Young women are above all objects to be bartered or sold. Marriage is a contract between families or within families. Decisions are made according to the advantages the marriage brings to the tribe – feelings are rarely taken into consideration. Throughout the centuries Afghan women have had to put up with injustices committed in their name. But in song and poem women have testified about their lives. The songs are not meant for publication, but the echo lingers on in the mountains and the desert.
‘They protest with suicide and song’, writes the Afghan poet Sayd Bahodine Majrouh in a book of poems by Pashtoon women.* He collected the poems with the aid of his sister-in-law. Majrouh was himself murdered by fundamentalists in Peshawar in 1988.
The poems or rhymes live on in popular sayings and are swapped by the well, on the way to the fields, by the baking oven. They talk of forbidden love, and without exception the beloved is someone other than the one the woman is married to; they talk of loathing the (often much older) husband. But they also express pride and courage. The poems are called landay, which means ‘short’. They are of few lines, short and rhythmical, ‘like a scream or a knife stab’, writes Majrouh.
Cruel people, you can see the old man
On his way to my bed
And you ask me why I cry and tear my hair.
Oh, my God, yet again you have bestowed on me a dark night
And yet again I tremble from head to foot
I have to step into the bed I hate.
But the women in the poems are also rebellious; they risk their lives for love – in a society where passion is prohibited and punishment merciless.
Le suicide et le chant. Poésie populaire des femmes pashtounes, by Sayd Bahodine Majrouh, Gallimard 1994.
Give me your hand, my loved one, and we will hide in the
meadow
To love or fall down beneath the knife stabs.
I jump in the river, but the current does not carry me away.
My husband is fortunate; I am always thrown back on to the
bank.
Tomorrow morning I will be killed because of you.
Do not say that you did not love me.
Nearly all the ‘screams’ deal with disappointments and life unlived. One woman asks God to make her a stone in the next life, rather than a woman. None of the poems are about hope – on the contrary, hopelessness reigns. The women have not lived enough, never tasted the fruits of their beauty, their youth, or the pleasures of love.
I was beautiful like a rose.
Beneath you I have turned yellow like an orange.
I never knew suffering.
Therefore I grew straight, like a fir-tree.
The poems are also full of sweetness. The woman glorifies her body with brutal sincerity, sensuous love and forbidden fruit – as though she wants to shock, provoke men’s virility.
Lay thy mouth over mine,
But let my tongue be free so it can talk of love.
Take me first in your arms!
Afterwards you can bind yourself to my velvet thighs.
My mouth is yours, eat it up, do not be frightened!
It is not made of sugar, dissolvable.
My mouth, you can have it.
But why stir me up – I am already wet.
I will turn you into ash
If I only for one moment turn my gaze towards you.
The Business Trip
It is still cool. The sun’s first rays have touched the steep, stony mountain cliffs. The landscape is dust-coloured, brown turning to grey. The mountainsides are all stone; boulders threaten to trigger crushing avalanches, and gravel and bits of clay crunch below the horses’ hooves. Thistles growing between the stones scratch the legs of smugglers, refugees and fleeing warriors. A confusion of paths cross and disappear behind rocks and mounds.
This is the route used by smugglers of weapons and opium, cigarettes and Coca-Cola cans between Afghanistan and Pakistan. The paths have been trodden throughout the centuries. These are the paths the Taliban and the Arab al-Qaida warriors crept along when they realised the battle for Afghanistan was lost and they fled into the tribal areas of Pakistan. These are the paths they will use when they return to defeat American soldiers – the infidel who has occupied holy, Muslim soil. Neither Afghan nor Pakistani authorities control the area around the border. Pashtoon tribes command their particular districts on each side of the state boundaries. The lawlessness, preposterously, has found its way into Pakistani law. On the Pakistani side the authorities have the right to operate on tarmacked roads, and up to 20 metres beyond on both sides. Outside the 20 metres tribal law reigns.
On this morning the bookseller Sultan Khan makes his way past the Pakistani border guards. Less than 100 metres away are the Pakistani police. As long as humans, horses and laden donkeys keep their distance, there is nothing they can do.
But if the authorities cannot control the stream, nevertheless, many of the travellers are stopped and ‘taxed’ by armed men, sometimes just ordinary villagers. Sultan has made his provisions; Sonya has sewn the money into the sleeves of his shirt and he carries his possessions in a dirty sugar bag. He is wearing his oldest shalwar kameez.
As for most Afghans, the border to Pakistan is closed to Sultan. It matters not that he has family, a house and business in the country, nor that his daughter goes to school there – he is not welcome. Following pressure from the international community, Pakistan has closed its borders to prevent terrorists and the Taliban from hiding away in the country. A fruitless gesture. After all terrorists and soldiers do not turn up at the borders passport in hand. They use the same paths as Sultan when he travels on business. Many thousands enter Pakistan daily in this way.
The horses struggle up the steep slope. Sultan, broad and solid, sits astride the saddleless horse. Even in his oldest clothes he looks well dressed. As always his beard is newly trimmed, his small fez fits perfectly on his head. He looks like a distinguished gentleman who has taken a trip to the mountains to admire the view – even when, terrified, he grabs the reins tightly. He feels shaky. One false step and they’ll be at the bottom of the abyss. But the horse trundles calmly up the well-trodden paths, effortlessly, unaffected by the man it is carrying. The valuable sugar bag is tightly wound round Sultan’s hand. It contains books he wants to print for his shop and the draft of what he hopes will become his life’s work.
He is surrounded by Afghans on foot, all wanting to cross to the forbidden country. Women wearing burkas ride sidesaddle en route to visit relatives. Amongst them are students returning to the university in Peshawar having celebrated eid, a religious festival, with their families. There might be some smugglers in the company, maybe some businessmen. Sultan does not ask. He is concentrating on his contract and the reins, and curses the Pakistani authorities. First one day by car from Kabul to the border, then an overnight stay in a hideous border station, followed by a whole day in the saddle, on foot and in a pick-up. The journey by main road from the border to Peshawar is barely an hour. Sultan finds it degrading being smuggled in to Pakistan; he feels he is being treated like a pariah dog. Pakistan supported the Taliban regime politically, with money and weapons, and he thinks they are now being two-faced, suddenly sucking up to the Americans and closing the border to Afghans.