The Bookseller of Kabul

The Smell of Dust

Steam rises from damp bodies. Hands move in quick, rhythmic motions. The sun’s rays creep in through two peepholes in the roof, bathing bottoms, breasts and thighs in a picturesque light. Initially the bodies in the room can be seen only dimly through the steam, until one gets used to the magical light. The faces show concentration. This is not pleasure, but hard work.

In two large halls women scrub themselves, lying, sitting or standing. They scrub themselves, each other or their children. Some are Rubenesquely fat, others thin as rakes, with protruding ribs. With large homemade hemp gloves they scrub each other’s backs, arms, legs. Hard skin under the feet is scraped off with pumice. Mothers scrub their marriageable daughters whilst carefully scrutinising their bodies. There is not much time before young girls with birdlike chests become breast-feeding mothers. Thin teenage girls have broad stretch marks from births their bodies were not yet ready for. Nearly all the women’s bellies have cracked skin from giving birth too early and too frequently.

The children shout and squeal, from fear or joy. Those who are scrubbed and rinsed play with the washbowls. Others howl in pain and wriggle about like fish caught in a net. No one is given a rag to protect eyes from soap. Mothers scrub them with the hemp gloves until the dirty, dark-brown bodies are pink. Bathing and washing is a battle children are condemned to lose, in their mothers’ firm fists.

Leila rolls dirt and loose skin off her body. Black strips are rubbed off, into the hemp glove or down on to the floor. Several weeks have passed since Leila washed properly and many months since she visited the hammam. There is not often water at home and Leila does not see the need to wash too often – you only get dirty again anyway.

But today she has accompanied her mother and cousins to the hammam. As unmarried women she and her cousins are especially shy, and have kept their bras and pants on. The hemp glove avoids these places. But arms, thighs, legs, back and neck get rough treatment. Drops of perspiration and water blend on their faces, as they scrub, scrape and scour, the harder the cleaner.

Leila’s mother Bibi Gul, who must be nearing seventy, sits naked in a pool on the floor. Her long grey hair, which is normally hidden under a pale-blue shawl, flows down her back. She unties it only in the hammam. It is so long that the ends float around in the pool on the floor. She sits as in a trance, eyes closed, enjoying the heat. Now and again she makes a few lazy efforts at washing. She dips a facecloth in the bowl Leila has put out for her. But she soon gives up, she cannot reach round her tummy and her arms feel too heavy to lift. Her breasts rest heavily over her big stomach. She remains sitting in a trance, stock still, like a big, grey statue.

Leila looks over at her mother now and then to assure herself that she is OK, while she scrubs and prattles with her cousins. The nineteen-year-old has a childlike body, in between girl and woman. The whole Khan family are on the plump side, certainly compared to Afghan standards. The fat and the cooking-oil they pour over their food are manifested on their bodies. Deep-fried pancakes, pieces of potato dripping in fat, mutton in seasoned cooking-oil gravy. Leila’s skin is pale and immaculate, soft as a baby’s bottom. The facial colour changes between white, yellow and pale grey. The life she leads is reflected in her childlike skin that never sees the sun, and her hands – rough and worn like an old woman’s. For a long time, Leila felt dizzy and weak – when she eventually went to see the doctor, he said she needed sun and vitamin D.

Paradoxically Kabul is one of the sunniest towns in the world. The sun shines nearly every day of the year, 1,800 metres above sea level. The sun makes cracks in the earth, dries up what were once moist gardens, burns the children’s skin. But Leila never sees it. It never reaches the first-floor flat in Mikrorayon, nor in behind her burka. Not one single curative ray gets past the grille. Only when she visits big sister Mariam, who has a backyard in her village house, does she allow the sun to warm her body. But she goes there only on rare occasions.

Leila is the first to get up in the morning and goes to bed last. She lights the stove in the living room with thin sticks, while the sleeping bodies of her family are still snoring. Next she lights the wood-burning stove in the bathroom and boils water for cooking, washing and washing up. Whilst it is still dark she fills bottles, pots and pans with water. There is never electricity at this time of the day and Leila has got used to groping around in the dark.

