In My Father's Country: An Afghan Woman Defies Her Fate

by SAIMA WAHAB

  Before I could find the courage to ask them to send me back to Afghanistan, Uncle A found out about Vasily. The years-long Sunday-meeting tradition was broken, because on a Thursday night we were all told to meet in the dining room. That should have been my first clue that the gloves were about to come off. Even today, I think about that fateful day and I tremble.

  They were enraged, and thought I was seeing Vasily only as a rebellion against them, and that I had chosen the most heinous country I could think of and picked the blue-eyed devil that they remembered from the Soviet invasion. All to get back at them. In retrospect, I can see why they thought that. But I was appalled by their closed-mindedness and their hypocrisy; although they talked with their American friends as if they were liberal, and expected American society to be tolerant of them, they were not tolerant of others. I knew that it was not going to be long before they took drastic measures to get me under control. If they had only tried to shame me for befriending a member of the opposite sex, something that is forbidden in Pashtun culture, I would have stopped seeing Vasily. Instead, they tried to shame me by casting him as responsible for my father’s disappearance. The newly educated and worldly Saima knew this made no sense, whereas as a Pashtun, I knew the rules of Pashtunwali; I was a part of that society and was obliged to accept their rules.

  I truly believe I would have ended up with a totally different life if the Professor had uttered any sentence other than the one he did: “Saima, your father would be ashamed of you.” Those eight words changed the course of my life, by igniting the fierce Pashtun pride that had lain dormant in my heart since the day my father walked out of our house in his slippers. My ears started ringing when I heard the hatred in his tone and saw the disgust on Uncle A’s face. He said other things, too, and gratefully I did not hear any of them, because my heart was beating so loudly, I couldn’t hear anything over the roar of it in my head. I actually envisioned how easy it would have been for that to happen and kill me on the spot. I knew that what I had to do was going to require every ounce of the strength given to me by my father and grandfather. I knew I had not done what they were accusing me of. I knew that my father would not have been ashamed of me, but he would have been ashamed of how his brothers were treating me. I felt this to be the ultimate truth; my father loved me and would have known that I was not a woman with loose or misguided morals. Had he been sitting there at the dining table, he would have protected me. My certainty of that fact gave me the courage I had been lacking all those years when I had lived in terror of being shoved into a life I didn’t want; when I had been too much of a coward to stand up for myself. I would have loved to have been able to rise to my feet for what I said next, but I couldn’t feel my legs. “Enough!” I said quietly, looking Uncle A squarely in the eyes.

  “I will forgive you everything you have said to me until this day because you are my father’s brothers, no matter how much that fact hurts me. But from this day forward, your words will never touch me or make me feel dirty and disgusting. I will not say any of the things I want to say because you are my Baba’s children, and it would be disrespectful to him.”

  I didn’t dare look at anybody else around the table, because I knew the horror on the faces of Najiba or any of the others would weaken my resolve, and if I lost that, I would have nothing to live for. I rose from the table, got my car keys, and started walking out. I didn’t know where I was going; I just needed to leave my uncles’ house.

  Uncle A followed me to the door, trailed by a crying Najiba, who stopped at the doorstep.

  “Where do you think you are going?” he asked icily.

  “Out. I can’t take this anymore,” I answered with all my heart.

  “If you walk out this door right now, you will never be allowed inside again, and you will never be allowed into the family either,” he threatened calmly.

  “I know,” I said, just as calmly.

  I looked up the steps again at Najiba standing there crying. Leaving her was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done, but I made a silent promise to her then; I would come back for her as soon as I could. Three years later, I did. But on that first night, I got into my car and drove away alone, leaving everything behind, just as I had done as a child more than a decade before. The difference was that I was in a Honda and not on a camel; I was a college graduate and not a child.

  NINE

  I was officially a disgrace to my family, in the United States and in Afghanistan and Pakistan. My uncles told everyone who would listen that I had moved out to live with my Russian boyfriend. For several years Mamai and I didn’t speak.

