The Bookseller of Kabul

Billowing, Fluttering, Winding

She loses sight of her all the time. The billowing burka merges with every other billowing burka. Sky-blue everywhere. She glances at the ground. In the mud she can distinguish the dirty shoes from other dirty shoes. She can see the trimming on the white trousers and catch a glimpse of the edge of the purple dress worn over them. She walks round the bazaar, looking down, following the fluttering burka. A heavily pregnant burka comes panting and puffing by. She is desperately trying to keep up with the energetic pace of the two leading burkas.

The lead burka has stopped near the bed-linen counter. She feels the material and tries to gauge the colour through the grille. She bargains through the grille, whilst dark eyes can only just be seen, dimly behind the lattice. The burka haggles, arms waving in the air. The nose pokes through the folds like a beak. At last she makes up her mind, gropes for her bag and reaches out a hand with some blue banknotes. The bed-linen seller measures up white bed-linen with pale blue flowers. The material disappears into the bag under the burka.

The smell of saffron, garlic, dried pepper and fresh pakora penetrates the stiff material and mingles with sweat, breath and the smell of strong soap. The nylon material is so dense that one can smell one’s own breathing.

They float on, to the cheap Russian-made aluminium teapots. Feel, bargain, haggle, and accept. The teapot too disappears under the burka, which is now overflowing with pots and pans, rugs and brushes and is growing ever larger. Behind the first come two less determined burkas. They stop and smell, feel plastic buckles and gold-coloured bracelets, before looking for the lead burka. She has stopped by a cart brimming with bras, all jumbled together. They are white, pale yellow or pink, of a dubious cut. Some hang on a pole and wave shamelessly in the wind. The burka fingers them and measures with her hand. Both hands emerge from the folds, they check the elastic, pull the cups, and with a visual estimate she settles on a powerful corset-like contraption.

They walk on, and weave around with their heads in all directions to see better. Burka-women are like horses with blinkers, they can only look in one direction. Where the eye narrows the grille stops and thick material takes its place; impossible to glance sideways. The whole head must turn; another trick by the burka-inventor: a man must know what his wife is looking at.

After a bit of head rotating the other two find the lead burka in the narrow alleyways of the bazaar’s interior. She is assessing lace edging. Thick, synthetic lace, like Soviet-style curtain borders. She spends a long time on the lace. This purchase is so important that she flips the front piece over her head in order to see better and defies her future husband’s command about not being seen. It is difficult to assess lace from behind a gauze grille. Only the stall vendor sees her face. Even in Kabul ’s cool mountain air it is covered in beads of sweat. Shakila rocks her head to and fro, smiles roguishly and laughs, she haggles, yes, she even flirts. Under the sky-blue one can detect her coquettish game. She has been doing it all along, and the vendor can decipher the moods of a waving, nodding, billowing burka with ease. She can flirt with her little finger, with a foot, with the movement of a hand. Shakila swathes her face in lace, which is suddenly transformed from curtain edging to lace for the veil, the remaining item for the wedding dress. Of course the white veil needs lace edging. The bargain is struck, the vendor measures, Shakila smiles and the lace disappears into the bag under the burka, which again drops to the ground, as it should. The sisters wriggle further into the bazaar, the alleyways get narrower and narrower.

There is a buzz of voices, a constant murmur. Very few vendors hawk their wares. Most of them are more occupied in gossiping with their neighbours, or lolling about on a sack of flour or a carpet mountain, keeping up with bazaar life, than bawling out their stock. Customers buy what they want, no matter what.

It is as though time has stood still in Kabul ’s bazaar. The goods are the same as when Darius of Persia roamed here around 500 BC. On large carpets under the open sky or in cramped stalls the magnificent and the necessary lie side by side, turned and fingered by discerning customers. Pistachio nuts, dried apricots and green raisins are kept in large hessian sacks; small hybrid fruit of lime and lemon lie on ramshackle carts, with skin so thin the peel is eaten too. One vendor has sacks of cackling and wriggling hens; the spice merchant has chilli, paprika, curry and ginger heaped up on his barrow. The spice merchant also acts as medicine man and recommends dried herbs, roots, fruit and tea, which, with the precision of a doctor, he explains will heal all illnesses, from the simple to the more mysterious.

Fresh coriander, garlic, leather and cardamom all mingle with the smell of the drains from the river, the stinking dried-up watercourse, which divides the bazaar in two. On the bridge over the river slippers of thick sheep’s hide are on sale, cotton in bulk, material in many patterns and in all the colours of the rainbow, knives, spades and pick-axes.

Now and again one happens upon goods not known in the time of Darius. Contraband like cigarettes with exotic names such as Pleasure, Wave or Pine, and pirate-produced Coke from Pakistan. The routes used by the smugglers have not changed much throughout the centuries: over the Khyber Pass from Pakistan or over the mountains from Iran; some goods on donkeys, some on lorries, along the same trails used for the smuggling of heroin, opium and hashish. Money used is up to date; the moneychangers, in tunics and turbans, stand in a long row clutching large bundles of blue Afghani notes, 35,000 Afghani for one dollar.