Sometimes she carries a small lamp. Then she makes tea. It must be ready by half-past six, when the men in the house wake, otherwise she is in trouble. As long as there is water she keeps on filling receptacles. You never know when the water might go off, sometimes after an hour, sometimes after two.

Eqbal squeals every morning like a stuck pig. The howls jar everyone’s nerves. He lies on his mat, stretched out or bent double, and refuses to get up. The fourteen-year-old invents new illnesses every day to avoid spending twelve hours in the shop. But there is no mercy. Every day he has to get up eventually, but next day the same performance is repeated.

‘You bitch! Lazybones! My socks have got holes in them,’ he cries and throws them after Leila. He takes it out on anyone he can, while his real wish is to go to school.

‘Leila! The water is cold! There’s not enough warm water! Where are my clothes, my socks? Get some tea! Breakfast! Polish my shoes! Why did you get up so late?’

Doors are slammed and walls pounded. The rooms, the corridor and the bathroom are like a battleground. Sultan’s sons howl, quarrel and cry. Sultan usually sits on his own with Sonya drinking tea and eating breakfast. Sonya looks after him, Leila does the rest: fills up the washbasins, puts out clothes, pours tea, fries eggs, fetches bread, polishes shoes. The five men of the house are off to work.

With great reluctance she helps her three nephews Mansur, Eqbal and Aimal to get away. No one says thank you, no one ever helps. ‘Uneducated children,’ Leila hisses under her breath, when the three boys, only a few years younger than her, order her around.

‘Haven’t we got any milk? I told you to buy some!’ Mansur taunts her. ‘You parasite,’ he adds. If she bristles, he always responds with the same cruel answer: ‘Shut up, you old bag.’ ‘This is not your home, it is my home,’ he says fiercely. Leila does not feel it is her home either. It is Sultan’s home, for Sultan and his sons and second wife. She, Bulbula, Bibi Gul and Yunus all feel unwelcome in the family. But moving is not an alternative. It is a scandal to split up a family. Besides, they are good servants – Leila is anyway.

Sometimes Leila is bitter that she was not, like her older brother, given away at birth. ‘Then I would have attended computer courses and English courses from an early age, and I would have been at university now,’ she dreams. ‘I would have had fine clothes, I wouldn’t have had to slave away.’ Leila loves her mother, but she feels that no one really cares about her. She has always been at the bottom of the pecking order, where she has remained; Bibi Gul had no more children.

After the chaos of the morning, when Sultan and the sons have left, Leila can relax, drink tea and have breakfast. Then she sweeps the rooms, for the first time of the day. She goes through the rooms with a small broom, bent over, sweeping, sweeping, sweeping. Most of the dust whirls into the air, floats around, and settles down again behind her. The smell of dust never leaves the flat. She never gets rid of the dust, it has settled on her movements, her body, her thoughts. But she scoops up bits of bread, paper scraps and rubbish. Several times each day she sweeps her way through the rooms. Everything takes place on the floor and it quickly gets dirty.

This is the grime she now tries to scrub off her body. It rolls off in fat little rolls. It is the dust that sticks to her life.

‘If only I had a house that needed washing just once a day, that stayed clean all day, that I would have to sweep only in the morning,’ Leila sighs to her cousins. They agree. The youngest girls of their family, their lives are like hers.

Leila has brought some underwear she wants to wash in the hammam. Normally washing is done in the twilight on a stool by the loo hole in the bathroom. She uses several large basins, one with soap, one without soap, one for whites, one for colours. She washes sheets, blankets, towels and the family’s clothes. They are scrubbed and wrung before being hung up. It is difficult to dry them, especially in winter. Ropes have been rigged up outside the block of flats, but clothes are often stolen, so she does not want to hang them up there, unless one of the children watches them until they are dry. Otherwise they hang, closely packed, on the little balcony. The balcony is a few square metres in size and full of food and rubbish: a bag of potatoes, a basket of onions, one of garlic, a large sack of rice, cardboard boxes, old shoes, and a few clothes and other things that no one dares throw away as they might come in useful one day.

