Bulbula suddenly fell ill when she was six, and when she recovered she had difficulty moving around. Her brother says it was polio, the doctors do not know, and Bibi Gul thinks she suffers from sorrow. All she knows is that Bulbula became ill, pining for her father in prison. He was arrested and accused of stealing money from the warehouse where he worked. Bibi Gul proclaims his innocence. He was released after a few months but Bulbula never recovered. ‘She took on her father’s punishment,’ says her mother.
Bulbula never went to school. The illness went to her head so she was unable to think clearly, her parents maintained. Bulbula hovered around her mother throughout her childhood. She never did much owing to the mysterious illness. But consequently life dropped her. No one had anything to do with Bulbula; no one played with her or asked her to help.
Few people have anything to say to Bulbula. The thirty-year-old woman has a kind of lassitude hanging over her, as though she drags herself through life, or out of it. She has large empty eyes, and on the whole sits with her mouth half open, the lower lip hanging down, as if about to fall asleep. At best Bulbula pays attention to the conversations of others, other lives, but without much enthusiasm. Bibi Gul was content to have Bulbula slopping around the apartment and sleeping on the mat beside her for the rest of her life. But then something happened that made her change her mind.
One day Bibi Gul wanted to visit her sister in the village. She pulled on her burka, dragged Bulbula with her and hailed a taxi. Normally she would go on foot, but she had grown large the last couple of years, her knees were starting to give out and she did not have the energy to walk. Having experienced starvation in her youth and poverty and toil as a young wife, Bibi Gul developed an obsession with food – she was unable to stop eating until all the dishes were empty.
The taxi-driver who halted by the fat burka and her daughter was their distant relative Rasul. He had lost his wife a few years earlier; she died during confinement.
‘Have you found a new wife?’ Bibi Gul asked him in the taxi.
‘No,’ he said.
‘Sad. Inshallah – God willing – you will soon find a new one,’ said Bibi Gul, before relating the latest news from her own family, the sons, daughters and grandchildren.
Rasul took the hint. A few weeks later his sister came to ask for Bulbula’s hand. ‘Surely she can manage him as a husband, ’ thought Bibi Gul.
She agreed without hesitation, which is most unusual. To give away a daughter immediately means she is worthless, that one is pleased to get rid of her. Holding back and hesitating increases the girl’s value; the boy’s family must come several times, plead, persuade and bring gifts. Not many steps were taken for Bulbula, nor any gifts proffered.
While Bulbula stares into space, as though the conversation does not concern her, her sister Shakila listens attentively. The two are like chalk and cheese. Shakila is quick and loud and the family’s centre of attention. Her appetite for life is well developed and she is nice and plump, as behoves an Afghan woman.
Shakila has had several suitors over the last fifteen years; from the time she was a slender teenager, to the present voluptuous woman, sitting in the corner behind the stove, listening speechless to her mother and brother haggling.
Shakila has been choosy. When the suitors’ mothers approached Bibi Gul to bid for her, she never asked, as is usual, whether he was rich or not.
‘Would you allow her to continue her studies?’ was the first question.
The answer was always ‘No’, and so marriage never came up for discussion. Many of the suitors were themselves illiterate. Shakila completed her studies and became a maths and biology teacher. When yet more mothers came to bid for the dashing Shakila on behalf of their sons, Bibi Gul asked: ‘Would you allow her to continue to work?’
No, they would not and so Shakila remained a spinster.
Shakila got her first teaching job while the war against the Soviet Union raged. Every morning she tottered on high heels in knee-length skirts, as dictated by eighties fashion, to the village of Deh Khudaidad, outside Kabul. Neither bullets nor grenades came near. The only thing that exploded was Shakila: she fell in love.
Unfortunately Mahmoud was already married. It was an arranged and loveless marriage. He was a few years older than her and the father of three little children. It was love at first sight when the two colleagues met. No one knew of their feelings for each other, they hid away out of view or phoned and whispered sweet nothings down the receiver. They never met except at school. During one of their clandestine meetings they laid plans for a future together; Mahmoud would take Shakila as his second wife.
But Mahmoud could not simply go to Shakila’s parents and ask for her hand. He was dependent on his mother or sisters.
‘They’ll never do it,’ he said. ‘And my parents will never say yes,’ sighed Shakila.
Mahmoud was of the opinion that only she, Shakila, could get his mother to ask her parents for her. He suggested that she act crazily, desperate; threaten suicide if she could not have Mahmoud; throw herself down in front of her parents; say she was being consumed by love. The parents might give in. To save their lives.
But Shakila had not the courage to scream and shout, and Mahmoud had not the courage to ask the women in his family to go to Shakila’s house. He could never mention Shakila to his wife. In vain did Shakila try to approach her mother. But Bibi Gul thought it was a joke; she anyhow chose to interpret it as a joke every time Shakila said she wanted to marry a colleague with three children.
Mahmoud and Shakila walked around each other in the village school for four years. Then Mahmoud was promoted and changed school. He could not refuse the promotion and now the only contact between them was by phone. Shakila was deeply unhappy and longed for her beloved, but no one was supposed to notice. It is a disgrace to be in love with a man one cannot have.
Then civil war broke out, the school was closed and Shakila fled to Pakistan. After four years the Taliban arrived and although the rockets stopped and peace returned to Kabul, her old school never reopened. Girls’ schools stayed closed, and, like all women in Kabul, Shakila lost the chance overnight of finding another job. Two thirds of Kabul ’s teachers disappeared with her. Several boys’ schools were obliged to close too, as many of the teachers had been women. Not enough qualified male teachers could be found.
The years passed by. Her secret liaison with Mahmoud had already been severed when the telephone lines were cut during the civil war. Shakila sat at home with the women of the house. She could not work, she could not go out alone, she had to cover herself up. Life had lost all colour. When she reached thirty the suitors stopped coming.
One day, having been grounded by the Taliban for nearly five years, the sister of her distant relative Wakil came to Bibi Gul to ask for her hand.
‘The wife died suddenly. The children need a mother. He is kind. He has some money. He has never been a soldier, he has never acted unlawfully, he is honest and healthy,’ said the sister. ‘She suddenly went mad and died,’ she whispered. ‘She was delirious, didn’t know any of us. Awful for the children.’
This father of ten needs a wife urgently. At the moment the oldest looks after the youngest, while the house falls apart. Bibi Gul said she would think about it and inquired about the man from friends and relatives. She concluded that he was hardworking and honest.
At any rate, it is an urgent matter if Shakila is going to have children of her own.