One man sells a brand of vacuum cleaners called ‘National’; his neighbour sells vacuum cleaners marked ‘Nautionl’ for the same price. But both the original and the copy are selling badly. Owing to Kabul ’s precarious supply of electricity most people resort to the broom.

The shoes walk on in the dust. All around are brown sandals, dirty shoes, black shoes, worn shoes, once a pair of nice shoes and pink plastic shoes with bows. Some are even white, a colour forbidden by the Taliban, as their flag was white. The Taliban forbade shoes with solid heels; the sound of women walking could distract men. But times have changed and if it were possible to click-clack in the mud the whole bazaar would resound with an arousing cacophony of click-clack. Now and again one catches a glimpse of painted toenails under the burka, yet another little sign of freedom. The Taliban forbade nail-varnish and introduced an import embargo. A few unlucky women had the tip of a finger or a toe cut off because they had committed an offence against the legal system. The liberation of women during the first spring following the fall of the Taliban has on the whole restricted itself to the shoe and nail-varnish level, and has not yet reached further than the muddy edge of women’s burkas.

Not that they haven’t tried. Since the fall of the Taliban several women’s associations have been formed. Some of them were even active during the Taliban reign, for instance organising schooling for girls, teaching women about hygiene and running literacy courses. The great heroine from the Taliban time is Karzai’s health minister, Souhaila Sedique, Afghanistan ’s only female general. She kept up the instruction of medicine for women and managed to reopen the women’s section at the hospital where she worked after the Taliban had closed it. She was one of very few women under the Taliban who refused to wear the burka. In her own words: ‘When the religious police came with their canes and raised their arms to hit me, I raised mine to hit them back. Then they lowered their arms and let me go.’

But even Souhaila seldom went out while the Taliban ruled. She was driven to the hospital every morning, wrapped up in a big shawl, and driven back every evening. ‘Afghan women have lost their confidence,’ she said bitterly after the Taliban fell.

A women’s organisation tried to organise a demonstration just one week after the Taliban fled. They gathered in Mikrorayon, in pumps and slippers, to march on the town. Most of them had tossed the burka recklessly over their shoulders, but the authorities stopped the demonstration, arguing that they could not guarantee the women’s safety. Each time they tried to gather they were stopped.

Now the girls’ schools have reopened and young women flock to the universities; some have even got their old jobs back. A weekly magazine is published, by and for women, and Hamid Karzai never lets an opportunity pass without talking about the rights of women.

Several women were prominent during the legislative assembly Loya Jirga in June 2002. The most outspoken were made fun of by the turbaned men in the assembly, but they never gave up. One of them demanded a female Minister of Defence, to great booing. ‘ France has that,’ she maintained.

But for the masses very little has changed. In the families, tradition is all – the men decide. Only a small number of Kabul women renounced the burka during the first spring after the fall of the Taliban, and very few of them know that their ancestors, Afghan women in the last century, were strangers to the burka. The burka had been used for centuries but not by large numbers of the population. It was reintroduced during the reign of Habibullah, from 1901 to 1919. He decreed that the two hundred women in his harem should wear them, so as not to entice other men with their pretty faces when they were outside the palace doors. Their veils were of silk with intricate embroidery and Habibullah’s princesses wore burkas embroidered with gold thread. The burka became a garment of the upper classes, shielding women from the eyes of the masses. During the fifties the use of the burka was widespread, but only amongst the rich.

The concealment of women had its opponents. In 1959 the prime minister, Prince Daoud, shocked the population when he and his wife appeared on the national day, she without a burka. He had persuaded his brother to make his wife do the same, and he asked ministers to throw away their wives’ burkas. Already the next day, in Kabul ’s streets, women were walking around in long coats, dark glasses and a little hat; women who had previously tramped around completely covered up. As the use of the burka had started amongst the upper classes, so they were the first to throw them off. The garment was now a status symbol amongst the poor, and many maids and servant girls took over the silk burkas of their employers. Initially it was only the ruling Pashtoon who covered their women, but now other ethnic groups took on the custom. But Prince Daoud wanted to rid the country of the burka completely. In 1961 a law was passed which forbade the use of the burka by civil servants. They were encouraged to dress in western clothes. It took many years for the law to be implemented but in the 1970s there was hardly a teacher or secretary in Kabul who did not wear a skirt and blouse; the men wore suits. However, the underdressed women risked being shot in the legs or having acid sprayed in their faces by fundamentalists. When the civil war broke out and Islamic law took over, more and more women covered up. When the Taliban arrived all female faces disappeared from Kabul ’s streets.

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.