At home Leila wears old shaggy, frayed sweaters, spotty shirts and skirts that sweep the floor. The skirts collect the dust she cannot get at. She wears down-at-heel plastic sandals and a scarf on her head. The only glitter comes from large gold-coloured earrings and smooth bracelets.

‘Leila!’

A voice calls her weakly, tired, over the screaming children. It just manages to drown the splashes that crash on the floor when the women throw water-buckets over each other.

‘Leilaaa!’

Bibi Gul has woken from her trance. She sits holding a cloth, looking helplessly at Leila. Leila takes the hemp glove, soap, shampoo and the basin over to her large, naked mother.

‘Lie on your back,’ she says. Bibi Gul manoeuvres her torso down on to the floor. Leila rubs and kneads the wobbling body. Bibi Gul laughs; she too sees the comical side to it. The small, neat daughter and the large, old mother. The age difference is somewhere near fifty years. When they laugh the others can smile too. Suddenly everyone laughs.

‘You are so fat, Mummy, you’ll die of it one day,’ Leila ticks her off, while she washes wherever the mother can’t reach. Then she rolls her over on to her stomach, helped by her cousins, who each scrub one of Bibi Gul’s enormous body parts. Then her long, soft hair is washed. The pink shampoo from China is poured over her scalp. Leila massages carefully as though she is frightened that what is left of the hair will disappear. The shampoo bottle is nearly empty. It is a leftover from the Taliban era. The lady on the bottle has been scribbled out with a thick, waterproof felt pen. When the religious police mutilated Sultan’s books, they also tackled packaging. Every lady’s face on a shampoo bottle or baby’s face on a piece of soap was removed. Living creatures must not be portrayed.

The water is cooling. Children who have not yet been done howl even louder. Soon only cold water remains in the once steaming hammam. The women leave the baths and as they go the dirt is visible. Eggshells and rotten apples lurk in the corners. Lines of muck are left on the floors – the women use the same plastic sandals in the hammam as they do on the village paths, in the outside loos and in their backyards.

Bibi Gul tumbles out with Leila and the cousins in tow. Then on with the clothes. No one brought a change; they pull on the same clothes as the ones they arrived in. The burkas are pulled over clean heads: the burkas with their own odours. Little air gets in and so the burkas have their own peculiar smell. Bibi Gul’s reeks of the indeterminable aroma she surrounds herself with, old breath mixed with sweet flowers and something sour. Leila’s smells of young sweat and cooking-fumes. Actually, all the Khan family burkas stink of cooking-fumes, because they hang on nails near the kitchen. The women are now spotlessly clean under the burkas and the clothes, but the soft soap and the pink shampoo desperately fight against heavy odds. The women’s own smell is soon restored; the burkas force it down over them. The smell of old slave, young slave.

Bibi Gul walks ahead; for once the three young girls linger at the back. They walk together, giggling. In an empty street they whip off the burkas over their heads. Only little boys and dogs roam around here. The cooling wind feels good on their skin, which is still sweating. But the air is not fresh. The back streets and alleyways of Kabul stink of rubbish and sewage. A dirty ditch follows the mud road between the mud huts. But the girls are not aware of the stink from the ditch, or the dust which sticks to their skin and closes their pores. The sun gets to their skin and they laugh. Suddenly a man on a bicycle turns up.

‘Cover up, girls, I’m burning,’ he shouts as he whizzes past them. They look at each other and laugh at the funny expression on his face, but when he turns up again, they cover up.

‘When the King returns, I will never use my burka again,’ Leila says, suddenly serious. ‘Then we’ll have a peaceful country.’

‘He’ll surely never come back,’ the covered-up cousin objects.

‘They say he’ll return this spring,’ says Leila.

But until then it is safest to cover up, the three girls are anyhow alone.

Leila never walks alone. It is not good for a young girl to walk about without company. Who knows where she might be going? Maybe to meet a man, maybe to commit a sin. Leila does not even walk alone to the greengrocer a few minutes away from the apartment. She usually takes a neighbour’s boy along with her, or asks him to run errands for her. Alone is an unknown idea for Leila. She has never, ever, anywhere, at any time, been alone. She has never been alone in the apartment, never gone anywhere alone, and never remained anywhere alone, never slept alone. Every night she sleeps on the mat beside her mother. She quite simply does not know what it is to be alone, nor does she miss it. The only thing she wishes for is a bit more peace and not so much to do.

