We discussed this highly taboo subject on the radio in an open and frank manner, but for some of my male Afghan colleagues in London and Afghanistan it was too much. They criticised both the programme and me for being too westernised and decadent. Some even made crude jokes about the fact that we had mentioned the word ‘vagina’ on the radio. The curious thing is, though, they kept on listening to the programme.
There was a handful of male and female colleagues, however, who congratulated me on the programme, saying that it was the first time they had heard this taboo subject being discussed so openly and informatively. When the interview with the doctor was aired I prayed that Ilaha’s husband’s family might hear it. I never heard anything more about Ilaha, though.
As a journalist, the search for stories is relentless. On Afghan Woman’s Hour we actively ask listeners to contact our reporters on the ground with their stories, so I sometimes had to make trips to Afghanistan to train the Afghan Woman’s Hour team there.
One day back in 2008 I was working at the BBCWorld Service’s office in Kabul when a woman came to see me. We were able to speak alone in the newsroom because all the other reporters were out on stories. Let us call her Gulalai. She was about thirty years old and had three children. She had a large frame in which she seemed to carry a burden heavier than her body. Gulalai wore fashionable western clothes and make-up, and arrived wearing a coat rather than a burqa. She was an educated woman who taught in a girls’ school; her husband was an engineer. Her family lived in Kabul and was prosperous, but she told me that she had been a breadwinner for longer than her husband because she had found a job sooner than him. For a while, she had been the only one who was employed, whilst also looking after the children and doing all the housework. Despite all her achievements, however, a memory from more than fifteen years ago still hurt her deeply. She had been made to feel as though she had committed a crime, and therefore suffered terribly, for something she hadn’t actually done. Gulalai spoke with tears in her large brown eyes.
‘I was seventeen when I got married. My husband was a lot older than me and had studied in France and Iran. I remember being very scared on the night of my wedding. I didn’t know what sex was, or even what relations between a man and a woman were, but I did remember something that my auntie had told me as I was leaving for my in-laws. She had said that when the night of my marriage came, I should use the handkerchief in my bag that she had made for me. When I asked her what the handkerchief was for, she said, “You’ll know when it’s night-time and you’re alone with your husband.”
‘But I still didn’t understand; I was too young. The first night I didn’t let my husband touch me. I cried and said that I was scared, and he got angry but said he would wait until the second night of the marriage.’ Gulalai’s tears were flowing fast as a river, full of pain, despite the passage of time. ‘Dear Zari, it hurts when I talk about it.’ I comforted her and told her not to worry and that I understood.
I had found my husband to be a kind man, but I felt that he had forgotten his kindness and was thinking only about sleeping with me. I was powerless to resist and so he had sex with me and I bled, but as I wanted to be clean I then went to the toilet and wiped between my legs with tissue paper. I threw the paper soaked with my blood into the toilet, and flushed it away, but when I went back to the bedroom he asked, ‘What did you do with the handkerchief?’ Then when I asked him which one he meant, he said, ‘Your mother must have told you; you’ve got to keep the handkerchief with your blood on it as my mother will be asking for it tomorrow.’ I told him that I had used a tissue to clean the blood away and then flushed it down the toilet, and although he didn’t say anything in response I could see he was starting to get worried. At that stage, though, I wasn’t too concerned because I was ignorant of the tradition surrounding the bloodied handkerchief. But although my husband seemed pleased that his wife was a virgin – reassuring me he was happy I was a pure woman – he did warn me that I would have some questions to answer. I still didn’t get it; I just didn’t understand what he meant. I was an innocent, young girl who did not realise that the absence of my virginal blood on a handkerchief would scar me all my married life.
Not long afterwards, though, I understood what my husband meant, as early one morning my mother-in-law came to my room and asked for a sign of my virginity: ‘Show me where the handkerchief with your blood is?’ I told her the truth about what had happened, but she didn’t believe me. ‘What will I tell the women who are waiting to see it? What will I say to the other members of the family?’
I didn’t know what to say and my husband remained silent. Then that evening my mother-in-law came to the house again and asked my husband, ‘What should we do now? It’s a disgrace. Your wife has dishonoured us.’
Luckily my husband replied, ‘No, she hasn’t shamed us. She’s proved her purity to me so I don’t want anyone to ask either of us about it again.’
I don’t know what my mother-in-law wanted to do to me – maybe she wanted to send me back to my parents’ home or maybe she even wanted to kill me. But after she had left my husband turned on me, saying, ‘You’ve made a big mistake. You may have proved yourself to me but you have not done so to my family. People will gossip about you and it won’t be easy.’
I pleaded with him to help me, but perhaps he had already realised that this was a good way to control me. For years afterwards my mother-in-law would say that her family had bought a bride who was not a virgin, and complain that they had never seen a sign of virginal blood from me. She would call me a liar. I went into a deep depression hearing these accusations hurled at me again and again. I tried to commit suicide twice but was not successful. The third time I stopped when I found out I was pregnant.
