The Dressmaker of Khair Khana

by Gayle Tzemach Lemmon

  Despite all the gains they had made--the orders from the market, the school, the flourishing little business they had built--their lives were as precarious as everyone else's in Kabul. They were just kids trying to survive another year of war together with no parents to watch over them. All that protected them right now was their faith--and a green metal gate that kept the world outside at bay.

  No, it wasn't fine at all. But the only thing Kamila could do now was to keep going. And to keep working. For all of their sakes.

  7

  An Unexpected Wedding Party

  The babies had been crying all night. Sleepless, overworked, and worried about the health of her twin girls, Malika was tempted to collapse onto her thick red pillow near the wooden crib and join them in their tears. But she had no time for such indulgences. The infants were feverish and colicky; as soon as it opened at 2 P.M. she would take them upstairs to Dr. Maryam's clinic.

  "Bachegak, bachegak"--little baby, little baby--"please, I promise it will be okay," Malika whispered as she scooped both babies into a tight embrace and walked them around the room, trying to lull them to sleep. The tiny newborn twins had arrived nearly two months ahead of their due date and had struggled to gain weight and strength ever since. They remained weak and sickly, their small bodies battling diarrhea and what seemed like an endless series of infections. Malika had been lucky to find a female doctor in time to assist her premature delivery; these days most women gave birth in their bedrooms without the benefit of professional help. Of course it wasn't guaranteed that making it to a hospital would improve an expectant mother's chances; the civil war had destroyed most medical facilities, and combatants on all sides had stripped hospitals bare of equipment and supplies. Patients had to fill their own prescriptions and even had to bring their own food.

  With the Taliban in power, doctors in Kabul could once again go to work without fear of rocket attacks, but female doctors--those who hadn't fled the country when the Taliban took Kabul--faced an entirely new set of problems. The Taliban had ordered hospitals, like every other institution, to be segregated by gender, with women physicians restricted to treating female patients and working in female-only wards. They were not allowed to work with--let alone consult--their male colleagues. Foreign aid organizations were still wrestling with the question of how much support to offer the Taliban, particularly given their policies toward women, so help had been slow to reach the nation's hospitals. As a result, doctors and surgeons regularly worked without even the basics such as clean water, bandages, and antiseptics. Anesthesia was a luxury. Along with most other women in Kabul, Malika now had no choice but to seek treatment from one of the very few women doctors who had chosen to remain in the capital. Dr. Maryam, like many of her colleagues, ran a private clinic in addition to her hospital work in order to help support her family.

  Malika arrived at the doctor's office early and for good reason; within thirty minutes, a crowd of women had filled the austere waiting room, with many standing against the walls holding infants in their arms. Demand for Dr. Maryam's services had grown so great in the last few months she had hired an assistant who handed out a numbered piece of paper to each woman as she entered the office. Malika waited patiently for her number to be called. She fixed her gaze on the peeling paint that curled along the old walls; she prayed for the twins' health and wondered how she would pay for whatever medicine they might need for their latest affliction.

  Stepping into the treatment room at last, Malika kissed the doctor hello and stepped aside so she could begin the examination. Dr. Maryam's specialty was pediatrics, and in her presence the worried mother felt her shoulders slacken and her jaw unclench for the first time in hours. The doctor examined first one baby, then the other, with a natural confidence that came from decades of experience. As a child, Dr. Maryam had dreamt of becoming a doctor, and her parents, neither of whom had any formal education, worked relentlessly to help their daughter realize her goal. She left her rural village for college at the start of the Russian occupation, and the local Mujahideen came to Maryam's father to complain that his daughter was attending Kabul University's medical school. They suggested, rifles in hand, that a Soviet-backed school was no place for a respectable girl, and that her family must be full of sympathizers who supported the Russian invaders. In response her father made a deal: he would supply them with as much wheat as they wanted, at no charge, if they would leave his daughter alone to continue her studies. He ended up having to sell much of his family's farmland to finance Maryam's university education, but he never complained; the Mujahideen got their wheat and his daughter got her medical degree.