When she gets home, chaos reigns; cases, bags and suitcases everywhere.

‘Sharifa has come back! Sharifa!’ Bulbula points, happy that Leila has returned and can take over as hostess. Sultan and Sharifa’s youngest child, Shabnam, runs around like a happy filly. She hugs Leila, who hugs Sharifa. In the middle of it all, Sultan’s second wife Sonya stands smiling, her daughter Latifa on her arm. Unexpectedly, Sultan has brought Sharifa and Shabnam back from Pakistan.

‘For the summer,’ says Sultan.

‘For always,’ whispers Sharifa.

Sultan has gone to the bookshop, only the women remain. They sit down in a circle on the floor. Sharifa doles out presents. A dress for Leila, a shawl for Sonya, a bag for Bulbula, a cardigan for Bibi Gul and clothes and plastic jewellery for the rest of the family. For her sons she has several outfits, bought at Pakistani markets, clothes not available in Kabul. And she has her own precious things. ‘No going back,’ she says. ‘I hate Pakistan.’

But she knows that all rests in Sultan’s hands. If Sultan wants her to return, she will have to.

Sultan’s two wives sit and prattle like old friends. They inspect the material, try on blouses and jewellery. Sonya pats the things she was given for herself and her little daughter. Sultan rarely brings presents for his young wife, so Sharifa’s homecoming is a welcome interruption in her monotonous existence. She dresses Latifa in the pink tutu dress, which makes her look like a doll.

They exchange news. The women have not seen each other for over a year. There is no phone in the flat so they have not spoken either. The major happening in Kabul is Shakila’s wedding, which they recount in detail: the presents she got, the dresses they wore, other relations’ children, engagements, marriages or deaths.

Sharifa relates news from refugee life. Who has returned home, who has stayed. ‘Saliqa is engaged,’ she says. ‘It had to turn out like that, even if the family were against it. The boy owns nothing, he’s lazy too, useless,’ she says. Everyone agrees. They all remember Saliqa, always dressed up to kill, but they feel sorry for her because she has to marry a poverty-stricken layabout.

‘After they met in the park she was grounded for a month,’ Sharifa says. ‘Then one day the boy’s mother and aunt came to ask for her. Her parents agreed, they had no choice; the damage had already been done. And the engagement party! A scandal!’

The women listen wide-eyed. Especially Sonya. These are stories she can relate to with all her senses. Sharifa’s stories are her soap operas.

‘A scandal,’ Sharifa repeats, to underline the fact. It is customary that the groom-to-be’s family pay for the feast, the dress and the jewels when a young couple get engaged. When they were planning the party, the boy’s father put a few thousand rupees in Saliqa’s father’s hand. Saliqa’s father had returned from Europe to help resolve the family tragedy. When he saw the money he just threw it on the floor. ‘Do you think you can make an engagement party out of chicken feed?’ he shouted. Sharifa was sitting on the stairs listening to it all, so it is absolutely true. ‘No, you take your money and we’ll foot the bill,’ he said.

Saliqa’s father wasn’t flush with money either. He was waiting to be granted asylum in Belgium and to fetch his family over. Holland had already rejected him and he was now living on money given to him by the Belgian government. But an engagement party is an important symbolic ceremony, and an engagement is virtually unbreakable. If it dissolves the girl will have big problems marrying again, whatever the reason for the break. The engagement party is also an indication to the world how the family is coping. What sort of decorations? What did they cost? What sort of food? What did it cost? What sort of dress? What did it cost? Orchestra, how much did that cost? The party is supposed to show how the boy’s family value the new family member. If the feast is miserly, it means they do not appreciate the bride, nor her whole family. That her father had to run up a debt for an engagement party that no one but Saliqa and her sweetheart was happy about meant nothing compared to the shame of hosting a cheap party.