  I had not moved in with Vasily. He had wanted me to, but it had never been an option for me. The day I drove away from my uncles’ house I broke up with him. I did not leave my family to move in with another man. My decision to be on my own had nothing to do with something as trivial as a boyfriend.

  After staying a few days with a friend, I moved into the bottom floor of a house in Northeast Portland, an area that was at that time predominantly lower-class, the opposite of Southwest Portland, where I had lived until then. I decided to move into that area because I knew my uncles’ prejudices; they would never wander off from Southwest Portland to look for me in Northeast. I had so much to learn about life. My landlord, Jimmy, had to show me where the grocery store was, where to buy gas, and how to get to my new job, since I had left the language agency and started working in an office downtown. I had to learn about utilities. Until I got my own place I never realized you had to pay for water—we never paid for it in Afghanistan.

  Far from leading the raunchy American life my uncles gossiped about, I was probably clinically depressed for a few years after being cast out from my family. In Pashtun culture, if you commit a crime or an offense against the community in which you live, the shura, a gathering of the residents, much like a jury of peers, decides to burn your house and, in some cases, kick you out of the village. I felt like I had been tried in the court of Pashtunwali and punished accordingly. I felt guilty for not following the ways of my loving Baba, who had protected me in his soft embrace. I slept long hours and lost weight. My days were dull and identical: I went to work, grabbed some takeout on the way home, ate it sitting in front of the TV, and went to bed. When I lived with my uncles and we battled over my 9:00 P.M. curfew I used to think, If I could just stay out until eleven, my life would be so much more fun. Suddenly I could stay out as late as I liked, but I didn’t care. I was asleep by nine. I made a lot of tea, but I don’t think I turned on the oven even once the whole time I lived there.

  I’d fought for my freedom, achieved it, and then I withdrew from life. I didn’t go on dates. I didn’t travel. I didn’t even go to the homes of my girlfriends. I didn’t go to clubs, the very activity my uncles had claimed was the reason I had left their home, until nearly three years later—and even then it was only to spend time with my brother and his friends. I had no desire to enjoy my newly acquired liberties, because I felt the price I had paid for them was too great.

  I slept a lot to try to avoid dwelling on my new reality and my choice to have walked away. In Afghanistan and Pakistan I’d grown up in a house with siblings, cousins, aunts, uncles, and grandparents. In the United States I’d spent every night eating dinner with seven people. Now I was completely alone, except for Jimmy, the landlord, who was rarely there and who certainly wasn’t a replacement for a family. My father was long dead; my mother was all the way over in Pakistan, raging and ashamed at the trouble I was causing; my uncles had declared me the source of irreparable family embarrassment; my brother was busy living his own American life; and my sister, in her typical way, hid her feelings, but I know how I would have felt in her place—abandoned, forgotten.

  Who is an Afghan woman without her family? I had no idea.

  I had no real understanding of what an American woman was capable of doing, of what choices she had, but I wanted to find out. As a Pashtun female, from the age of about six I had been told how to beh
ave, what it meant to be a Pashtun woman. Part of me was very secure and comfortable with this role, because I knew so much about it. Another, newer part of me wanted me to be an American woman—free, educated, resourceful, and most of all, independent. This was a role I didn’t know half as much about, which made it difficult for me to balance the two parts. I wanted to take the good from the Pashtun in me and combine it with these new rights and choices I had been offered as an American—to blend the two to make a perfect woman, or at least a woman who would be perfectly me. To be honest with myself is to recognize that I also wanted to earn the envy of my friends back home, who believed I was enjoying an unimaginably carefree and happy life.

  TO THIS DAY, my uncles have not forgiven me for walking out on their insanity in order to preserve my own sanity. I’ve realized that they inadvertently gave me the tools—education and anger—that I needed to become who I am. For that, I’m willing to spare them shame by dwelling no further on what they did to me.

