The lead burka’s shoes disappear amongst other shoes on one of the narrow footbridges over the dried-up watercourse. Further back the sisters’ sandals have been caught up in the throng. They can only follow the crowd’s movements. To look for each other’s shoes is not possible, even less stop or turn. The burkas are hemmed in by other burkas and men carrying goods, on their heads, under their arms or on their backs. They can no longer see the ground.
Over on the other side three burkas are looking for each other. One is wearing black shoes, white lace trousers and the hem of the dress is scarlet; one has brown plastic sandals and a black hem; the last, slimmest burka-silhouette has pink plastic shoes, purple trousers and hem. They find each other and raise their sights to consult. The lead burka leads the way into a shop, a real shop with windows and displays on the outskirts of the bazaar. She wants a blanket and has fallen head over heels for a shiny, quilted, pink thing called ‘Paris’. The blanket comes with frilly pillows, hearts and flowers. All is folded together in a handy, see-through plastic suitcase. ‘Product of Pakistan’ is written on the suitcase, under the word ‘Paris’ and a picture of the Eiffel Tower.
This is the blanket the burka wants on her future conjugal bed. A bed she has neither seen nor tried, and that she, God forbid, will not see until her wedding night. She haggles. The assistant wants several million Afghani for the blanket and the pillows in the plastic suitcase.
‘A preposterous sum!’
She continues to haggle, but the vendor is obstinate. She is about to leave when he gives in. The billowing burka has got the blanket for under one third of the initial price, but as she is about to hand him the money she changes her mind. She does not want the baby pink but the signal red instead. The blanket vendor wraps it up and throws in a red lipstick for good measure. As she is getting married.
She thanks him sweetly and lifts the veil to test the lipstick. After all, Shakila has become quite familiar with the blanket-and-cosmetic vendor. Apart from him there are only women in the shop. Leila and Mariam pluck up courage, lift up the burka, and three pale lips are transformed. They look in the mirror and devour the glamour displayed under the glass counter. Shakila searches for skin-bleaching cream. To be pale is an important Afghan beauty feature. A bride must be pale.
The blanket-and-cosmetic seller recommends a cream called Perfact. ‘Aloe White Block Cream’ is written on the box, the rest is in Chinese. Shakila tries some, and ends up looking as if her skin has been bleached with thick zinc cream. Her skin is paler - for a while. Her real skin colour can be seen through the cream; the result is blotched brown-white.
The wonder cream is stuffed down into the already full bag. The three sisters laugh and promise to return each time one of them gets married.
Shakila is pleased and wants to return home to show off her purchases. They find a bus and push their way in, up the back running board, and down on the seats behind the curtain. The back rows are reserved for burkas, babies and shopping bags. The burkas are pulled in all directions, get caught up and trampled upon. They have to be raised slightly when the sisters sit down so they can look around without the material pulling the head down. They force themselves down on the outside of a seat with their bags on their laps and between their legs. Not many seats are reserved for women and as more get on the bus the burkas are hemmed in by other burkas and bodies and arms and bags and shoes.
The three exhausted sisters and their parcels fall off the bus when it stops at the bombed-out house. They flap into the cool apartment, pull the burkas over their heads, hang them up on nails and heave a sigh of relief. Their faces have been restored. The faces the burkas stole.
A Third-rate Wedding
The evening before the big day. The room is heaving. All available floor space is occupied by some woman’s body, eating, dancing or chatting. It is the henna-night. Tonight the bride and groom will be painted with henna on their palms and the soles of their feet. The orange pattern on their hands will, allegedly, guarantee a happy marriage.
But the bride and groom are not together. The men feast by themselves, likewise the women. Left alone the women display a fierce, almost frightening power. They hit each other’s bottoms, pinch each other’s breasts, and dance for each other, arms flailing like snakes, hips like Arab belly dancers. Little girls dance as though they were born to seduce and wriggle across the floor with challenging looks and raised eyebrows. Even the old grannies test the water, but give up halfway, before the dance is over. The old magic is still there, but they haven’t got the stamina to see the dance out.