‘She’s already regretting it,’ Sharifa reveals. ‘Because he has no money. She soon saw what a good-for-nothing he is. But it’s too late now. If she breaks the engagement no one will want her. She walks around jingling six bracelets he gave her. She says they are gold, but I know, and she knows, that they are metal bracelets painted in gold colour. She didn’t even get a new dress for New Year’s Eve celebrations. Have you ever known a girl who didn’t get a new dress from her fiancé for New Year’s Eve?

‘He’s in their house all day now. Her mother has no control over what they do. Awful, awful, what a disgrace, I have told her,’ Sharifa says, before the three others bombard her with new questions.

About that one, and that one and that one. They still have many relatives in Pakistan, aunts, uncles and cousins who do not yet think the situation safe enough to return. Or they have nothing to return to: bombed house, mined land, burnt-down shop. But they all long for home, like Sharifa. It is nearly a year since she last saw her sons.

Leila goes out to the kitchen to make supper. She is glad Sharifa is back, it’s right like that, but she dreads the quarrels that will follow, with her sons, in-laws and Leila’s mother. She remembers how Sharifa would ask them all to pack their bags and go.

‘Take your daughters and just disappear,’ she used to say to her mother-in-law, Bibi Gul. ‘There’s no room here. We want the place to ourselves,’ she shrieked when Sultan was not at home. That was when Sharifa ruled the house and Sultan’s heart. Only during the last years, after Sultan got himself another wife, has her tone towards Sultan’s relatives become milder.

‘But we’ll have less room,’ Leila sighs; no longer eleven, but thirteen in the small rooms. She peels onions and cries bitter onion tears. She rarely cries real tears; she suppresses yearnings, longings and disappointments. The clean smell of soap from the hammam has long gone. Oil from the pan sprays her hair and gives it a smell of acrid fat. Her rough hands ache from the chilli sauce, which penetrates her thin, worn skin.

She cooks a simple supper, nothing special in spite of Sharifa’s return. The Khan family is not in the habit of celebrating women. Anyhow, she has to cook what Sultan likes. Meat, rice, spinach and beans, all in mutton fat.

Every evening Sultan returns home with wads of money from his shops. Every evening he locks it into the cupboard. Often he brings home large bags with juicy pomegranates, sweet bananas, mandarins and apples. But the fruit is also locked in the cupboard. Only Sultan and Sonya may eat it. Only they have the key. Sultan thinks it is a heavy burden to feed his large family, and fruit is expensive, especially out of season.

Leila looks at some small, hard oranges lying on the windowsill. They had started to dry out and Sonya put them out in the kitchen – for general use. Leila would not dream of tasting them. If she is condemned to eat beans, eat beans she will. The oranges can lie there until they rot or dry out. Leila tosses her head and places the heavy rice pot over the primus. She pours the chopped onion into the oily pan, adds tomatoes, spices and potatoes. Leila is a good cook. She is good at most things. That is why she is put to do everything. During meals she usually sits in the corner by the door, and leaps up if anyone needs anything, or fills up the plates. When she has seen to everyone else, she fills her plate with the remains, some fatty rice and cooked beans.

She has been brought up to serve, and she has become a servant, ordered around by everyone. In step with every new order, respect for her diminishes. If anyone is in a bad mood, Leila suffers. A spot that has not come off a sweater, meat that has been badly cooked; there are many things one can think of when one needs someone to vent one’s wrath on.

When relatives invite the family to a party, Leila turns up early in the morning, having made breakfast for her own family, to peel potatoes, make stock, chop vegetables. And when the guests arrive, she has barely time to change clothes, before continuing to serve and then spend the remainder of the party in the kitchen with the washing up. She is like Cinderella, except there is no prince in Leila’s world.

Sultan returns home with Mansur, Eqbal and Aimal. He kisses Sonya in the hall, and greets Sharifa briefly in the sitting room. They spent a whole day in the car from Peshawar to Kabul and have no need for any more conversation. Sultan and the sons sit down. Leila brings in a pewter washbasin and a can. She places the basin in front of each one in turn, they wash their hands, and she hands them a towel. The plastic cloth has been laid on the floor and the meal can be served.

