The Dressmaker of Khair Khana

by Gayle Tzemach Lemmon

  When Mahbooba asked, "Will you join us?" Kamila didn't have to think about her answer. "Oh, yes," she replied. "I'm definitely interested." But she paused for a moment, then added, "I have to speak with my sisters first. I'm not sure how Malika Jan will feel about it since we already have so much work here at home."

  Mahbooba heard the hesitation in Kamila's voice; she knew from Kamila's cousin Rukhsana that Malika was the eldest in the house now, and that Kamila would need to defer to her will. She ramped up her pitch.

  "Kamila Jan, of course there are risks, but this program is really making a difference. It's almost all that's left out there for women now; you know that. When we announce that we're starting an income-generation program for one hundred people, do you know how many women show up to wait in line for hours, even on the coldest days of winter? Four hundred, sometimes five hundred. Each winter we run emergency relief programs and we cannot even come close to meeting the enormity of the need. Not one woman we've spoken with has yet said no to working with us. I know from your cousin and I can see from your work that you are not one to turn down an opportunity to serve our community and to share all the business skills you've learned."

  Kamila assured the women that she would take to heart everything they had said and that she considered it an honor even to be considered for such a post with so prestigious an organization. After all, she was just a girl from Khair Khana and here was a chance to be part of a program led by professionals in Japan and Switzerland and the United States, at a time when her country was entirely cut off from the rest of the world.

  "I promise I'll get back to you in just a few days," she told her visitors as she helped them on with their coats and chadri and walked them to her gate. "Thank you for coming."

  As soon as they had left, Kamila collapsed on a pillow to think about everything the women had said. She was amazed that Habitat was managing to create opportunities at a time when it seemed that every door for women was closing. And she couldn't imagine saying no to this chance, given the miserable state of her city. Besides, wasn't this exactly what she and her father had discussed only weeks ago--helping as many people as she could? Didn't she have his blessing to do precisely this sort of work? She knew she could learn so much from the women who ran the forums and the foreigners who led Habitat. And surely she would make connections in this new job that would only help her family. With her cousins already working there, Malika and her parents couldn't raise too many objections, could they?

  Later that evening, just after dinner, Kamila went to find her older sister to tell her all about what had happened that afternoon.

  She found Malika still at work, sitting next to her babies' wooden crib sewing a seam on a burgundy dress that Kamila had been admiring for days.

  "That is just so beautiful," she said. "I'm ready to order one for myself!"

  "Thank you," said Malika, looking up at her sister and laughing. "How are you? We haven't spoken all day; it's been so busy!"

  "Malika Jan," Kamila began, "there's something I want to discuss with you--it's about the visit we had today from Rahela and Rukhsana's colleagues, Mahbooba and Hafiza. They are working here with UN Habitat; you know, the group Rahela works with in the north? Anyway, they are starting a new Community Forum in Kabul that will offer classes for girls and jobs programs for women."

  Kamila paused for a moment and took a breath in, aware that her sister was no longer smiling.

  "They want me to join them," she went on. "I would help with home business projects like sewing and knitting and carpet making. It's a bit like what we've been doing here, but on a smaller scale."

  Kamila's hopes that her sister would be as thrilled as she was to hear the news were quickly dashed; it was clear from Malika's face that she was anything but. Malika stared at the wall beyond Kamila and inhaled deeply, trying to calm her nerves the way she did whenever she was upset.

  "Are you serious about this, Kamila Jan?" she asked. She spoke in a low and carefully controlled tone of pained disappointment. Kamila could tell that her sister was trying to hold back her anger, but she feared Malika was on the verging of losing it as her voice began to rise. "Do you know the punishment for girls who get caught working with foreigners? They get thrown in prison, or even worse. Do you know that? What could you possibly be thinking?"

  Kamila answered in a measured and respectful tone, hoping to cool her sister's ire. She did not want to fight with her about this, but she had no intention of giving in. It was like her fight to attend Sayed Jamaluddin during the civil war all over again.

  "Malika Jan, this is important," she said. "This is an opportunity to support a lot of women, women who have no place else to turn." Kamila paused for a second, marshaling the points in her argument.

  "And it's a chance for me and for our family. I need to learn more and I want to work with professional people. I have to think about my future. I was never meant to be a tailor; you know that. It's the business and the management that I'm good at, that I really enjoy."

  Kamila's short speech only made Malika more unhappy. She saw now that her younger sister was determined to go forward with this mad idea, and Malika was willing to do anything she could to stop her.

  "Kamila Jan, if it's money you need, we have it," Malika said. "Our family is doing okay; we have plenty of work. I'll make sure that you get whatever it is that you want. But you cannot take this job. If something happens, I am responsible for you. Our parents are not here and it will be on my head. We don't need your salary and we definitely don't need the problems this job will surely bring."

  Kamila started to answer, but her sister wasn't finished. Her face flushed with indignation.

  "What do you think will happen to me, to your other sisters, if you are caught? And to my husband, the father of these twins? They punish the men in the family, too, you know. Are you willing to put all of us at risk? In the name of your family and all that is sacred"--she finished by pleading to Kamila with words that forbade defiance--"do not take this job."