Shakila is sitting on the only piece of furniture in the room, a sofa which has been brought in for the occasion. She watches from a distance and is forbidden to either smile or dance. Happiness would hurt the mother she is leaving, sorrow irritate the future mother-in-law. A bride’s face must be non-committal, she is not supposed to turn her head or look around, but must stare fixedly straight ahead. Shakila passes with flying colours, as though she has rehearsed this night all her life. She sits upright like a queen and converses quietly with whoever is sitting beside her on the sofa - an honour taken in turns. Only her lips move when she answers the questions of the guest on the sofa.
Her costume is red, green, black and gold. It looks as though the Afghan flag, strewn with gold dust, has been draped over her. Her breasts stand out like mountain peaks. The bra she bought, measured by eye, obviously fits. The waistline is drawn in tightly, under the dress. She has applied a thick layer of Perfact on her face, the eyes have been outlined with kohl and she is wearing the new, red lipstick. Her appearance, too, is perfect. A bride must look artificial, like a doll. The word for doll and bride is the same - arus.
During the evening a procession of tambourines, drums and lanterns enters the gate. It is the women from Wakil’s house - his sisters, in-laws and daughters. They sing out in the pitch-black night, while they clap and dance:
We are taking this girl from her home and leading her to our
home
Bride, do not bow your head and cry bitter tears
This is God’s wish, thank God.
Oh, Muhammad, God’s messenger, solve her problems
Make difficult things easy!
Wakil’s women dance a sensual dance, framing their bodies and faces in shawls and scarves. The room is damp and smells of sweet sweat. All the windows are flung open and the curtains flutter in the breeze, but the fresh spring air cannot cool down these women.
It is not until there is a pause in the dancing that brimming plates of pilau are carried in. Everyone drops down on to the floor at the spot where they were standing or dancing. Only the oldest sit on cushions along the wall. Shakila’s little sister Leila and the younger cousins carry the food in, cooked in huge pots in the courtyard outside. Pots with rice, large hunks of mutton, aubergine in yoghurt sauce, noodles stuffed with spinach and garlic and potatoes in paprika sauce are laid out on the floor. The women collect around the pots. With the right hand they squeeze the rice into balls and stuff them into their mouths. Meat and gravy is mopped up with pieces torn off large chunks of bread, always using the right hand. The left hand, the dirty hand, must remain still. The sound of women eating is all that can be heard. The meal is consumed in peace. The silence is broken only when they urge each other to eat more. It is good manners to push the juiciest morsels over to your neighbour.
When everyone is replete the henna ceremony can begin. The night is far spent, no one is dancing. Some sleep, others lie or sit around Shakila and watch while Wakil’s sister rubs the moss-green paste over Shakila’s hands and feet and sings the henna-song. Once Shakila’s hands have been covered she must close them. Her future sister-in-law binds reams of material round each fist to ensure a pattern is formed, and then rolls them in some soft cloth to avoid dirtying clothes and bed-linen. She undresses her down to her underwear, long white cotton trousers and a long tunic, and lies her down on a mat in the middle of the floor with a pillow for her head. She is
then fed with large pieces of meat, fried liver and uncooked onion sections, specially prepared by the sisters of the one who is about to leave the family.
Bibi Gul follows everything closely. She watches each piece the sisters put into Shakila’s mouth. She starts to cry. Then everyone follows suit; but they assure each other that Shakila will be well treated.
After Shakila has been fed, she lies down close against Bibi Gul, curled-up in the foetal position. She has never in her life slept in a room without her mother. This is the last night in the bosom of her family. The following night belongs to her husband.
A few hours later she is woken and the sisters unwrap the cloth around her hands. They scrape off the henna, and an orange pattern has formed on the palms of her hands and on the soles of her feet. Shakila washes off last night’s doll-face and eats a good breakfast, as usual: fried meat, bread, a sweet pudding and tea.
