The Bookseller of Kabul

The Matriarch

A wedding is like a small death. The bride’s family mourns in the days following the wedding, as though it were a funeral. A daughter is lost, sold or given away. The mothers especially grieve. They have had complete control over their daughters, where they go, who they meet, what they wear, what they eat. They have spent most of the day together, got up together, swept the house together, and cooked together. After the wedding the daughter disappears, completely; she goes from one family to the other. She cannot visit when she wants, only when her husband allows her. Her family cannot drop in on her without an invitation.

In an apartment in block no. 37 in Mikrorayon a mother laments her daughter, who now lives an hour’s walk away. But it makes no difference whether Shakila is in the village Deh Khudaidad immediately outside Kabul, or in a foreign country thousands of miles away across the sea. As long as she is not on the mat by her mother’s side, drinking tea and eating sugared almonds, the loss is just as hard to bear.

Bibi Gul cracks another almond; she had hidden it under the mattress so her youngest daughter Leila would not find it. Leila makes sure that her mother does not eat herself to death. Like a nurse at a health-spa, she has forbidden sugar and fat and snatches the food out of Bibi Gul’s hand if she helps herself to something banned. When she can afford the time she cooks special fat-free food for her mother. But Bibi Gul pours fat from the family’s plates over her food when Leila is not watching. She loves the taste of cooking-oil, warm mutton fat and deep-fried pakora, or sucking marrow from bones at the end of a meal. Food is her comfort. If she feels peckish after supper she often gets up at night to lick pots and scrape pans. Bibi Gul never loses weight, in spite of Leila’s efforts; on the contrary, her girth increases every year. And anyhow, she has her little stashes everywhere, in old chests, under carpets, behind a crate. Or in her bag. That’s where she carries cream toffees: discoloured, mealy, grainy cream toffees from Pakistan, cloyingly sweet and sometimes even rancid. But they are cream toffees, there is a picture of cows on the wrapper and no one can hear her sucking them.

The almonds, on the other hand, she must crack in silence. Bibi Gul feels sorry for herself. She is alone in the room. She sits on the mat and rocks backwards and forwards, while hiding the almonds in her hand. She stares into space. The sound of pots and pans banging in the kitchen reaches her. Soon all the daughters will have left. Shakila has gone, Bulbula is on her way out. When Leila goes she won’t know what to do. No one will be left to look after her.

‘No one is going to get Leila before I die,’ she says about her nineteen-year-old. Many have asked for her but Bibi Gul’s answer has always been no. No one else will look after her the way Leila does.

Bibi Gul doesn’t do a stroke of work any more. She sits in the corner, drinks tea and broods. Her working life is over. When a woman has grown-up daughters, she becomes a sort of warden who bestows advice, guards the family’s morals – in practice, the morals of the daughters. She makes sure they do not go out alone, that they cover up appropriately, that they do not meet men outside the family, that they are obedient and polite. Politeness is, according to Bibi Gul, the greatest virtue. After Sultan, she is second in command.

Her thoughts drift to Shakila who now lives behind tall mud walls; unfamiliar walls. She pictures her heaving heavy buckets full of water from the well in the backyard, surrounded by chickens and ten motherless children. Bibi Gul worries that she might have made a mistake. What if he is unkind? Anyhow, the flat is so empty without Shakila.

In truth, the little flat is only a tiny bit emptier without the daughter. Instead of twelve, eleven people now live in the four rooms. Sultan, Sonya and their year-old daughter sleep in one room. Sultan’s brother Yunus and the oldest son Mansur sleep in a second. In the third room, the remainder: Bibi Gul, her two unmarried daughters Bulbula and Leila, Sultan’s two younger sons Eqbal and Aimal, and Mariam’s son Fazil – their cousin and Bibi Gul’s grandson.

The fourth room is a storage room for books and postcards, rice and bread, winter clothes in the summer and summer clothes in the winter. The family’s clothes are stored in big boxes, as none of the rooms has cupboards. Every day a lot of time is taken up searching. Standing or sitting amongst the boxes the women of the family examine garments, shoes, a lopsided bag, a broken container, a ribbon, a pair of scissors or a tablecloth. The items are either deemed worthy of wearing, or are just studied and put back into the box again. Only rarely is anything thrown away, and the number of boxes grows. Every day a little reshuffling takes place in the storage room; everything has to be moved if someone is looking for something at the bottom of a box.

