The Bookseller of Kabul

A Broken Heart

For several days now Leila has been receiving letters. Letters that have caused her to freeze with fear, her heart to beat faster than normal and her mind to forget everything else. After having read them she tears them into little bits and throws them in the stove.

The letters cause her to dream. About another life. The scribbles give her thoughts a lift and her life some quivering excitement. Both are new to Leila. Suddenly there is a world inside her head she never knew existed.

‘I want to fly! I want to escape!’ she shouts one day while sweeping the floor. ‘Out!’ she cries and swings the broom around the room.

‘What did you say?’ Sonya asks and looks up from the floor where she is sitting gazing into space and moving her fingers over the pattern in the carpet.

‘Nothing,’ answers Leila. She cannot stand it any longer. The house is a prison. ‘Why is everything so difficult?’ she moans. She normally hates going out, but she feels she cannot stay inside. She goes to the market. Fifteen minutes later she returns with a bag of onions, and is received with suspicion.

‘Do you go out just to buy onions? Are you so keen to show yourself off that you go to the bazaar when we really don’t need anything?’ Sharifa is in a cutting mood. ‘Next time you should send one of the small boys.’

Shopping is really the work of men and old women. It is unseemly for young women to stop and bargain with shop-owners or men in the market. All shops and stalls belong to men and during the Taliban period the authorities banned women from going to market alone; now Sharifa, in her dark dissatisfaction, bans her too.

Leila doesn’t answer. As if she were interested in talking to an onion-vendor! She uses the lot, just to show Sharifa that the onions really were needed.

She’s in the kitchen when the boys return. She hears Aimal cluck behind her and shrinks. Her heart beats faster. She has asked him not to bring any more letters. But Aimal pushes a letter on her, and a hard package. She hides both under her dress and rushes to her casket and locks it all up. While the others eat she sneaks out and into the room where all her treasures are kept. With trembling hands she unlocks the casket and unfolds the piece of paper.

Dear L. You must answer me now. My heart burns for you. You are so beautiful, do you want to remove my sorrow or must I live in darkness for ever? My life is in your hands. Please, send me a token. I want to meet you; answer me. I want to share my life with you. With love from K.

The package contains a watch, a watch with blue glass and a silver-coloured strap. She puts it on but quickly takes it off again. She can never wear it. What could she say if the others asked her who gave it to her? She blushes. What if the brothers get to know about it, or her mother? Fear and loathing, what shame. Sultan and Yunus would both condemn her. By accepting the letters she commits an immoral act.

‘Do you feel the same as me?’ he had asked. She doesn’t really feel anything. She is desperate; a new reality has been forced on her. For the first time in her life someone is demanding an answer from her. He wants to know what she feels, what she thinks. But she feels nothing; she is not used to feeling anything. And she tells herself that she feels nothing because she knows she must feel nothing. Feelings are a disgrace, Leila has been taught.

Karim feels. Karim has seen her once. That was the time she and Sonya delivered lunch to the boys in the hotel. Karim had caught only a quick glimpse of her, but there was something about her which made him realise that she was the right one for him: the round, pale face, the beautiful skin, her eyes.

Karim lives alone in one room and works for a Japanese TV company. He is lonely. His mother was killed by shrapnel, which landed in their backyard during the civil war. His father quickly took a new wife, whom Karim could not get on with, and who did not like Karim. She didn’t care for the children from the first marriage and beat them when the father was not around. Karim never complained. His father had chosen her, not them. After he’d finished school he worked with his father in his pharmacy in Jalalabad but in the end he couldn’t bear living with his new family. His younger sister was married off to a man in Kabul, and Karim followed them, and lived with them. He studied odds and ends at the university and when the Taliban fled and hordes of journalists filled Kabul ’s hotels and guesthouses, Karim turned up and offered his English skills to the highest bidder. He was lucky and procured a job with a company who established an office in Kabul and gave Karim a long contract with a good salary. They paid for his room in the hotel. There Karim got to know Mansur and the rest of the Khan family. He liked the family, their bookshop, their knowledge, their level-headedness. A good family, he thought.

When Karim caught sight of Leila he was smitten. But Leila never returned to the hotel, in fact she had loathed being there that one time. Not a good place for a young woman, she thought.

