KABUL,
Afghanistan — Faheema stood trembling in the courtyard of the large
house, steeling herself for the meeting with her family.
She
took a deep breath and ran inside, her black abaya swirling around her,
and fell to the floor at her uncle’s feet, hugging his knees, her face
pressed against him, her shoulders heaving.
The
reproaches came immediately. “How could you do this?” her uncle said.
“You were always so sweet to everyone. How could you have done this?”
What Faheema, 21, had done was to run away from her home in eastern Afghanistan
with the man she loved. She left behind her large family and the man
that her family had promised her to. Although her uncle’s words at first
seemed kind, his tone had a dangerous edge: Faheema had to come home.
For
a young woman from an Afghan village to go home after running away with
a man is tantamount to crossing a busy street blindfolded: There is a
strong likelihood that she will be killed for bringing shame on her
family.
Faheema,
who like many Afghans uses a single name, was one of the lucky ones:
She had made it to an emergency women’s shelter, one of about 20 that
over the last 10 years have protected several thousand women across
Afghanistan from abuse or death at the hands of their relatives.
These
shelters, almost entirely funded by Western donors, are one of the most
successful — and provocative — legacies of the Western presence in
Afghanistan, demonstrating that women need protection from their
families and can make their own choices. And allowing women to decide
for themselves raises the prospect that men might not control the order
of things, as they have for centuries. This is a revolutionary idea in
Afghanistan — every bit as alien as Western democracy and far more
transgressive.
As
the shelters have grown, so has the opposition of powerful conservative
men who see them as Western assaults on Afghan culture. “Here, if
someone tries to leave the family, she is breaking the order of the
family and it’s against the Islamic laws and it’s considered a
disgrace,” said Habibullah Hasham, the imam of the Nabi mosque in
western Kabul and a member of a group of influential senior clerics.
“What she has done is rebelling.”
The
opposition comes not only from conservative imams, but also from within
the Afghan government itself. Lawmakers came very close in 2011 to
barring the shelters altogether and in 2013 nearly gutted a law barring
violence against women. They yielded only after last-minute pressure
from the European Union and the United States.
Now,
as the Western presence in Afghanistan dwindles, this clash between
Western and Afghan ideas of the place of women means many of the gains
women made after the 2001 invasion are at risk.
Although
the Taliban’s harsh restrictions on women alienated many Afghans and
helped rally foreign support for the war, the idea that women must
submit to men remains widely held.
“A
lot has changed since 2001, but most people still have conservative,
traditional views of women,” said Manizha Naderi, who runs Women for
Afghan Women, which operates shelters or other programs in 13 provinces.
That
makes the fragile network of safe houses and the women who staff them
even more vulnerable to restrictive legislation and attacks by local
strongmen. The shelters, like so much of the Western project to coax
change in Afghanistan, are emblems of a society in transition.
While
the shelters have brought freedom to many women, others are stranded,
safe for a time from their families but unable to leave because neither
their families nor society accepts them.
Ms.
Naderi estimates that about 15 percent of the women in her shelters
cannot leave — ever. For these abused women, the longer they live
suspended between two worlds, the less the shelter comes to feel like a
haven and the more like a jail.
A Frightening Example
Above all, Faheema wanted to avoid the fate of Amina,
an 18-year-old who ran away from her family in rural Baghlan Province
in the summer of 2013 and whose case became widely known. She fled when
her family told her she would be marrying an older man.
Amina
made it to the provincial capital and was picked up by the Afghan
Intelligence Service. Unlike many runaways, who are seen as fallen women
and are prey to being molested by the police, she was not abused.
Instead, she was brought to the women’s ministry office, which exists in
every provincial capital in Afghanistan.
The
women’s ministry sent her to the only shelter in the province. But
after one or two nights, her family arrived. They promised not to harm
Amina if she returned home with them, repeating that pledge on a
videotape after meeting with the head of the provincial women’s ministry
office, Khadija Yaqeen. The girl then climbed into a taxi with her
family.
Amina
never made it home. Nine men accosted the vehicle on a deserted stretch
of road not far from her home, pulled her out and shot her, according
to her family. No one else was harmed, they later told the ministry.