  After completing her studies, Dr. Maryam worked for more than a decade at Kabul Women's Hospital and eventually rose to a senior position supervising its new doctors. At the same time she raised two children with her husband, a scientist by training who now owned a pharmacy not far from her clinic in Khair Khana.

  Once the Taliban arrived, of course, everything changed. The new government installed its own men inside the hospital and charged them with overseeing everything that went on. They regularly burst into the women's ward to make certain that no men were present and that female doctors remained veiled while treating the sick who had come to see them. Tall in stature with a self-assured, almost regal bearing, Maryam could not easily abide being told what she could or couldn't do when it came to caring for her patients, and she found it impossible to keep her feelings to herself. She chafed at the new restrictions and voiced her frustration to her colleagues, one of whom informed upon her. Senior Taliban officials didn't take kindly to being questioned by anyone, let alone a woman, and Dr. Maryam was now regularly watched by the government's soldiers; they monitored her every move.

  Despite these difficulties, Maryam maintained a schedule that impressed even Malika and Kamila. Each day she worked from 8 A.M. until 1 P.M. at the hospital before returning to Khair Khana to treat patients at her clinic, sometimes staying well into the night to see the very last woman who needed her care. Like Kamila and her sisters, she refused to turn any woman away. Most of her patients suffered from malnutrition because they couldn't afford to buy food. But depression was also running rampant, debilitating former teachers, lawyers, and civil servants who now felt powerless and full of despair, with nothing to do and nowhere to go. Many of them turned to Dr. Maryam for advice and comfort, as well as the opportunity to escape their homes.

  Now, standing in her examining room with one hand around each tiny baby, the doctor turned her attention to their mother.

  "I don't know who I'm more worried about, Malika: you or your girls," she said. "Are you sleeping at all? It certainly doesn't appear so. I know you're taking care of the entire family, but you must get some rest." Her tone was calm but stern as she looked at her third patient. "You will do no one any good if you collapse."

  Malika stared down at the carpet, trying to beat back the tears. She thought about her husband, her boys, her sick twins, her customers, her sisters, all the people who counted on her. In that instant she felt perfectly alone, unable to share her burden, and with no choice but to simply carry on.

  "Think of all that you've done already," Maryam continued. She handed both babies to Malika and drew her chair near. "You've managed to keep your older boy in school, care for these sick little girls, help your sisters' business, and support your family. None of these are small things and you must certainly not give up now. But you have to take better care of yourself. Otherwise you will be the one I am treating next time, not the babies. Okay?"

  Malika nodded wearily. She embraced the doctor in a big hug before picking up her chadri from its hook on the door and hoisting the twins into her arms once more.

  "I am going to your husband's pharmacy now to fill the prescriptions," Malika said. "And you must be sure to come see me again when you and your nieces are ready for more dresses!"

  Later that evening Malika confided to Kamila that she felt better just from having had a moment of
quiet to confide in someone she trusted about her problems. With dozens of young girls coming to the house every day, she and her sisters had grown much more accustomed to listening to other people's problems than to sharing their own, even with each other. Kamila had been worried about her sister for days and was relieved to hear that the doctor had insisted that she take better care of herself.

  Malika, however, was not the only one to receive a lecture from Dr. Maryam. Kamila too slipped out to see her after several days of feeling sluggish and lightheaded. Maryam warned Kamila that her blood pressure was too low and she needed more rest. But following the doctor's advice was proving difficult for her, too. With orders backing up and a steady stream of new students, she was lucky to sleep more than five hours each night. Even when she finally made it to the bedroom she shared with her sisters, she stayed awake for hours worrying that they wouldn't have enough work the following week and that the girls wouldn't be able to deliver all the orders they already had.