Karim could not divulge his obsession to anyone. Mansur would only laugh and at worst ruin it all. Nothing was sacred to Mansur and he wasn’t particularly fond of his aunt.

Only Aimal knew and Aimal kept his mouth shut. Aimal was Karim’s go-between.

If he could get closer to Aimal, Karim thought, he might get to know the family through him. He was lucky; one day Mansur invited him home to dinner. It is normal to introduce friends to the family and Karim was one of Mansur’s most respected friends. Karim did his utmost to be well received: he was charming, a good listener, and showered the food with compliments. It was especially important that the grandmother liked him because she had the last say where Leila was concerned. But the one he came to see – Leila – never showed up. She was in the kitchen cooking. Sharifa or Bulbula carried the food in. A young man outside the family very rarely gets to see the unmarried women. When the food was eaten, the tea drunk and they were about to go to bed, he caught another glimpse of her. Owing to the curfew, dinner guests often stayed overnight, and Leila was making the dining room into a bedroom. She laid out the mattresses, took out rugs and cushions and made up an extra mattress for Karim. Her only thought was that the letter-writer was in the apartment.

He thought she was done and went in to pray before the others went to bed. She was there still, bent over the mattress, her long hair braided and covered by a simple shawl. He turned in the doorway, surprised and excited. Leila didn’t even notice him. All night Karim cherished the memory of her bent over the mattress. The next morning he didn’t see her, although she had prepared water for him to wash in, fried his egg and made his tea. She had even polished his shoes while he was sleeping.

The next day he dispatched his sister to the women of the Khan family. When someone finds new friends, it is not only he who is presented to the family, but his relatives also, and the sister is Karim’s closest relative. She knew about Karim’s fascination with Leila and now she wanted to get to know the family a bit better. When she returned home she told Karim what he already knew. ‘She is clever and a good worker. She is pretty and healthy. The family is quiet and decent. She is a good match.’

‘But what did she say? How was she? What did she look like?’ Karim listened to the answers time and again, even the rather tame answer describing Leila. ‘She is a decent girl, I’ve already told you,’ she said in the end.

As Karim no longer had a mother, the younger sister was obliged to take on the role of suitor for him. But it was still too early; first she would need to get to know the family better, as there was no kinship between them. Without kinship, they were bound to say no the first time.

After the sister had visited, everyone in the family started pulling Leila’s leg about Karim. Leila pretended not to notice when they teased her. She pretended not to care, although she burnt inside. They must not get to know about the letters. She was angry because Karim had put her in danger. She crushed the watch with a stone and threw it away.

First of all she was terrified that Yunus would find out. Of all the family, Yunus was the one who most lived up to the strictest Muslim way of life, although not even he followed it completely. He was also the one she loved most. She worried that he would think badly of her, if he got to know that she had received letters. When she was offered a part-time job on the strength of her knowledge of English, he forbade her to take it. He could not accept that she would work in an office alongside men.

Leila remembers the conversation they had had about Jamila. Sharifa had told her about the young girl’s death by suffocation.

‘What about her?’ Yunus exclaimed. ‘You mean the girl who died when an electric fan short-circuited?’

Yunus did not know that the bit about the electric fan was a lie, that Jamila was killed because a lover had visited her at night. Leila revealed the full story.

‘Awful, awful,’ he says. Leila nods.

‘How could she?’ he adds.

‘She?’ Leila exclaims. She had misunderstood the look on his face and thought it was shock, anger and sorrow over the fact that Jamila had been suffocated by her own brothers. But it was shock and anger that she could have taken a lover.

‘Her husband was rich and good-looking,’ he says, still shaking with indignation after the revelation. ‘What a disgrace,’ he says. ‘And with a Pakistani. This makes me more determined than ever to wed a young girl, young and untouched. And I’ll have to keep her on a short rein,’ he says firmly.

‘But what about the murder?’ Leila asks.

‘Her crime came first.’

Leila, too, wants to be young and untouched. She is terrified of being found out. She does not perceive the difference between being unfaithful to your husband and receiving letters from a boy. Both are forbidden, both are equally bad, both are a disgrace if found out. Now that she is beginning to see Karim as a saviour, as a way of escaping from the family, she is frightened that Yunus won’t support her if he should propose.