Women’s
advocates and the police doubted the story. Why would armed men take
just one young girl out of a car and shoot her? Why wouldn’t the family
call for revenge?
The
answer pointed to something far more sinister than a random holdup. In
much of Afghanistan, a runaway is a tainted woman, who cannot be married
off.
“This
is the perception: Once she leaves the family, she’s in the hands of
others, and they can do whatever they want with her — sexually abuse her
— because she has left the family circle,” said Mr. Hasham, the imam in
Kabul. By tribal custom, which is particularly strong in rural areas,
an honor killing is the only way to eradicate the shame.
The
Baghlan provincial police chief, Amer Khail, believes Amina’s brother
was involved in her killing, but said there were conflicting reports.
The
women’s ministry office did not press for arrests. Amina’s short life
and death drifted into sketchier and sketchier memory, with everyone
involved claiming they had done the right thing.
Ms. Yaqeen of the women’s ministry said she had to let Amina go because she asked to leave with her family.
“Nobody had beaten her,” she said, “so I had no excuse to keep her.”
Ms.
Yaqeen admits she was called by a member of the provincial council. She
said the council member did no more than urge her to talk to the
family, who had come to the provincial capital to get their daughter
back. Provincial council members tend to be deferential to the desires
of powerful local families, who would be eager to cleanse the family
honor.
But Ms. Yaqeen said Amina made the choice herself.
It
seems likely that a young girl, frightened and among strangers and
faced by her angry family, would try to appease them because she could
hardly believe that her family would be willing to kill her.
Women’s
advocates in Baghlan have little question that this was an honor
killing. “She should have been kept in the shelter for much longer,”
said Homaira Mohammedi, the acting head of the Baghlan shelter at the
time, who says that she was away the weekend that Amina came in.
“We did everything according to the rules and regulations,” Ms. Yaqeen insisted. “This is a problem of the society.”
A Family Confrontation
Faheema was sure that her family would not spare her if she left the shelter and went home.
“I
had a problem with my father,” she said. “He engaged me to my uncle’s
son, and I wasn’t happy to marry him, so I married another man.”
Her father told her he had bought a gun. “‘Wherever I see you both, I will kill you,’” he said before she ran away.
The
desperation of her family to have her come home suggested that her view
was correct. They were willing to agree to almost anything to pry her
away from the safety of the shelter. A younger girl, or a weaker one,
might have given in. But one of the most striking characteristics of
many of the women who make it to a shelter is that, like Faheema, they
have a sad but cleareyed understanding that they are in danger from
their own families. This is often the first step toward being able to
save themselves.
Unlike
the Baghlan women’s ministry, where Amina had just one meeting with her
family before she was given back to them, Women for Afghan Women
requires repeated sessions between the young woman, her family and a
mediator before she can go home. . The average number of meetings is
about eight, said Nuria Kohistan, who mediated Faheema’s case. If the
staff is not satisfied that the young woman will be safe, they will keep
her as long as necessary.
Faheema’s
third session with her family was a few days after the first and
involved her mother, a younger sister, a younger brother and the brother
of her spurned fiancé, who had been at the previous meeting.
The
45-minute session was filled with tears and screaming and bordered on
physical violence — several times Faheema’s mother grabbed her
daughter’s arm and held it in an iron grip as if to drag her from the
mediation room, through the door and out the gate. A tall, thin woman
with a frightening strength, she seemed to hold Faheema in her sway far
more than the men in the family.
As if to protect herself, Faheema entered the room with a veil covering her whole face.
First her mother said to the mediator: “My daughter wants to go with us. Her father is now in the hospital.”
She
turned to Faheema and said, “We will get you divorced from that guy,”
referring to the man Faheema ran away with. Her fiancé’s brother and her
mother said they would support her marrying someone else.
Ms.
Kohistani, the mediator, said in an aside, “They’re saying these
things, but as soon as they get custody of her, they will kill her.”
Heaping
on the guilt and reminding Faheema of her shame, her mother said, “We
have two houses in Ghazni, but we will sell them, because we can’t live
in Ghazni anymore.”