In addition to the huge boxes containing family clothes and rubbish, every member of the family has a small chest with a lock. The women wear the key fastened to their dress. The chest is the only private item they possess and every day one can see them sitting on the floor bent over it. They take up a piece of jewellery, look at it, maybe try it on, put it back, apply some cream they forgot they had, or sniff some perfume someone gave them once. Maybe they pore over a photograph of a cousin and get lost in a dream, or, like Bibi Gul, take out some cream toffees or a biscuit squirrelled away.

Sultan has a glass-fronted bookcase through which the covers can be read and which he can lock. The bookcase contains collections of poetry by Hafez and Rumi, and hundred-year-old travelogues and frayed old atlases. In secret places between the pages he also hides his money. Afghanistan ’s banking system cannot be trusted. In this book-cupboard Sultan has his most precious works, books that have been dedicated, books that he wants to read sometime in the future. But for now he is in his bookshop all day and has no time. He leaves home before eight and returns at eight in the evening. There is only time left to play with baby Latifa, eat supper and lay down the law should anything have happened in the family while he was away. Usually it has not; life for the housebound women is quiet and it is beneath Sultan’s dignity to resolve their squabbles.

In the bottom of the cupboard Sonya keeps her personal things. Some pretty shawls, some money, toys that the mother, from her simple background, thinks are too good for Latifa to play with. The Barbie doll copy, which Latifa was given on her first birthday, still sits on top of the cupboard, wrapped in wrinkled cellophane.

The bookcase is the only furniture in the house; there is neither TV nor radio. The only ornaments are threadbare mats along the walls and large, uncomfortable cushions. The mats are used for sleeping on at night, sitting on in the daytime. The cushions are pillows at night and prop up backs during the day. For meals a waxed cloth is put out on the floor. Everyone sits around, cross-legged, and eats with their fingers. When the meal is over the cloth is washed and rolled up.

The floors are cold stone covered with large rugs. The walls are cracked. The doors are lopsided and some cannot be closed and have to remain open. Some of the rooms are separated by just a bed-sheet. The holes in the windows are stopped with old towels.

In the kitchen there is a sink, a gas primus and a hot plate on the floor. On the windowsills lie vegetables and bits and pieces from the previous day. The shelves have curtains to protect the crockery from dirt and smoke from the primus. But however hard they try to keep it clean, there is always a layer of grease, to which a sprinkling of Kabul ’s perpetual dust clings, over benches, shelves and sills.

The bathroom is a cubicle in the kitchen, divided off by a wall with an open hatch; it is not much more than a hole in the concrete floor and a tap. In one corner is a wood-burning stove where water can be boiled for washing up. There is also a large water-tank, which can be filled when there is water in the pipes. Over the tank is a small shelf with a shampoo bottle, a bar of soap, which is always black, some toothbrushes and a Chinese toothpaste tube containing a grainy substance with an unidentifiable chemical taste.

‘This was once a nice flat,’ Sultan reminisces. ‘We had water, electricity, paintings on the walls, everything.’

But during the civil war the flat was pillaged and burnt. When the family returned the flat had virtually been demolished and they had to make do as well as they could. The oldest part of Mikrorayon, where the Khan family lived, lay on the front line between the forces of Mujahedeen hero Massoud and those of the hated Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. Massoud was in control of large parts of Kabul, while Hekmatyar’s power was concentrated on a height outside Kabul. They shot at each other with rockets, many of which landed on Mikrorayon. On yet another height the Uzbek Abdul Rashid Dostum had established himself, on a third the fundamentalist Abdul Rasul Sayyaf. Their rockets landed on other parts of the town. The fronts moved from street to street. The warlords fought for four years until at last the Taliban rolled into Kabul and the warlords fled to make way for the priestlings.