At nine she is ready to be made up, have her hair dressed and be titivated. Shakila, little sister Leila, Sultan’s second wife Sonya and a cousin troop into a flat in Mikrorayon. This is the beauty salon - a salon that also existed under the Taliban. Then too, in spite of it being illegal, brides desired glamour. They wanted to be dolled up to the nines. Here a Taliban decree was an actual help. They arrived in a burka and left in a burka, but with a new face underneath.
The beautician has a mirror, a stool, and a shelf full of bottles and tubes, which, from appearance and design, look to be several decades old. On the wall she has put up posters of Indian Bollywood stars. The beauties in low-necked costumes smile ingratiatingly at Shakila, who sits silent and broad on the stool.
Few would say that Shakila is beautiful. Her skin is coarse and the eyelids swollen. The face is wide and the jaw powerful. But she has the loveliest teeth, shining hair and a cheeky look, and has been the most sought after of Bibi Gul’s daughters.
‘I don’t understand why I like you so much,’ Wakil said to her during the dinner in Mariam’s house. ‘You’re not even beautiful.’ But he had said it lovingly and Shakila took it as a compliment.
Now she is nervous about not being beautiful enough and the playful look has disappeared. A wedding is deadly serious.
First the dark mop of hair is rolled round little wooden curlers. Next the bushy eyebrows, which are so strong they have met in the middle, are plucked. This is the most important sign of her intended marriage, as unmarried women cannot pluck their eyebrows. Shakila screams, the beautician plucks. The brows are turned into beautiful arches and Shakila admires herself in the mirror. Somehow her face is lifted up.
‘If you had come earlier, I would have bleached the hairs on your upper lip,’ says the woman. She shows her something mysterious. On the peeling tube are the words: ‘Cream bleach for unwanted hair’. ‘But we won’t have time now.’
Then she rubs Perfact over Shakila’s face. She applies a heavy shimmering red and gold eye shadow on the eyelids. She outlines the eyes with a thick kohl pencil and selects a dark, brown-red lipstick.
‘Whatever I do I’ll never be as beautiful as you,’ Shakila says to her youngest sister-in-law Sonya, Sultan’s second wife. Sonya smiles and mumbles under her breath. She is pulling a pale-blue tulle dress over her head.
Once Shakila has been made up it is Sonya’s turn to be beautified. Shakila is being helped into her dress. Leila has lent her a tummy belt, a broad elasticated band that will give Shakila a waist. The dress is of a penetrating, shining, mint-green material, with synthetic lace, ruche and gold borders. The dress must be green - the colour of happiness and Islam.
When the dress has been fitted and her feet have been forced into sky-high, white, gold-buckled pumps, the hairdresser unrolls the curlers. The hair is now frizzy and is fixed on top of the head with a tight comb, whilst the fringe, aided by copious amounts of hair spray, is forced into a wave and fixed to one side of the face. Now it’s the turn of the mint-green veil, and the icing on the cake, right at the end, are little stickers strewn over the hair, sky-blue with golden borders. Shakila’s cheeks are given the same treatment, three little silver stars on each side. She is beginning to look like the Bollywood stars on the wall.
‘Oh no, the cloth, the piece of cloth,’ sister Leila suddenly cries. ‘Oh no.’
‘Oh no,’ exclaims Sonya and looks at Shakila, who does not bat an eyelid.
Leila gets up and rushes out. Luckily home is not far. What if she had forgotten about the piece of cloth, the most important item of all?
The others remain behind, unaffected by Leila’s panic. They all apply stickers to hair and cheek and then on with the burkas. Shakila tries to get into hers without ruining the bridal hairdo. She refrains from pulling it tight over her head, but lets it rest lightly on top of the frizz. That means that the grille is not in the right place, in front of the eyes, but rather on top of her head. Sonya and the cousin have to lead her, like a blind person, down the stairs. Shakila would rather fall over than be seen without a burka.