The mediator pleaded: “Please talk about this in a way that this problem could be solved.”
Faheema
put her head in her hands. Her 3-year-old brother knelt on the floor
with his head under his mother’s long skirt as if he were trying to
block out the sound of the warring grown-ups.
As
it became clear that the shelter was not going to turn Faheema over to
her family, her mother tried offering the mediator a bribe. “Please help
us, and we will give you a gift,” she said, her voice pleading, tears
in her eyes. Then she turned, almost spitting, to Faheema.
“You
know your father, you know the character of your father,” she said.
Gripping Faheema, she dragged her up from the chair. “He will kill me.
You can come to my grave tomorrow.”
Finally, Faheema summoned her courage. “Why don’t you understand?” she said. “I already got married.”
And
then she appeared to resign herself to the future. “This thing I did, I
did. I cannot go with you, even if I lose everyone in my family,” she
said and added, half speaking to them and half to the mediator, “I
cannot go back home, because they will kill me.”
She
pried her arm away from her mother’s grip and ran into the main
building’s basement rooms. There, her mother could not reach her — she
was kept out, and Faheema locked in, by a heavy metal gate. Her
shoulders heaving, Faheema sank to her knees and wept hopelessly.
Never Going Home
The
women in the long-term shelter try to cheat sleep by huddling together
in the dark, their voices a way to ward off nightmares. The torments
they endured at the hands of their families are written on their bodies.
Knife scars traverse their faces and necks. Beatings with chains mark
their backs. Some limp from broken bones that were never properly set.
Several have faces eroded by acid, a favorite weapon here.
Daily
life is an endless effort to escape the haunted precincts of memory;
images of pummeling hands, the thumping sound of wood hitting their
legs, of their bodies falling to the floor, the taste of blood in their
mouths.
There
are 26 women in the long-term shelter run by Women for Afghan Women in
Kabul. If Faheema’s family continued its threats, this shelter would
become her home.
That
these women are still standing, and that some are trying to piece
together complete lives, is a cause for wonder and a testament to their
strength. In the safety of the halfway house, the women offer a glimpse
into the worlds they have fled: muddy courtyards strung with laundry;
screaming children and squawking chickens; cramped rooms for women and
often not enough food. Women in Afghanistan are the last to eat, the
last to bed and the first to rise.
Gul
Meena, 16, survived a brutal attack by her brother after she fled an
older husband, who had beaten her, and ran away with another man. She
had been just 8 or 9 in her home in Kunar Province on the Pakistan
border when a man in the next village offered money to her unemployed
father for her.
In
her innocence, she was thrilled to be given a white dress and makeup
for the wedding ceremony. “I was thinking, this is the future, my
husband would be buying me new clothes every day,” she said. In the car
on the bumpy ride to her new home she remembers addressing her new
husband as “uncle.”
“Uncle, please take care of me. I’m afraid I will fall,” she said as she bounced on his knee in the car.
From
the moment she arrived in his house, she was a servant. The only grace
was that he was not allowed to have sex with her before she had her
first period. Two years after they wed, the moment came and he forced
himself on her. “I was like a thing and they sold me,” she said. “He was
beating me with everything near to him. With his glasses, with his
mobile phone, with wood, with stones, and with his hands.”
Lonely
and bewildered, she tried at least twice to return to her father’s
house, but the family sent her back to her husband and finally she went
to a neighbor’s home. The husband of the family ran away with her to
Nangarhar Province in eastern Afghanistan.
When
her brother caught up with them, he slit the man’s throat and slashed
Gul Meena 15 times with an ax, nearly blinding her and leaving her for
dead. When she woke up in the hospital, she looked in the mirror. “I was
very damaged,” she said. “Before, I was beautiful and young.”
Although
she does not see herself that way, she is still a stunning young woman.
She has never gone to school but speaks with a simple eloquence. Now
she fears that she is ugly and no one will marry her. “Men are always
interested in the beauty of a woman,” she said. “They are never
interested in the heart.”
In
the long-term shelter, most women feel a deep relief. No one is beaten.