  For a moment they sat in silence, locked in their unhappy standoff. Kamila hated that she had upset someone she loved so dearly, but Malika's opposition had only toughened Kamila's resolve by showing her the stakes of this decision. Her life was about more than her own safety.

  "I have to," Kamila said, looking down at the floor, and then at the twins, anywhere but at her sister. She just could not believe that Malika, who had supported her through every trial she had faced for the past twenty-one years, was refusing to back her now. "God will help me because I am going to help my community. I put my life in the hands of Allah and I am sure he will keep me safe because this is work for his people. I must do this. I hope you'll understand one day."

  She was halfway out of the room before she offered the final words of the conversation--heated ones she immediately regretted.

  "If something does happen to me, I promise I will not come to you to get me out of it," she said. "It will be my responsibility."

  One week later, Kamila began working in District 10's Community Forum. Her salary was ten dollars a month. Kamila studied her Habitat leaflets every night and committed to memory Habitat's founding principles about the importance of leadership, consensus, and transparency. She also received her first formal lessons in bookkeeping. Habitat closely tracked the $9,900 that the UN provided to fund each new forum, and one of Kamila's tasks was to help detail how every production section dollar had been spent.

  In time, Kamila herself began to teach a class on the Holy Q'uran in addition to her work running tailoring programs for women. Each morning, packs of students tiptoed excitedly through the foyer, working hard not to succumb to their enthusiasm and break the rules with loud shouts or giggles. It had stunned Kamila to hear through the Khair Khana grapevine that several Afghan girls she knew who had fled to Pakistan had lost interest in their studies. Now that it had been taken away, Kabuli girls of every age understood exactly how precious education really was.

  Many
of the students' families struggled to afford the small fee the forum charged for its classes, and some had no money for even one pencil or a few sheets of paper. But the women in charge found a way to make the donated books last longer and to use and reuse the provisions they had. The children shared everything.

  Growing the home business projects remained Kamila's favorite part of the job. At the Community Forum headquarters she and her colleagues ran training sessions on the basics of tailoring and quilting. Afterward they would deliver fabric, thread, and needles to women in the Taimani section of Kabul, returning days later to pick up the sweaters and blankets the women had made.

  These outings gave Kamila a close-up view of Kabul's poverty. She saw families of seven or even twelve people forced to survive for days on boiled water and a few old potatoes; she knew women who had sold the windows of their homes to feed their children. Some desperate parents she met had sent their little girls and boys, as small as eight and nine, to Pakistan to work. No one knew if they'd ever see them again. She grew even more committed to the Community Forums' efforts. With all this despair crippling her city, who was she not to do her part?

  Soon, Habitat managers asked Kamila and her District 10 colleague Nuria to help with several other forums as well. An experienced teacher and an expert accountant who had finished her studies at Sayed Jamaluddin several years ahead of Kamila, Nuria supported her father and two nephews on her Habitat salary. Each morning, regardless of the cold or the rain, she and Kamila shared the forty-minute walk along the back roads to their center in Taimani, discussing their lessons for the day and ideas for future projects, including a women's center that Mahbooba had suggested they help develop.

  Families showed their gratitude for the forum's presence by protecting the women as much as they could. "Tell Nuria and Kamila a new Talib is patrolling the neighborhood; they should be extra careful this morning," the father of one of her students whispered early one morning to a little girl who answered the school's door. He had come running over to warn the women as soon as word of the neighborhood's new minder had reached him. Kamila, Nuria, and three dozen little girls spent the next half hour huddled together on the drafty floor in total silence while the Talib knocked again and again on their door, until at last, hearing nothing, the soldier gave up and moved on. An hour later, once Kamila could convince her heart to stop racing, classes were back up and running.

  Everyone, it seemed, had learned how to adapt. And that held for Kamila's house, too. With their sister spending most of her time at the Community Forum, Saaman and Laila had taken over the day-to-day management of the business, naturally assuming the new roles they had been preparing for. Kamila knew the girls could handle the work, but she was delighted to see how easily they took charge of teaching the students and fulfilling all their contracts. Kamila still went to Lycee Myriam most weeks to do the marketing. She also kept for herself the task of visiting Mandawi Bazaar, whose shopkeepers preferred not to place orders in advance but to sift through the dresses Kamila and Rahim brought them and purchase the ones they liked. The downtown bazaar was too far from Khair Khana for her younger sisters to make the trip, Kamila decided, and she refused to let them take the risk of getting caught on their own, far from home. She and Rahim were used to such work and Kamila wanted to keep it that way.

  As for Kamila's own protective older sister, things had improved--but only slowly. The weeks immediately following the fight with Malika had been painful, filled with a wordless tension that Kamila found difficult to bear. She missed her sister intensely and craved the advice and encouragement she had relied upon her whole life. She ached with the strange sensation of having lost a loved one she still saw every day.

  At last Malika came to Kamila after overhearing her tell the girls about a District 10 embroidery project one evening as the girls were wrapping up their work. For the first time, she seemed resigned to Kamila's decision, though she was still clearly far from being at peace with it.