The burka is removed only when - the frizz slightly crushed - she is in Mariam’s backyard, where the wedding is being held. The guests fling themselves on her when she enters. Wakil is yet to arrive. The backyard is teeming with people in full swing, stuffing themselves with pilau, kebabs and meatballs. Hundreds of relatives have been invited. A chef and his son have been chopping, cutting and cooking since dawn. 150 kilos of rice have been bought in for the wedding meal, 56 kilos of mutton, 14 kilos of veal, 42 kilos of potatoes, 30 kilos of onions, 50 kilos of spinach, 35 kilos of carrots, 1 kilo of garlic, 8 kilos of raisins, 2 kilos of nuts, 32 kilos of oil, 14 kilos of sugar, 2 kilos of flour, 20 eggs, several varieties of spice, 2 kilos of green tea, 2 kilos of black tea, 14 kilos of sweets and 3 kilos of caramels.
After the meal some of the menfolk disappear into the house next door where Wakil is sitting. The last negotiations are about to take place. Detailed discussions about money and pledges for the future follow. Wakil is obliged to guarantee a certain sum should he divorce Shakila without reason, and he must promise to keep her in clothes, food and shelter. Big brother Sultan negotiates on Shakila’s behalf, and men from both families sign the contract.
When they have come to an agreement they leave the house next door. Shakila sits in Mariam’s house with her sisters, observing it all from behind curtains. While the men negotiate she changes into the white dress. The Russian lace curtain is drawn down over her face. She is waiting for Wakil to be led in to her so they can walk out together. He enters rather shyly; they greet each other, eyes on the floor, as demanded, and walk out, shoulder to shoulder, without looking at each other. When they stop they must each try to put one foot over the other’s. The winner is declared the boss in the marriage. Wakil wins, or Shakila lets him win, as she should. It looks bad to appropriate power which is not hers by right.
Two chairs have been put out in the yard. They must sit down at the same time. If the groom sits down first, the bride will dominate all decisions. Neither wants to sit down, and in the end Sultan walks up behind them and pushes them down on to the chairs, exactly at the same time. Applause all around.
Shakila’s older sister Feroza drapes a blanket over the newly married couple and holds up a mirror in front of them. They must both look into it. According to tradition, this moment is the first time their eyes meet. Wakil and Shakila stare hard into the mirror, as they should, and as though they have never seen each other before. Feroza holds the Koran over their heads and a mullah reads a blessing. With bowed heads they accept the word of God.
Then a dish containing a pudding made of cake crumbs, sugar and oil, seasoned with cardamom, is put in front of them. They feed each other with a spoon while everyone applauds. They also pour drink into each other, signifying that they desire a happy life for their spouse.
But not everyone is equally enthralled with the slurping of lemonade.
‘Once upon a time we toasted in champagne,’ an aunt whispers. She remembers more liberal times, when both wine and champagne were se
rved at weddings. ‘But those times will never return,’ she sighs. The era of nylon stockings, western dress, bare arms and - not least - the era before burkas, are faint memories.
‘A third-rate wedding,’ Sultan’s oldest son Mansur whispers back. ‘Bad food, cheap clothes, meatballs and rice, tunics and veils. When I get married I’m going to hire the ballroom at the Intercontinental. Everyone will have to wear modern clothes and we’ll serve only the best. Imported food,’ he emphasises. ‘Anyhow, I’m going to get married abroad,’ he adds.
Shakila and Wakil’s wedding feast takes place in Mariam’s mud house, in the backyard where nothing grows. The walls are peppered with bullet holes and the evidence of shell splinters. The couple pose for the photographers staring fixedly ahead. The lack of smiles and the bullet holes in the background give a tragic atmosphere to the picture.
They have arrived at the cake. They hold the knife and concentrate on cutting. They feed each other through half-open mouths, as though they shrink from opening them completely, and spill crumbs all over each other.
After the cake there is music and dancing. For many of the guests this is the first wedding they have celebrated since the Taliban left Kabul, in other words the first wedding with music and dancing. The Taliban deprived people of half the joy of wedding feasts when they took the music away. Everyone throws themselves into the dance, except the newlyweds, who sit and watch. It is late afternoon. Owing to the curfew, wedding feasts have been moved from evening to daytime; everyone must be home by ten.