  Kamila had also taken Malika's advice and was pushing the most exceptional girls to develop their own designs and embrace their individual styles. She was finding, however, that while sewing a sample of a new dress was easy enough, churning out a dozen of them all at once required multiple trips to the fabric store and days of work from several seamstresses. Mahnaz had just dreamt up a new pattern in which an elaborate geometry of translucent beads with gold flecks at their center covered a deep purple fabric in yellow and white flowers from the neck to the waistline. Kamila was thrilled with Mahnaz's boldness and creativity, and she loved the design, but she wondered how in the world she had ever agreed to produce so many of these ornate dresses for Hamid in only seven days.

  Kamila decided that if she really wanted to grow her business she would have to invest in it so that they could sew more dresses, faster. "We need machines," she said to Rahim, "and we need them now." With her faithful mahram at her side she went to Lycee Myriam and selected several, including an expensive embroidery apparatus imported from Pakistan and a small new generator that would go in their courtyard. The brother of one their students, Neelufar, had promised he would teach Kamila how to use the embroidery machine if she would teach his sister how to sew. Embroidered dresses sold for a premium, and those extra afghani would certainly help. "With all of this gear," she said to Rahim while he struggled to carry the whole lot back home, "there's no reason we can't triple our orders, don't you think?"

  He only nodded at his sister; he was too focused on steadying the stack of machines to speak.

  One morning shortly after the arrival of the new equipment, Kamila was lost in her work finishing the beading on the last of Mahnaz's purple dresses. Malika sat nearby, wrestling with the folds of a pantsuit, trying to get them to lie just right. At last she noticed their young helper Neelab standing silently at her side. The small girl's eyes focused on a pile of fabric scraps on the floor while she waited for Malika to acknowledge her.

  "Yes, Neelab, sorry, what is it?" she asked the girl.

  "Auntie Malika, there is a family at the door--three ladies and one of them is getting married. They want to see if you can make wedding outfits for the bride."

  The child looked up. "They need the dresses tomorrow."

  Malika thought she had misheard. "Tomorrow?"

  "Yes," the girl answered, "that's what she said."

  These days the few weddings that took place were rarely rush affairs. It took too long to save or borrow the money for a celebration and gather all the guests from the far-flung places they had fled to. Anyway, most potential grooms were either outside Afghanistan or fighting on the front lines.

  "Okay, ask the women to come in," Malika said. "We can see what they need."

  Moments later two young women and their clearly anxious mother hurried into the room.

  "Oh, thank goodness," said the older woman, looking around the crowded workshop at all the girls working and breaking into a tense smile. "This is just the kind of place we have been looking for. My name is Nabila and these are my daughters, Shafiqa and Mashal. Shafiqa is getting married the day after tomorrow and we need to get her dresses made right away. We have been driving around the city all day trying to find a female tailoring shop to take the work, but yours is the first we have found that can make what we need."

  With that, Nabila pulled two bolts of fabric, one green and the other white, from a plastic tote bag.

  "Here is the material," she said, handing the pile to Malika before the seamstress even had a chance to say no. "We really appreciate you getting these dresses done for us so quickly."

  Malika was still a bit dumbfounded, but she smiled anyway and took the fabric.

  Nabila then gestured at the younger girl, Mashal, who quickly disappeared from the room.

  "Okay, yes, of course," Malika said. "We'll do it, though this kind of order would usually require at least a few days. But we've done many wedding dresses before and I think we can manage this. I'll make sure that your daughter's dresses are ready tomorrow evening."

  Malika walked Shafiqa, the bride, down the hall to a makeshift tent made of pale-colored cotton sheets that served as a fitting room. She was a pretty girl of maybe nineteen or twenty, thin and a bit wan, with light eyes and high cheekbones that bisected a narrow, doll-like face. After completing Shafiqa's measurements Malika returned to the living room and found Nabila waiting for her with the other daughter, Mashal. She had apparently reappeared while the bride was getting measured and was standing, somewhat breathlessly, cradling in her arms an even larger bag than her mother's.

  "I am very sorry to trouble you," the mother began, addressing Malika again. "But I see how many girls are sewing here with you and I am wondering if you would be so kind as to make four more dresses for us?" Without waiting for Malika's reply, she reached into the bag and brought out a handful of fabric. "Shafiqa's sisters and I also need gowns for the wedding party. As I said, we haven't been able to find a female tailor anywhere who could handle so many gowns at once. We are really quite desperate since the wedding is only two days away. Do you think you could make all six dresses for us?"