I am now the mother of three children, but my husband’s family still talk about how I was not a virgin when I married because I was unable to display the ‘sign’. I keep asking my husband, why after fifteen years does his family keep tormenting me with this same question? Will they ever let the subject drop? Was it not enough that I suffered on my wedding night, rather than enjoying becoming a woman? I feel as though I have been taken to court for a serious crime, yet it is a crime that I didn’t commit. In response to my anguish my husband tells me to thank God that I found a man who did not kick me out and who was able to accept me as his wife.
My mother-in-law still tells me to keep my distance when socialising with the girls who come to the house to see her other sons. I hear her saying, ‘We never saw her sign; she never had one. We brought a shameful woman into the family so you girls be careful, and don’t mess around. You must be virgins when you marry, otherwise you will end up like her.’
Gulalai began to cry, shouting that she didn’t know what to do and that there were still times when she wished she was dead and even felt such hatred towards her mother-in-law that she wished her dead. She had three healthy children yet was still unhappy. But she also said that when she’d heard Ilaha’s story she had felt a kind of relief.
‘I thought you were talking about my life, not Ilaha’s. I hope other people – and particularly women – listen to these stories and become kinder to their own sex.’
Gulalai and I then said goodbye to each other, but as she left I felt like shouting after her, ‘Wait! Gulalai, hear my story! I have a life story too!’ I had spent so much time reporting on other women’s stories that I suddenly felt the need to share my own, and the pain inside me was bursting to come out. But now was not the time. When Gulalai and I parted my eyes were full of tears and I suspect she thought they were for her. I wanted to tell her, though, that no matter where an Afghan woman lives, Afghan society and its culture will always treat her in the same way.
Ilaha couldn’t escape her predicament because she was a poor, uneducated woman with no job in Afghanistan. Gulalai had an education and a professional job but she couldn’t divorce her husband either or she would lose her children, and the stain of divorce would remain on her family’s name, her
children’s name and her name for ever. Ilaha and Gulalai remind me of myself on my wedding night, as I was also very ignorant about what to expect. My parents and teachers had told me very little about it, and all I knew about sex from discussing it with friends was that the man would do something to me, that it would hurt and I would bleed from my vagina. Meanwhile my older sister had told me that if I wanted to avoid getting pregnant I should go to the doctor and get some ‘anti-baby’ pills. I had also been warned by everyone I knew that if a bride does not bleed after she has sex for the first time with her husband, then her life thereafter will be hell.
One of my schoolfriends had also reminded me of an Afghan tradition which maintains that as a virgin – and therefore a pure and clean woman – whatever I was to ask of God on my wedding day would be given to me.
‘It’s your Nikkah time so you should pray now,’ she had said, and I had raised both hands with my palms held upwards towards God and prayed, ‘God, please make sure I bleed; that’s the only wish I have. I don’t want money or a big house to live in – I just want this blood.’
I was not able to relax and enjoy the wedding, as I was too worried about when to take the ‘anti-baby’ pills. The doctor had told me it was important to take them at the same time every day, but I wasn’t wearing a watch and my husband refused to tell me what time it was (I think he suspected why I wanted to know). In the end I had to ask a small boy, only to find that I was more than two hours late taking the pills. At nine o’clock in the evening, a traditional Afghan meal of rice, kebabs, koftas and manto was served to everyone and as I was feeling weak and tired by then, I ate the food. After dinner, a singer began a romantic Afghan song and I started crying as I realised what I had got myself into. When my father saw my tears he got angry with me, but I still wept when I said goodbye to the guests. One female guest offered me a tissue with the advice that ‘every woman goes through this’.
My husband and I did not get to bed until five o’clock in the morning. The wedding party had gone on for many hours and then there was some difficulty finding the key to our room at Javed’s parents’ house. Sitting alone on a chair in the corner of his mother’s bedroom wearing my white wedding dress, I gazed at the cream polyester sheets on the bed and was frightened at the prospect of what was going to happen. I took off my make-up and had a shower, as it was July and I was hot and sweaty. I then changed into a white silky nightdress that my mother had bought me especially for my wedding night and went back to the corner of the room. Javed was still downstairs with his male friends. He arrived later smelling of alcohol and cigarettes, took off the black wedding suit my parents had bought for him and brushed his teeth in his vest and underpants. He asked why I was sitting in the corner of the room, and I told him I was scared. He said I shouldn’t be frightened, hugged me and led me to the bed. Without another word, he started kissing me and caressing my breasts, even though I’d crossed my arms over them because of the hungry way he was coming at me.
After a few minutes he told me to open my legs, but I held them shut with my hands. He pushed them open and told me to relax and said that this was how it happens, before asking where the handkerchief was. I told him I was not sure but that I thought it might be under the pillow, as my elder sister had told me she’d put it there. Javed found it, put it on the bed and said we had to have sex on the handkerchief to catch the blood. When my husband penetrated me my legs began shaking uncontrollably. He told me not to worry. Despite the pain and fear, I did not bleed that night. We both searched frantically on the handkerchief for blood but there was none. God was not kind to me, even on my wedding night.
I remember him saying, ‘Oh no, there’s no blood!’