  I HAD STARTED working at a downtown import-export company that dealt mostly with soybeans and corn. Like hundreds of other carefree women all around me, I spent my lunch hour shopping. But freedom was not as sweet as I had imagined.

  I met Greg on a setup date. I was twenty-four; he was twenty-one. He’d made some miscalculations in life that made him more mature than other guys his age. He had a three-year-old son, Riley, with an ex-girlfriend from high school with whom he shared custody, and was working his way through college as a car salesman. On our second date he asked me to marry him. I didn’t want to hurt his feelings by laughing. Instead, I told him to ask me again in five years.

  Greg’s mother was English, and having lived in England until only a few years before, Greg retained enough of his British accent to grab my attention. He had seen me at the house of one of my coworkers when I was dropping her off one day. He was visiting her brother. That first meeting took less than two minutes; I was in a rush to get back on the road. He begged my coworker to set us up, so she in turn begged me to go out on one date, just one—and the rest, as they say, is history—an explosive but loving history.

  Over the years we dated Greg was always there for me, holding me while I raged and sobbed over whatever hatred the uncles were circulating about me. My fury was like an emotional roadside bomb—it injured whoever came upon me. Often, it was Greg. I said the cruelest things to him. He understood that it was not about him and that I loved him for his unconditional support. Most nights, he’d come over after work and make me tea and my favorite chicken dish, draw me a warm bath and light some candles, then make sure I was in the tub before letting himself out. I took hundreds of baths during those first years, trying to soak away my stress and anger, hoping that it would disappear down the drain with the soapy water. But of course it didn’t, and I felt restless and incomplete, even though I had the undying love of a wonderful man, in addition to a job where I was challenged daily to learn something new.

  Greg was the most caring man I’d ever met. And yet, for reasons I couldn’t articulate, even to myself, I couldn’t imagine marrying him. I knew he deserved more than I could ever offer him. I had a jaded idea of the relationship between a man and a woman, and he was the first person with whom I had ever explored that. I couldn’t seem to compromise on the littlest things, because I feared relinquishing any control, to Greg or anyone. Now, I understand that give-and-take is a necessary part of a healthy relationship. At that time, however, I was terrified that if I gave even a little of myself, I would be taken completely, again.

  Our differences over money also got in the way. I had to be financially independent. I worked forty hours a week, lived frugally, and saved as much as I could. I needed to know that I could take care of myself. What kept me up at night was the fear that one day I would have to go crawling back to the uncles because I couldn’t pay my rent and bills. Greg lived paycheck to paycheck. He would get a $500 bonus and want to splurge. The only time I was aware of him making an effort to save was for an engagement ring for me. This should have made me feel better—look, he is capable of being careful with his money—but I felt extremely anxious whenever I thought about the moment when he would sink to one knee and produce the little velvet box, forcing me to make a choice between love and what I thought was my personal freedom.

  So I lived in dread that he would propose to me and end a perfectly good relationship. When he would suggest we go to our favorite restaurant for dinner, I would worry that he was looking for a special occasion so I would make excuses about not being hungry. We would often go away for the weekend, but during the last few months of our relationship I would come up with reasons why I couldn’t make it: “Greg, we can’t go next weekend! Banana Republic is having a huge sale!” I knew that I couldn’t keep this up for much longer and that I would have to deal with the issue one day. I was not looking forward to it.

  In the meantime, I decided to do all I could to bring the two women who were most important to me back into my life: Najiba, whom I’d had to leave with our uncles almost three years earlier, and Mamai. My mother’s life had been abysmal, in the typical Afghan way. After we’d left for America she’d lived with one of our uncles, his wife, and their two children—first in Peshawar, then in Abbottabad. She had had no rights, but that was not an unusual fate for a woman in Afghanistan. Mamai was required to ask permission to do everything, whether it was going shopping, visiting a friend, or seeing a doctor. No one cared that she’d lost her husband because of the war; there were tens of thousands of Afghan widows just like her, and she did not warrant any special considerations.