On her part, there was no talk of being in love. She had hardly seen him, only peeped at him from behind a curtain, and seen him from the window when he came with Mansur. What little she had seen was more or less passable.

‘He’s so young,’ she said to Sonya a bit later. ‘He’s small and thin and rather childish looking.’

But he was educated, he seemed kind and he was without a family. Therefore he was her saviour, because he might get her away from the life that was otherwise hers. The best of all was that he had no large family, so she would not risk becoming a servant girl. He would let her study, or take a job. It would be just the two of them; maybe they could go away, maybe abroad.

It was not that Leila had no suitors – she already had three. All were relatives, relatives she did not want. One was the son of an aunt, illiterate and jobless, lazy and useless.

The second suitor was Wakil’s son, a big lout of a son. He was unemployed; now and again he helped Wakil drive.

‘You are lucky, you’ll get a man with three fingers,’ Mansur used to tease her. Wakil’s son, the one who blew off two fingers when he was fiddling with an engine, was not someone Leila wanted. Big sister Shakila pushed for this marriage. She wanted to have Leila around her in the backyard. But Leila knew that she would continue to be a servant. She would always be under her big sister’s thumb and Wakil’s son would always have to fall in with what his father demanded.

That will mean twenty people’s washing, and not just thirteen like now, she thought. Shakila would be the respected lady of the house; Leila would remain the servant girl. Whatever happened she would never get away; once again she would be caught within the family, like Shakila; chickens, hens and children around her skirts all day long.

The third suitor was Khaled. Khaled was her cousin – a nice, quiet young man. A boy with whom she’d grown up and who, on the whole, she liked. He was kind and his eyes were warm and beautiful. But his family – he had an awful family. A large family of about thirty people. His father, a strict old man, had just been released from jail having been accused of co-operating with the Taliban. Their house, like most other houses in Kabul, had been plundered during the civil war, and when the Taliban arrived and imposed law and order, Khaled’s father laid a complaint about some Mujahedeen in his village. They were arrested and imprisoned for a long time. When the Taliban fled, these men regained power in the village and avenged themselves on Khaled’s father by sending him to jail. ‘That will teach him,’ said many. ‘He was stupid to complain.’

Khaled’s father was known for his unruly temperament. Moreover, he had two wives who were continually quarrelling and who could hardly be in the same room together. Now he was thinking of getting a third wife. ‘They are getting too old for me, I must have someone who can keep me young,’ the seventy-year-old had said. Leila could not bear the thought of joining this chaotic family; anyhow Khaled had no money so they would never be able to set up somewhere on their own.

But now destiny had generously bestowed Karim on her. His attentions give her the lift she needs and reason for hope. She refuses to give up and continues to look for opportunities to get to the Ministry of Education and register as a teacher. When it is clear that none of the men in the family is prepared to help, Sharifa takes pity on her. She promises to go with Leila to the Ministry. But time passes and they never go. They have no appointment. Leila loses heart, but then suddenly things look up, in an extraordinary way.

Karim’s sister had told him about the problems Leila was having registering as a teacher. After many weeks’ exertion, and because he knows the Minister of Education’s right-hand man, he arranges a meeting between Leila and the new Minister of Education, Rasul Amin. Leila’s mother allows her to go because she might now get the teaching job she has wanted for so long. Luckily Sultan is abroad, and even Yunus doesn’t put a spanner in the works. Everything is going her way. She lies all night thanking God and prays that all will go well, the meeting with Karim and the Minister.

Karim is to fetch her at nine. Leila tries on and rejects all her clothes. She tries Sonya’s clothes, Sharifa’s, her own. When the men of the family have left, the women make themselves comfortable on the floor while Leila walks in and out in new outfits.

‘Too tight!’

‘Too patterned!’

‘Too much glitter!’

‘Transparent!’

‘That one’s dirty!’