I said, ‘Maybe you haven’t done it properly.’
He began again and it still hurt. After a while, he groaned. I felt something wet between my legs and a few seconds later he stopped. We both inspected the handkerchief again for blood, but there still wasn’t any. He looked at me, expecting an answer.
‘Maybe I’m different and I don’t bleed,’ I said.
He said, ‘You should do if you’re a virgin.’
I cried and said, ‘I don’t know what has happened. This is my first time and you just have to believe me. There’s nothing else I can say.’ Then I started sobbing and suggested we do it again. He told me to relax and go to sleep, but I lay awake feeling anxious and guilty because I hadn’t been able to please him. I was also worried about what his relatives would think. Although he hadn’t said anything, I could see he no longer trusted me. I knew I was a virgin when I married him, but I had not been able to prove it by bleeding, and as a result my married life had begun with my husband failing to trust me. Whenever he spoke unkindly to me after that I thought it was because he didn’t believe I’d been a virgin on our wedding night.
And so my married life began with me constantly trying to please my husband as a way of making up for not being able to prove my virginity. I worked hard to provide for both of us; I cooked him his favourite meals and washed and ironed all his clothes, yet I received no love or encouragement in return. I soon began to feel old and ugly and started spending less and less time in our flat and more time at my parents’ house. Even with my education and the support of my relatively liberal family, I had never thought to question the Afghan traditions surrounding marriage and virginity. I had always heard that Afghan women must be virgins when they marry, but no one had ever said anything about men being virgins, so I had this idea that it was down to women to prove their virginity.
Who should I blame for the nights I have cried myself to sleep? Myself, Javed or my mother who never told me properly about sexual relations between a husband and wife? I now ask myself why I went through all that pain and worry on my wedding night, and why I didn’t once ask of my husband: ‘I know you’ve slept with other women before marrying me, so what gives you the right to check up on me?’
I know now that Afghan women feel the same, whether you are Ilaha in a village, Gulalai in Kabul or Zarghuna in London. The women who blame you for not bleeding on your wedding night have been told by their mothers and their grandmothers that clean and good women bleed. It is the sign of a woman’s purity. I know from my experience that Afghan families do not discuss women’s feelings. If their son starts chasing girls – following them home from school, writing them notes – then they are proud because it shows that their son is becoming a man. But no one knows when their daughter becomes a woman and no one helps her. How can a girl who does not even know what a period is understand what sex is? Has any young bride ever dared to ask for information or advice? Can she ask her mother or her mother-in-law? A girl like Ilaha could not ask such questions.
A girl who bleeds on her wedding night is fortunate indeed, and the pride of her mother-in-law, her parents, her husband and the whole family. Bleeding is not just a sign of virginity, it also guarantees the future family life of the young bride, for a girl who does not bleed is not considered to be a virgin, and she must start married life with the worry that she might be kicked out of her in-laws’ home or usurped by a second wife.
Girls are kept like dolls in the corner of the house. If they are sent to school they are taught to see this as a big favour; if they are given the same food as their brothers they have the best parents, and if they are bought new clothes then they have the best family.
Anesa’s Story
In Afghanistan, a wedding represents the creation of a new family, and the family is the single most important institution in that society, providing economic security in times of hardship in a way that the state is unable to do. For example, wherever they are in the world, Afghans will send money to help their less fortunate relatives. They will even help them get jobs. This is seen as fulfilling family responsibility rather than nepotism. The family unit can be quite large, and sometimes includes three or four generations living together. Marriages are often arranged between cousins to keep the kinship intact. Afghan society is held together by fami
lies – family loyalties are very strong – and weddings represent that coming together. And the more lavish the wedding the better, since this shows everyone your wealth and status.
Weddings are an even bigger affair in villages where traditional values hold greater sway. Hundreds of people are invited – the whole village must be included – but men and women are entertained separately, which, in effect, doubles the cost. Parents save hard for their sons’ weddings. New clothes will be required for all family members, sheep and cows will be kept and then slaughtered especially for the occasion and gold jewellery will be bought in advance for the bride. The bride’s family, on the other hand, has few responsibilities. They are respected if they don’t ask for money for their daughter, but it is a common practice to receive a large sum of money, which some Afghan women see as a show of respect for the new in-laws. Sometimes the amount is so large that the groom’s family has to borrow the money from relatives and can remain in debt for years.
Weddings are generally celebrated in a similar way throughout Afghanistan but there are some regional differences, and working on Afghan Woman’s Hour helped me discover the roots of some of these traditions. Every day at work I’d be sent new material from across Afghanistan. I learnt that there are many similar customs amongst Pashtuns, Hazaras, Uzbeks and Tajiks. At the same time, I found that in some regions there are families who won’t accept any money for their daughters and will celebrate the wedding in a far simpler style. The reporters and I decided to make a series of special programmes about the wedding customs of people around Afghanistan. Why, for example, did brides in the north wear white clothes, while in the south Pashtun areas they wear red?
Dear Zari: Hidden Stories from Women of Afghanistan Page 12