  "Just promise me that you will be discreet and keep your work hidden; don't carry any UN papers or Community Forum forms they could find if they search your bag," she said. She had waited until the younger girls had gone to bed and the two of them were sitting alone in the living room, near Kamila's old sewing station. Kamila detected the lingering note of disappointment in her sister's voice, but concern and love clearly predominated. "And if you have to carry money around the city to pay the women you work with, then take Rahim and get a taxi for goodness' sake. I know that you know what you are doing and that you think all the tailoring work has taught you how to move around the city as if you're nearly invisible, but remember that they only have to catch you once to destroy everything. Your name, your family, your life. Everything. Don't trust anyone other than your colleagues, and never talk about your work in public, even if you think you are the only ones on the street. Be careful all the time: don't ever let your guard down and get comfortable, even for a moment, because that's all it takes for them to arrest you. Okay?"

  Kamila wanted to speak but the words failed to come. She nodded her head, over and over, and hugged her sister tightly.

  And she prayed she would be able to keep her promise.

  9

  Danger in the Night Sky

  Loud voices jolted Kamila from her sleep. In a fog she pulled herself upright and found herself sitting on the worn vinyl seat of an old Pakistani-made bus. "We are on the way to Peshawar," she remembered, now almost fully awake and realizing the bus was no longer moving. Something must be wrong. . . .

  It had been nearly four years since another bus ride had taken Kamila, with her new diploma in hand, from Sayed Jamaluddin back to her home in Khair Khana on the day the Taliban arrived. Kamila thought about it often--how much had happened since then. She and her sisters had lived through so much, and she was no longer a nervous teenager preparing to teach school. Now she was an entrepreneur and a community leader with the Women's Community Forum program, and she was on her way to a training session in Peshawar hosted by her international bosses: Samantha, the unrelenting head of UN Habitat who had battled both her own superiors as well as the Taliban to keep the Community Forums running; and Anne, who headed Habitat's programs in Kabul. There would be other foreigners there, too, teaching the Community Forum workers such as herself classes in leadership, management, and business skills. It was an extraordinary opportunity to meet and exchange ideas with talented Habitat women who worked all around Afghanistan. Gathering everyone together in Kabul was impossible given the Taliban's rules, so the women were traveling to Pakistan, where the UN had moved much of its Afghan staff.

  Shouts again interrupted Kamila's thoughts.

  Through the window of her chadri, Kamila watched as a young Talib yelled questions at Hafiza, her traveling companion and Habitat colleague. Sitting next to Hafiza was Seema, another Community Forum organizer on their team. The soldier, Kamila assumed, must have boarded the bus at the government checkpoint on the edge of Jalalabad while she was dozing.

  "Where are you coming from?" the Talib shouted. "Who is your mahram? Where is he? Show him to me."

  Not only were the women riding to Pakistan without a mahram but they were headed to a meeting hosted by foreigners who worked for the United Nations. Relations between the Taliban and international agencies in Afghanistan had worsened steadily during the past few months, and the Amr bil-Maroof was again warning that Afghan women were not to be employed by foreign aid organizations. If the angry Talib now questioning Seema found out about their jobs, there would be big problems for them all.

  Kamila sat quietly, thinking through every possible scenario that might help them escape the trouble they were in. Her years of visiting the shops at Lycee Myriam and Mandawi Bazaar with Rahim had taught her there was usually a way out of such situations if she could find the right words. A few weeks earlier a member of the Vice & Virtue forces bounded into Ali's store just as Kamila was unwrapping the dresses the shopkeeper had ordered. Thinking fast on her
feet she explained to the soldier that she was here visiting Ali, a member of her family. "Thank you very much for checking on us; my relatives and I appreciate all the hard work that you and your brothers are doing to keep our city safe. We have great respect for the Amr bil-Maroof," Kamila had told the soldier. "I've just come to see my cousin here to try to sell a few dresses to support my brothers and sisters at home." The soldier looked almost persuaded but not quite. "Now surely you have more important work to do to find real lawbreakers and keep this neighborhood free of danger and dishonor for all of us, no?" In the end, that seemed to satisfy him and he left her with a warning to "be careful" to speak only with men in her family and to get back home right away, as quickly as possible. "Women should not be out on the streets." Ali remained silent and terrified throughout the exchange, and he asked Kamila afterward how she had dared to speak like that to a Talib. Her answer showed how much she had learned during the years of visits to Lycee Myriam with Rahim: "If I didn't speak to him like a brother," Kamila replied, "he would have been sure we were guilty of doing something wrong, which we were not. You are like my family and we are only trying to work on our family's behalf. If I did not explain myself, there could have been problems for you and me and Rahim." Experiences like this had taught her that many of the men who now worked for the government could be reasoned with as long as one was polite, firm, and respectful.

  So far, she now observed, the soldier on the bus was still talking to them, and that was a good sign. If things got quiet, then they were in real danger.

  Just then Seema pointed toward a middle-aged man who was sitting a few rows behind her.

  "He is our mahram," she said, leaning her covered head toward a bearded gentleman who had a kindly, open face that suddenly went tense with fear.