There is something wrong with everything. Leila has few clothes in the range between old, worn, fuzzy sweaters and blouses glittering with imitation gold. She possesses nothing that is normal. When very rarely she buys clothes it is usually for a wedding or engagement party and then she always chooses the glitziest she can find. She ends up with one of Sonya’s white blouses and a big, black skirt. It doesn’t actually matter that much, as she throws a long shawl over herself which covers her head and the upper part of her body to well below the hips. But she leaves her face uncovered. Leila has given up the burka. She had promised herself that when the King returned she would take off the veil; Afghanistan would then be a modern country. The April morning when ex-king Zahir Shah set foot on Afghan soil, after thirty years in exile, she hung up her burka for good and told herself she would never again use the stinking thing. Sonya and Sharifa followed suit. It was easy for Sharifa; she had lived most of her adult life with her face uncovered. It was worse for Sonya. She had lived under the burka all her life and she hung back. In the end it was Sultan who forbade her to use it. ‘I don’t want a prehistoric wife, you are the wife of a liberal man, not a fundamentalist.’

In many ways Sultan was a liberal. When he was in Iran he had bought Sonya western clothes. He often referred to the burka as an oppressive cage, and he was pleased that the new Government included female ministers. In his heart he wanted Afghanistan to be a modern country, and he talked warmly about the emancipation of women. But within the family he remained the authoritarian patriarch. When it came to ruling his family, Sultan had only one model: his own father.

When at last Karim arrives Leila is standing in front of the mirror, wrapped in her shawl, with a light in her eyes that has never been there before. Sharifa walks out in front of her. Leila is nervous and her head is bowed. Sharifa sits in front, Leila behind. She greets him quickly. It is going well, she is still anxious but some of the nervousness has gone. He seems completely harmless, looks kind and rather funny.

Karim talks to Sharifa about this and that: her sons, the job, the weather. She asks about his family, his work. Sharifa would also like to take up her old job as a teacher. In contrast to Leila her papers are in order and she only needs to re-register. Leila has a multi-coloured collection of papers, some from the school in Pakistan, some from English classes she has attended. She has no teacher training and did not even complete high school, but there are no other candidates – if Leila doesn’t go and teach, the school will have no English teacher.

Once at the Ministry they have to wait for several hours for their moment with the Minister. Around them are numerous women. They sit in the corners, along the walls, with burkas, without burkas. They queue up in front of the many counters. Forms are thrown at them and they throw them back, completed. Employees hit them when they don’t move fast enough. They scream at people behind the counters, and they are screamed at in turn from behind the counters. A sort of equal rights reigns: men bawl at men and women yell at women. Some men, obviously employed by the Ministry, run around with piles of papers. It looks as though they are running in circles. Everyone shouts.

An ancient, wizened woman roves around; she is clearly lost but no one helps her. Exhausted, she sits down in a corner and falls asleep. Another old woman is crying.

Karim uses the waiting period to his advantage. At one stage, when Sharifa disappears to enquire about something at a counter with a long queue, he even catches Leila alone.

‘What is your answer?’ he asks.

‘You know I cannot answer you,’ she says.

‘But what do you want?’

‘You know I cannot have a desire.’

‘But do you like me?’

‘You know I cannot answer that.’

‘Will you say yes when I propose?’

‘You know it is not me who answers.’

‘Will you meet me again?’

‘I can’t.’

‘Why can’t you be a bit nicer? Don’t you like me?’

‘My family will decide whether I like you or not.’

Leila is irritated that he dares ask about these things. Anyhow, it is Sultan or her mother who decides. But of course she likes him. She likes him because he is her saviour. But she has no feelings towards him. How can she answer Karim’s questions?

They wait for hours. At last they are called in. The Minister sits behind a curtain. He greets them briefly. He takes the papers Leila hands him and affixes his signature to them without even glancing at them. He signs seven pieces of paper, then they are hustled away.

That is how Afghan society functions. You must know someone to get on in life: a paralysing system. Nothing happens without the correct signatures and sanctions. Leila got to the Minister; someone else must make do with the signature of a less prominent person. But because the ministers spend large parts of the day signing the papers of people who have bribed their way in, their signatures become progressively less valuable.

Leila thinks that having procured the Minister’s signature, the road to the world of teaching will be child’s play. But she must visit a host of new offices, counters and booths. On the whole Sharifa talks while Leila sits and looks at the floor. Why should it be so difficult to register as a teacher when Afghanistan is crying out for teachers? In many places there are buildings and books, but no one to teach, the Minister said. When Leila reaches the office where new teachers are examined, her papers are all crumpled, they have been handled by so many.