There is enough food. Chores are shared and, above all, there are
choices: Some girls decide to go to school and try to make up for the
years they were kept as virtual slaves. Others go to classes at beauty
school in the hope of learning a skill that they will be able to use.
One has a job as a house cleaner, and another is a skilled tailor and
makes clothes while caring for her 6-year-old daughter.
“We
try to find a solution,” Ms. Naderi said, but she admitted there were
few options in Afghanistan. It is exceedingly rare for a woman to live
alone here, and so the staff tries to help women recreate families when
their own have shunned them. “Sometimes we can find husbands,” she said.
“We’ve married maybe 10 or 11, but it’s difficult.”
While
traditional attitudes remain deeply ingrained, women’s advocates do see
changes. “Now women are finding a voice,” said Soraya Sobrang, a member
of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission. “And also they want
to have some rights and have some decision-making. If you want to marry
my daughter, you have to ask me as well. The men think the women want to
deprive them of rights. This touches their pride. And this creates
violence in the family.”
The
battle between tradition and a fragile new sense of women’s rights
continues. A government committee investigated the shelters after a
television program accused them of forcing battered women into
prostitution. The committee found that most of the shelters were well
run.
The
committee members recognized that most of the women were at risk of
beatings or death if the shelters were closed or their capacities
diminished, but no one wanted to defend the shelters publicly. The
outcome relieved the women who ran the shelters and Western aid
organizations: The government would not close the safe houses but, at
the same time, there was little public support for spending money from
the Afghan budget on them.
However,
Ms. Sobrang said: “The international community has promised to continue
support.” Such funding is essential if the shelters are to survive. Ms.
Naderi relies on generous funding from the United States government,
which accounts for close to 90 percent of her budget. The balance is
raised from private, mostly foreign donors.
The
women inside the halfway house understand the risks they would face if
they had to leave. “I cannot go anywhere alone,” said Mariam, 22 who
escaped an abusive Taliban husband and fled to the shelter. “Everybody
likes to have their freedom, but I cannot have mine.”
Inescapable Fear
In
the end, Faheema was able to leave the shelter, with the help of a
lawyer provided by Women for Afghan Women. After four or five months, a
court recognized her marriage to her husband, Ajmal, and the attorney
general ordered her to live with him in Kabul.
But it is not exactly a happy ending.
Although
they are in love,, they live in terror of being cornered by a member of
Faheema’s family and being beaten or killed. They live in poverty
because Ajmal had to shutter his shop in their hometown, Ghazni, and
cannot go there for fear of being killed. He has no money to start a new
business.
A
thin young man who wears Western clothes and, in keeping with more
modern Afghan ways, does not have a beard, Ajmal comes across as serious
and anxious.
“We
live in fear and in hiding,” he said. Three times a day, when he goes
out to buy a long loaf of Afghan bread, he finds himself looking around
nervously to see if any of Faheema’s family is lying in wait for him.
He
worries all the time about his widowed mother and two sisters, who
still live in Ghazni. When he had his small cosmetics shop there, he
contributed to supporting the family. But now, only his widowed mother’s
meager income as a tailor helps feed the family.
None
of this has weakened the couple’s resolve to be together, but it weighs
on them because in Afghanistan, to not be able to go home is to be an
outcast, almost an orphan.
Faheema
tried to make peace between their two families and braved a phone call
with her angry father to beg him to meet with elders from Ajmal’s clan.
But her father refused to see them and said the only thing that would
satisfy him is if they gave him a daughter to marry off to his son or
nephew in exchange for Ajmal’s taking Faheema.
Despite
the hardship, Faheema hopes her sisters and cousins will have the
courage to demand that their families ask permission before making plans
to marry them off. She wishes that her father had respected her enough
to ask her. “My message to my father is that he should ask his children
first before making any decision for their lives,” she said, wistfully.
In
the cold Kabul winter, as they prepared to return to their small, damp
apartment, which is all they can afford, Faheema said she had one more
wish.
“Take us out of Afghanistan,” she said, “because we won’t be able to have a quiet life here.”
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