Yunus, Sultan’s younger brother, has come home and greets Sharifa warmly. He asks for latest news from relatives, and then, as usual, says nothing. He rarely talks during meals. He is quiet and sober and seldom joins in the family conversations. It is as though he does not care and keeps his unhappiness to himself. The 28-year-old is deeply discontented with his life.

‘A dog’s life,’ he says. Work from dawn to dusk, and crumbs from his brother’s table.

Yunus is the only one Leila dances attendance on. She loves this brother. Sometimes he comes home with little presents, a plastic buckle, a comb.

This evening something is bothering Yunus. But he waits to ask. Sharifa takes the wind out of his sails and blurts out: ‘It’s a bit of a mess with Belqisa. Her father is keen, but the mother says no. Initially the mother said yes, but then she talked to a relative who had a son, a younger son, who wanted to marry Belqisa. They have offered money and the mother has started to doubt. This relative has spread rumours about our family. That’s all I can tell you.’

Yunus blushes and scowls silently. The whole situation is embarrassing. Mansur sneers. ‘The granddaughter won’t marry grandfather,’ he mumbles under his breath, so Yunus hears it but not Sultan. Yunus’s last hope is reversed and rejected. He feels tired, tired of waiting, tired of seeking, tired of living in a box.

‘Tea!’ he commands, in order to interrupt Sharifa’s flow of words on why Belqisa’s family do not want their daughter to marry him. Leila gets up. She is disappointed that Yunus’s marriage seems to be dragging on. She had hoped that when Yunus married he would take her and her mother with him. They could all live together; Leila would be so good, so good. She would instruct Belqisa, she would do all the heavy chores. Belqisa could even continue her education if she wanted to. All would be well. Anything to get out of Sultan’s household where no one appreciates her. Sultan complains that her cooking is not according to his likes, that she eats too much and that she does not obey Sonya in everything. Mansur is always over her, pecking at her. Often he tells her to go to hell. ‘I care about no one who has no significance for my future,’ he says. ‘And you, you mean nothing to me. You are a parasite, off with you,’ he laughs contemptuously, knowing full well that she has nowhere to go.

Leila brings the tea. Weak green tea. She asks Yunus whether he would like her to press his trousers for the next day. She has just washed them and Yunus has only two pairs, so she needs to know whether he wants to wear the clean ones. Yunus nods silently.

‘My aunt is so stupid,’ Mansur keeps on saying. ‘Whenever she wants to say something, I know what she’s going to say. She is the most boring person I know,’ he laughs scornfully and mimics her. He has grown up with his three-years-older aunt, not like a brother, but like a master.

It is true that Leila often repeats herself, because she thinks she is not being heard. On the whole she talks about everyday things, because that is her world. But she can laugh and shine, with her cousins, sisters or nieces. She can surprise everyone with funny stories. Her whole face can transform itself with laughter. But not during family suppers – then she is mostly silent. Sometimes she laughs at her nephews’ crude jokes, but as she told her cousins in the hammam: ‘I laugh with my mouth, not my heart.’

No one says much during Sharifa’s first evening meal, following the disappointing news about Belqisa. Aimal plays with Latifa, Shabnam plays with her dolls, Eqbal talks noisily with Mansur and Sultan flirts with Sonya. The others eat in silence, then the family goes to bed. Sharifa and Shabnam are allocated places in the room where Bibi Gul, Leila, Bulbula, Eqbal, Aimal and Fazil already sleep. Sultan and Sonya keep their room. At midnight everyone is on the mats, all except one.

Leila cooks by the light of a candle. Sultan likes homemade food during the day at work. She cooks a chicken in oil, rice, makes a vegetable sauce. While it is cooking she washes up. The flame from the candle lights up her face. There are big, dark rings round her eyes. When the food is done she takes the pan from the hotplate, winds pieces of cloth round it and knots it tightly to keep the lid from falling off when Sultan and his sons take it with them next morning. She washes the oil off her fingers and goes to bed, in the same clothes she has been using all day. She rolls out her mattress, pulls a blanket over her and falls asleep, until the mullah wakes her a few hours later. A new day begins, to the sound of ‘Allahu akhbar’ – ‘God is great’.

A new day which smells and tastes like every other day: of dust.