  She passed the bag over to Malika, who was struggling to contain her amazement.

  "You need two wedding dresses and four wedding party gowns made in one day?"

  The woman nodded energetically. She did indeed look desperate.

  Malika stood silent for a moment. This kind of order would normally take at least a week of work. If it was even possible to get this done, which she was not at all sure of, she would need the help of all her sisters and every student in the school. It would have to be all hands on deck, starting as soon as possible. Like now.

  Well, she thought to herself, we wanted more work. . . .

  Malika escorted Nabila to the foyer, where she asked her to wait with the two girls, then hurried back to the living room workshop where Kamila was still absorbed in her beading.

  "Kamila Jan, there is a woman here wanting me to make her six dresses in one day for her daughter's wedding party. Of course I can't do it by myself; I honestly don't even know whether we can get it done all together. It's a huge amount of work. What do you think?"

  Kamila didn't need to think; she dropped the purple fabric and answered immediately and decisively.

  "Yes, of course we can do it. The girls and I will help you. We're nearly finished with this order for Hamid anyway," she said. "We'll get it done--you know we always find a way. Besides, how many times have you rescued us? More times than we can count!"

  "Well, it will be quite an adventure," Malika said, kissing her sister on the cheek in gratitude before returning to her new customers.

  "All of you must come back today, just before six P.M., so your measurements can be taken," she instructed. "Usually we wouldn't ask you to come back at night because of the soldiers and the curfew, but if we're going to work quickly, we'll need your help," she said. "But please make sure not to come late; we don't want you to be on the streets or at our gate at the
time of prayer."

  "Yes, yes, of course, that will be fine," said the mother of the bride, now smiling. "We will see you this evening. And thank you. Thank you so much."

  As soon as the women had gone, the living room began to buzz with activity as Malika called her troops to order and gave directions to each and every one.

  "Okay, girls, we are going to get started on this order and we need all of your help," she began, standing before the students at the front of the living room. "We have seven hours until the women come back. By then we will need to have the shells of each dress ready for them to try on. I will lead the wedding dresses team, and Kamila will be in charge of the gowns for the mother and sisters. Saaman will cut all the fabric and do the stenciling for the embroidery. Laila and Neelab will make sure we have all the supplies we need. Sara Jan will be coming around to make sure everyone understands what they are supposed to be doing. Please don't hesitate for one second to ask any of us a question; we don't have time to make mistakes, and we are all glad to stop what we're doing and help with whatever you need. And if any of you can stay a bit later today, we would very much appreciate it."

  With that, the teams broke off to begin their work. They would work in two stages, starting with the green dress, which Shafiqa would wear during the ceremony in which the bride and groom consented to marriage. Then she and the girls would turn to the white gown, which Shafiqa would wear to greet her guests during the wedding reception afterward. The bride had requested that both frocks be very long and very plain, with only a bare minimum of beading around the neckline and sleeves. It struck Malika as a bit odd, particularly since the bride had seen from the dresses hanging around the workspace what pretty embroidery work the girls could do. "But so much the better," she told the girls. "The handwork would have set us back at least half a day."

  Kamila's group of seamstresses began by unrolling the fabric Nabila had brought and matching each material with the woman who would wear it. She wrote their names on a piece of scrap paper that she then taped to the floor next to each pile of fabric. Once Saaman had cut the material and drawn the patterns for them, the girls went to work in pairs, dividing each bodice and skirt into panels that they could work on separately. When it came time to work on the sleeves, the girls wrote down each customer's arm length and placed it on the table in front of them before starting to run stitches across the top of the fabric in the way that Kamila had taught them. This would make it easier to attach the arms to the rest of the dress later on. The girls made certain to leave extra fabric for the first fitting. As their teachers had told them so many times, it's better for a sleeve to be too long than too short. "Long," the mantra went, "you can always shorten."