The battles ceased six years ago but Mikrorayon still resembles a battlefield. The building is peppered with bullets and shell holes. Many windows are covered in plastic rather than glass. There are cracks in the ceilings and the top flats are burnt out; gaping wounds where rockets once exploded. Some of the fiercest battles of the civil war took place in Mikrorayon and most of the inhabitants fled. On the heights of Maranjan, above Mikrorayon, where Hekmatyar’s forces were assembled, nothing has been done to clear up after the civil war. Rocket-launchers, destroyed vehicles and tanks lie scattered around, a mere fifteen-minute walk from the Khan family home. This was once a popular picnic spot. Here too is the grave of Nadir Shah, Zahir Shah’s father, who was assassinated in 1933. Now the tomb is a ruin, the cupola full of holes and the pillar broken. The less impressive tomb of his wife, next to his, is in an even worse condition. It looms up like a skeleton on a projection overlooking the town, all in bits. Someone has tried to fit the pieces together, so the quotations from the Koran can be read.

The whole hillside is mined, but amongst the broken rocket-casings and metal rubbish can be seen something that bears witness to peace. Inside a circle of round stones orange marigolds grow. They alone have survived civil war, drought and the Taliban.

From the heights, at a good distance, Mikrorayon looks like any place one might chance upon in the former Soviet Union. The buildings were a gift from the Russians. In the fifties and sixties Soviet engineers were sent to Afghanistan to build the so-called Khrushchev blocks which eventually filled the Soviet Union, and which were exactly the same wherever they were built, in Kabul, Kaliningrad or Kiev: five-storey apartment blocks with two, three or four rooms.

When one gets closer to it is clear that the shabby impression is due not to customary Soviet decay, but bullets and war. Even the concrete benches by the front doors are smashed and lie like overturned wrecks on the pitted earth that was once asphalt.

In Russia babushkas sit on these benches, old women with walking sticks, moustaches and headscarves, watching everything that goes on around them. In Mikrorayon it is only old men who sit outside the houses and gossip, while the prayer beads slide between their fingers. Barely a handful of trees are left standing to give them meagre shade. The women hurry past carrying shopping bags under the burkas. One rarely sees women stop to have a chat with a neighbour. In Mikrorayon women go visiting if they want to chat, and make sure no men outside their own family see them.

The apartments were designed on Soviet principles of equality, but there is certainly no equality inside the four walls. While the idea behind the building of the apartments might have been to create classless dwellings in a classless society, in practice the Mikrorayon flats were seen as residences for the middle classes. At the time they were built, it was a sign of status to move from the mud huts in the villages around Kabul to the apartments with running water. Engineers and teachers, shop-owners and truck-drivers moved here. But the word middle-class now means little in a country where so many have lost all they had, and where everything has regressed. The once soenviable running water has been a joke for the last ten years. On the first floor there is cold water in the pipes for a few hours each morning. Then nothing. Water reaches the second floor now and again, but no water ever reaches the third floor, the pressure is too weak. Wells have been dug outside the flats and every day children stream up and down the staircase carrying buckets, bottles and kettles.

Likewise, the electricity supply used to be the pride of the apartments. Now, on the whole the inhabitants live in darkness. Owing to the drought electricity is rationed. Every other day there is power for four hours, between six and ten in the evening. When there is power in one part of town, another part is blacked out. Sometimes everyone is blacked out. The only solution is to get out the oil lamps and sit around in semi-darkness while the acid smoke stings the eyes and makes them water.

The Khan family live in one of the older apartment blocks, by the dried-out Kabul River. Bibi Gul looks on the gloomy side of things, as she sits confined within the cracked concrete desert, far from the village where she grew up. Bibi Gul has not been happy since her husband died. According to his relatives he was hard-working, deeply religious, strict but fair.

When his father died Sultan took over the throne. His word is law. Anyone who does not obey him will be punished. Not only does he lord it over the household, but he also tries to rule over the siblings who have moved away. The brother only two years younger than him kisses his hand when they meet and God help him if he dares contradict Sultan, or even worse, lights up a cigarette in front of him. Respect must be shown to the older brother in every way. Sultan has his reasons for such strict behaviour. He believes that if families are not disciplined and hard-working, there will never be a new, prosperous Afghanistan.