It is an oral examination, to test her suitability as a teacher. In a room two men and two women sit behind a counter. When name, age and education have been recorded, questions are asked.

‘Do you know the Islam creed?’

‘There is no god but God and Muhammad is his prophet,’ Leila rattles off.

‘How many times a day must a Muslim pray?’

‘Five.’

‘Isn’t it six?’ the woman behind the counter asks. But Leila doesn’t allow herself to be knocked off her perch.

‘It might be for you, but for me it is five.’

‘And how many times do you pray?’

‘Five times a day,’ Leila lies.

Then there are mathematical questions, which she solves. Then a physics formula she has never heard of.

‘Aren’t you going to test my English?’

They shake their heads. ‘You can say whatever you want,’ they laugh sarcastically. None of them can speak English. Leila feels that they would rather neither she nor any of the other candidate teachers got a job. The exam is over and after long discussions between themselves they realise that one piece of paper is missing. ‘Come back when you’ve got that paper,’ they say.

Having spent eight hours in the Ministry they return home, despondent. Confronted with such bureaucrats not even the Minister’s signature was enough.

‘I give up. Maybe I don’t really want to be a teacher,’ says Leila.

‘I’ll help you,’ Karim smiles. ‘Now that I’ve started, I’m going to complete it,’ he promises. Leila’s heart softens a tiny bit.

The next day Karim goes to Jalalabad to confer with his family. He tells them about Leila, what sort of family she comes from and that he wants to propose to her. They agree, and now all that remains is to dispatch his sister. It drags on. Karim is frightened of being rejected, and he needs a lot of money for the wedding, for furniture, for a house. Besides, his relationship with Mansur starts to cool. Mansur has ignored him the last few days and greets him curtly with a toss of his head when they meet. One day Karim asks him if he has done something wrong.

‘I must tell you something about Leila,’ Mansur answers.

‘What?’ Karim asks.

‘No, I can’t say anything after all,’ says Mansur. ‘Sorry.’

‘What is it?’ Karim remains standing, open-mouthed. ‘Is she sick? Is there something wrong with her?’

‘I can’t say what it is, but if you knew you’d never want to marry her,’ Mansur says. ‘I have to go now.’

Every day Karim pesters Mansur about what is wrong with Leila. Mansur only draws away. Karim begs and implores, he’s angry, he’s sour, but Mansur never answers.

Aimal had told Mansur about the letters. In reality he would not have minded Karim marrying Leila, on the contrary, but Wakil too had got wind of Karim’s courtship. He asked Mansur to keep Karim away from Leila. Mansur had to do what his aunt’s husband asked. Wakil was family, Karim was not.

Wakil even threatened Karim. ‘I have chosen her for my son,’ he said. ‘Leila belongs to our family, and my wife wants her to marry my son. I want that too, and Sultan and her mother will approve. For your own sake, keep away.’

Karim could say little to the older Wakil. His only chance would be if Leila fought to get him. But was there something wrong with Leila? Was it true, what Mansur said?

Karim started to doubt the whole courtship.

In the meantime Wakil and Shakila visit Mikrorayon. Leila disappears into the kitchen to make food. After the couple have gone Bibi Gul says: ‘They have asked for you for Said.’

Leila remains standing, paralysed.

‘I said it was OK by me, but I would ask you,’ says Bibi Gul.

Leila has always done what her mother wanted. Now she says nothing. Wakil’s son. With him her life will be exactly as it is now, only with more work and for more people. In addition she will acquire a husband with three fingers, one who has never opened a book.

Bibi Gul dips a piece of bread in the grease on her plate and puts it in her mouth. She takes a bone from Shakila’s plate, and sucks up the marrow whilst regarding her daughter.

Leila feels how life, her youth, hope leave her – without being able to save herself. She feels her heart, heavy and lonely like a stone, condemned to be crushed for ever.

Leila turns, takes three paces to the door, closes it quietly behind her and goes out. Her crushed heart she leaves behind. Soon it blends with the dust, which blows in through the window, the dust that lives in the carpets. That evening she will sweep it up and throw it out into the backyard.