanistan. “Americans just jump in. It is not the Afghan way. Spend time talking about the other person’s life. There will be plenty of time for business.” Paying attention to my good teachers, I found out all about the baby and how she was now feeling and how it was to come back to work. I was also genuinely interested – this woman was older that I when Emily was born, although I am sure that this baby was not her first child – in how, in this country that is not always so hospitable to women, she managed to be a mother and work, not just as an employee, but as a very important part of the women’s rights movement in a country that is not yet known for women’s rights. Director C. exuded a quiet power.

Azizah translated for us, and at times, the two women had a conversation between themselves, while Gayle and I looked on as outsiders. I could tell by the looks on her face when Director C. was happy, when she was not happy, and when she wanted us to know that she was not happy. I also saw the looks of impatience when we were continually interrupted by the comings and goings of staff who needed to communicate with her about things that were happening that needed her immediate attention.

We did our business, and then the woman brought us more tea, which meant we could stay a while longer. She also brought us a delicacy – sugar-coated almonds. These are not like Jordan almonds. Instead of being covered with a thin, hard, sugary shell, these almonds are drizzled with a hard white icing that makes the outside of the almond look like it is covered with a spiderweb. I gave Director C. a look of helplessness, and then took my first one of the day. She smiled and told us that these were served at a special Eid celebration, after the first day of Eid, when the Koran is read. I, of course, because of my wonderful tutelage at the feet of Esman and Hasat, knew about different Eid celebrations, and I nodded my assent and said some of the things I had discovered because of my wonderful teachers. She told Azizah that I had a lot of knowledge, and I answered that I enjoyed knowing about the people in the country.

Then I asked about the work of the Ministry. Director C. was expansive in her discussion of what is happening in Afghanistan regarding women’s rights. She talked about the number of young women who had been killed over the past year in Herat, and she mentioned a particular case that I had seen over the past couple of weeks. I told her I had read of it, and I was sorry that those kinds of things continued to happen. I also said that I had worked with some very well-educated and progressive young men, whose wives were not in that kind of danger. She told us that because Herat was more progressive because of the number of educated women, more women were being attacked – their education and progress were threats to the centuries-old culture.

And then she talked about their day-to-day work. It seems that many couples in Afghanistan have the same problems that couples do in America: they don’t communicate. In many instances, the minister said, women will call asking for help because their husbands are continuing to beat them for some reason. The ministry gets the couple in for some good, old-fashioned mediation. What the ministry workers find is that the couples have not talked about their problems. The workers will have the woman state her problem, and then will require the man to respond, and then they will talk together until the problem seems to be resolved – at least for the time being.

The minister said that this approach works because divorce or conviction for abuse of a woman in Afghanistan is not good for anyone. First, if a man is convicted for abusing his wife, he will be thrown in jail. Because most women are not educated and cannot provide for themselves or their families, if their abusive husbands are in jail, the children are not being fed, and the wife cannot help the family. If the couple is divorced, again, the wife has few rights under the law (which, remember, is also the religious law) in that her children will be with her only until they are seven, and then they will be placed with their father. Additionally, because the woman probably has little education, she cannot provide for her children without her husband’s contribution.

Obviously, the ministry’s approach does not work every time, and in some instances, things do not change for the women. The first day I went to a meeting at the ministry, for instance, I saw a young woman walking along the sidewalk with two small children in tow. She was crying. I’m sure she did not have a good outcome with whatever was going wrong in her life. And the law that leaves children with their mother only until the end of their seventh year is certainly a disincentive for a woman to do what may be best for both her and her children’s safety – and that is to “get thee to a” shelter (rather than a nunnery). And at present, Afghanistan has precious few shelters for abused women and their children. So until things change – and they will, some day – what the ministry has to offer by way of mediation is a blessing.

The ministry also helps women whose friends or neighbors report abuse that the woman is afraid to report herself. If someone reports abuse, the ministry goes to the house with the police, and the woman is taken to safety, and is checked to make sure that she is physically sound. In this instance, though, a quirk in the law, at least I call it a quirk, and I think I told you about this a few weeks ago, allows a woman to withdraw her complaint against her husband at any time during the process should he be prosecuted for abuse. This happens in the United States as well, when a woman will be abused, call the police, make a complaint, and prior to the trial, either get together with her significant other and make up, or he threatens her within an inch of, or with, her life.

In all this, I left the meeting feeling as if something is being done, something important, and that this little woman, who showed me her short hair and complimented me on the color of mine, is a part of it. I felt honored when we left and she gave me, as well as my companions, a “New York” kiss. I will see her again, and I know I will enjoy hearing her stories.

To finish the day, I asked Azizah, our birthday girl, where she wanted to be in 10 years. “Doing work for gender rights and human rights,” she said. “That is why I do this work.” And you know, I want to do whatever I can to make sure that she does exactly that.