If neither scolding nor hitting has any effect, the next punishment is rejection. Sultan never talks with or about his younger brother Farid. Farid refused to work for Sultan in his bookshop and started up his own bookshop and bindery; Sultan has never spoken to him since. Nor is anyone else in the family allowed to talk to him. Farid’s name is never mentioned. He is no longer Sultan’s brother.

Farid also lives in one of the devastated apartments in Mikrorayon, only a few minutes away from the Khans. When Sultan is in his bookshop Bibi Gul visits Farid and his family, without Sultan’s knowledge. So do his siblings. In spite of the prohibition Shakila accepted her brother’s invitation before her wedding and spent a whole evening with him, telling Sultan that she was with an aunt. Before a girl gets married all the family must each invite her to a farewell dinner. Sultan is invited to family celebrations but not his brother. None of the cousins or uncles or aunts wants to fall out with Sultan; that would be unpleasant and unprofitable. But Farid is the one they love.

No one really remembers any longer what happened between Sultan and Farid, just that Farid left his big brother in a rage while Sultan shouted after him that the bond between them was broken for ever. Bib Gul asks them both to be reconciled, but the two brothers just shrug their shoulders. Sultan, because it is the duty of the younger to ask for forgiveness, Farid because he feels it is Sultan’s fault.

Bibi Gul has given birth to thirteen children. When she was fourteen she had her first daughter, Feroza. At last life was worth living. She had cried throughout the first years as a child bride; now life was better. As the oldest Feroza never got any education. The family was poor and Feroza carried water, swept and looked after her younger siblings. When she was fifteen she was married to a man of forty. He was rich and Bibi Gul thought the wealth would bring happiness. Feroza was pretty and they got 20,000 Afghani for her.

The two following children died in infancy. A quarter of Afghanistan ’s children die before they reach five. The country has the world’s highest infant mortality rate. Children die of measles, mumps, colds, but first and foremost of diarrhoea. Many parents mistakenly think they must not give the children anything when they suffer from diarrhoea, it will all come out anyway. They think they can dry up the illness, a misunderstanding that has cost thousands of young lives. Bibi Gul can no longer remember what her two died of. ‘They just died,’ says Bibi Gul.

Then Sultan arrived, beloved Sultan, revered Sultan. When Bibi Gul’s son reached maturity, her position amongst her in-laws strengthened considerably. The value of a bride is her maidenhead, the value of a wife the number of sons she bears.

As the oldest son he was always given the best, in spite of the family’s poverty. The money they received for Feroza was used to pay for Sultan’s education. From the time he was small he was given a position of authority and was the one his father trusted with responsible assignments. When he was seven he was already in full-time work, besides his schooling.

A few years after Sultan, Farid arrived. He was a madcap who always got caught up in fights and came home with torn clothes and a bloody nose. He drank and smoked, of course without his parents’ knowledge, but was good as gold when he was not angry. Bibi Gul found him a wife and now he is married with two daughters and a son. But he has been excommunicated from the apartment in block no. 37 in Mikrorayon. Bibi Gul sighs. Her heart is torn apart by the enmity between the two oldest sons. Why can they not behave reasonably?

After Farid came Shakila. Cheerful, tough, strong Shakila. Bibi Gul sheds a tear. She visualises her daughter, dragging heavy water buckets.

Next was Nesar Ahmad. When Bibi Gul thinks of him the tears start to flow. Nesar Ahmad was quiet, kind and scholarly. He attended high school in Kabul and wanted to be an engineer like Sultan. But one day he never returned. His classmates said that the military police had grabbed the strongest boys in the class and forced them to enlist in the army. This was during the Soviet occupation and Afghan Government forces functioned as Soviet ground troops. They were put in the front line against the Mujahedeen. The Mujahedeen had better troops, knew the terrain and entrenched themselves in the mountains. There they waited for the Russians and their allied Afghans to roll into the mountain passes. Nesar Ahmad disappeared in such a mountain pass. Bibi Gul thinks he is still alive. Maybe he was taken captive. Maybe he lost his memory and lives happily somewhere. She prays to Allah every day that he will return.