  The uncles with whom she lived didn’t believe in socializing, and at heart Mamai was a gregarious, fun-loving woman. They discouraged her from having friends over and wouldn’t allow her to visit them. She was miserable, but didn’t believe she had a right to happiness, or to be treated any differently. It drove me crazy to think of my own mother so oppressed and not believing that it was wrong. When I finally got in touch with her and encouraged her to press the uncles into at least allowing her some friendships, she refused. She said she didn’t want to cause any trouble. There I was in Portland, able to question everything. Back in Pakistan, my mother questioned nothing. I knew she had turned on me and had no sympathy for what I had struggled to achieve, for my independence. Would she even appreciate the liberties I wanted to give her?

  Getting Najiba from Southwest Portland to Northeast Portland turned out to be a lot easier: I told her our father’s three children should live together, so Khalid, she, and I moved into a three-bedroom town house close to downtown where we all worked and started living a blissfully happy life; for the first time I didn’t dread the thought of coming home. Uncle A had gotten married and wanted to enjoy married life with his wife without worrying about keeping an eye on Najiba, which is why he had let Najiba go so easily.

  Bringing my mother to the United States was going to be a lot more difficult.

  First I had to become a U.S. citizen. For years I had put off the decision. To become a citizen in America, I would have to give up the citizenship of Afghanistan. While I was a refugee in Pakistan, I never made fake papers, like hundreds of other refugees did in order to avoid harassment by the Pakistani police. I thought, If I hadn’t denounced my Afghan citizenship then, why would I do so now? In my new adopted country no one was harassing me, and I could hold on to the Afghan in me and still be a good U.S. resident. I paid my taxes and obeyed all the laws of the land. The only thing I wasn’t able to do was vote; like many U.S. citizens, I really didn’t think much about it. But one thing I couldn’t do as a resident was bring my mother to the land of the free. So I filed the papers and gave up the last physical symbol of being an Afghan—my green afghan passport; now I was an American, bearer of a much coveted blue passport.

  After I had filed immigration papers to bring Mamai to Portland and her request for a visa to the United States was approved, Najiba flew to Peshawar to collect her.

  The night she wa
s due to arrive, Greg and I were sitting in the living room of the town house in Portland where I lived with Khalid and Najiba, finishing our tea. This was before my siblings and I bought a house, in which we hoped Mamai would feel more at home, as if that were possible. Greg’s son, Riley, was playing an elaborate private game with his Transformers in front of the TV. I took my teacup to the sink and picked up my purse and keys. I said I had to go to the airport to pick up my mother and needed to say good night.

  “Okay, let me get Riley. We’ll all go,” Greg said.

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” I said.

  “You’re not going to tell her about me, are you?”

  “Not right away,” I replied. I went up to where he was sitting next to Riley and gave him a hug to reassure him. “Don’t jump to conclusions. I just don’t think she’s ready for the culture shock. This isn’t the same as my meeting your mom. She doesn’t even know what a boyfriend is and she doesn’t know for sure that I have one.”

  “All right.” I could hear the uncertainty in his voice. Greg was accommodating to a fault; it was his best and worst quality, the quality I both cherished and held against him. He told Riley they needed to go. I watched him place his hands on his small son’s shoulders. I watched the way he carefully handled the toys. “I’ll do what you ask of me,” he said, looking away. “But I’m afraid things are going to change here. I wouldn’t be able to handle not seeing you every day.”

  I bit my lip, said nothing, and tried not to be irritated. Like the drama with my uncles, this had nothing to do with Greg, with us. I was trying to give my mother—whom I hadn’t seen or spoken to in years—time to get acclimated to this entirely new land and way of living. I remembered how it felt the first time I walked out of a U.S. airport, into, well, all that is America.