After Nesar Ahmad came Bulbula who sickened with sorrow when her father was imprisoned, and who generally sits at home all day, staring into space.

There was more life in Mariam, who was born a few years later. She was clever, keen and a wizard at school. She grew up to be beautiful and had lots of suitors. When she was eighteen she was married to a boy from the same village. He owned a shop and Bibi Gul thought he was a good match. Mariam moved into his home, where his brother and mother also lived. There was a lot to do; his mother’s hands were useless, she had burnt them badly in a baking oven. Some fingers are lost, some melted together. Both thumbs are stumps, but she can feed herself, look after little children and carry certain things if she holds them against her body.

Mariam was happy in her new home. Then the civil war came. When one of Mariam’s cousins got married in Jalalabad the family took the chance, in spite of the uncertain roads, to travel there. Her husband, Karimullah, stayed behind to look after the shop in Kabul. One morning, when he arrived to open it, he was caught in crossfire. A bullet pierced his heart and he died on the spot.

Mariam cried for three years. In the end Bibi Gul and Karimullah’s mother decided that she must marry the deceased husband’s brother, Hazim. She had a new family and pulled herself together for the sake of the two children. Now she is pregnant with her fifth child. Her oldest son, from her marriage to Karimullah – Fazil – is ten and already in full-time employment. He carries cases and sells books in one of Sultan’s shops and lives with Sultan, to relieve Mariam.

Then Yunus arrived, Bibi Gul’s favourite. He is the one who mollycoddles her, buys her little presents, asks what she needs and ends up with his head in her lap in the evening, after supper, when the family sits or lies around on the mats dozing. Yunus’s date of birth is the only one the mother knows with certainty. He was born the day Zahir Shah lost power in a coup, 17 July 1973.

The other children have neither birthday nor birth date. Sultan’s year of birth ranges from 1947 to 1955, depending on which document you are reading. When Sultan adds up years as a child, years in school, years at university, the first war, the second war and the third war, he arrives at fifty-something. This is the way everyone works out their age. And because no one knows, you can be the age you want to be. In this way Shakila can be thirty, but she could easily be five or six years older.

After Yunus came Basir. He lives in Canada after his mother arranged a marriage for him there with a relative. She has never seen him or spoken to him since he moved away two years ago. Bibi Gul sheds another tear. She hates being far away from her children. They are all she has in life, apart from the glazed almonds at the bottom of the chest.

The last-born son was the cause of Bibi Gul’s eating habits. A few days after the birth she had to give him away to a childless relative. The milk kept seeping out and Bibi Gul cried. A woman gains stature by being a mother, especially of sons. A sterile woman is not appreciated. Bibi Gul’s relative had been childless for fifteen years, had prayed to God, despaired, tried every conceivable medicine and remedy, and when Bibi Gul was expecting her twelfth child, she asked to have it.

Bibi Gul refused. ‘I cannot give my child away.’

The relative continued to beg, whimper, threaten. ‘Have mercy on me, you already have a large family, I have none. Just give me this one,’ she cried. ‘I cannot live without children,’ she sniffled.

In the end Bibi Gul gave in and promised her the child. When her son was born she kept him for twenty days. She nursed him, cuddled him and cried over having to give him away. Bibi Gul was an important woman by virtue of her children. She wanted as many as possible. But she kept her promise and after the agreed twenty days she gave him to the relative, and though the milk flowed she could not nurse him again. All ties to the mother had to be severed and from then on he was only a relative. Bibi Gul knows that he is well cared for, but still mourns the loss of her son. When she meets him she feigns indifference, as she promised when she gave him away.

Bibi Gul’s youngest daughter is Leila. Clever, industrious Leila who does most of the family housework. She is the afterthought at nineteen and at the bottom of the pecking order: youngest, unmarried and a girl.

When Bibi Gul was her age she had already given birth to four children, two who died and two who lived. But she doesn’t think of that now. Her tea is cold and she is cold. She hides the almonds under the mattress and wants someone to fetch her woollen shawl.

‘Leila,’ she calls. Leila gets up from the pots.