September 9, 2007
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I Meet the Women
The following day, Suraia had arranged for me to meet with the women in our project. Initially five women had received loans; as payments were made, two more borrowers were added. An eighth loan will be awarded soon. Four of the women were present that day.
I offered the women some gifts that had been sent from women in New Mexico -- hand crafted jewelry, packets of pretty cards, socks, as well as lipsticks and nail polish. My friend Sarah Teofanov, a talented artist in Farmington who had collected most of these gifts, sent a beautiful beaded "Heart of Compassion" for Suraya. Sarah has been making these beaded hearts since 9-11 as an offering for peace. Suraya loved it.
I had intended to give a little talk about the project and the women in the US who had worked on it, but we were still waiting for two of the other women and a talk did not seem appropriate. But finally we began our conversation because one of the women had to leave, Anis Gul, who had taken the most recent loan. She is probably younger than me but she looks older, missing quite a few teeth and hair practically white under her white scarf. She is married and has --- children and grandchildren. She runs a small farm with her husband in a district outside the city called Kameri. With her loan, she bought a cow for milking and a horse to pull her goods to market. She brought some of her milk with her. Suraia boiled it and served it to everyone in cups. I don't drink milk but managed a little taste. It was rich and good.
With Anis was one of her granddaughters, a plump, pretty teenage girl who chose lipstick and nail polish from the gifts. She does not attend school.
I asked each of the women about their projects, their families, and the future of their business. In particular I wanted to know whether they thought they would be able to carry on after their loans were paid off. Most of them said they believed they could. Although I tried to be as encouraging and friendly as possible, I could see the women felt that they were being examined. Later, I understood that Suraia had said I had come to "check up on the project." That was really never the intent, and I made a point of telling her later that I had really just come to meet them and know a little bit about how life was going on in Kabul. Her whole attitude shifted then, she seemed to decide that I was ok and began extending invitations to lunch and so forth. But until then, she seemed very reserved with me, already making excuses that she was "so busy" she "would not have very much time" to spend with me. As it turned out, that was not the case.
Nasima showed us some lovely silk scarves that she has been selling in her shop since receiving her loan in December. The scarves were dazzling, hand woven by a woman weaver. It takes one day to make each scarf. Does she use natural or synthetic dyes? These are synthetic. I told her that she might consider experimenting with natural dyes; one of our members, Janet Rodina, who has a shop in California called "Silk Moon", buys only textiles made with natural dye. Nasima was very interested in this idea, which was new to her. She spoke English quite well, which really helped. She was clearly a middle class woman, beautifully dressed in a tailored suit. Did she have a family? No, her husband was killed 24 years ago in the war. Her eyes filled with sadness as if this had happened last year. Doubtless she is also sad that she did not have the opportunity to have children. She lives with one of her relatives.
Shaima produces a great range of things -- jewelry, beaded plastic baskets used at wedding parties, clothing and embroidery. She works with an organization for the disabled, and employs a number of disabled people, most of them hit by land mines left behind by the Soviets, or otherwise injured in the wars. She was very interested in the few books and magazines I had brought for them, to give them ideas for their own work. Her whole demeanor speaks of her generosity and compassion for the poor people of her community. She purchased two of Nasima's scarves.
Torpakhy is a large woman, whose warmth and intelligence are as ample as her full bosom. She makes food products she that she sells in the bazaar. Her plastic jars have a colorful label with the name of her business, Barghi Sabz (Green Leaf). She does not have the equipment to sterilize and seal the jars. (Glass jars are not easy to get. Once she ordered some from Iran; they all arrived broken.) She also does not have adequate refrigeration to store her goods, so she takes orders from the shops and produces only enough to fill the orders. She works with several other women in a place they have rented for the purpose. She makes tomato paste, pickles and pickle relish (Achar). She told us that her dream is to have a big Afghan food processing factory and sell her goods all over the world.
The next day, two more women came to see me at the AAWU. Khadija is a beautiful woman with a lovely smile and long grey hair. She makes gorgeous jewelry of polished lapis, amber and other stones, strung together in beaded necklaces or set in silver. She had been working for her nephew, who owns a shop in Chicken Street, Kabul's famous shopping district. Thanks to the loan, she has been able to purchase her own polishing equipment. She makes designs, and her nephew helps her execute them. Instead of working for him, she is now a partner in the business.
Zenab is a teacher who does embroidery. She is raising four children on her own. She makes tablecloths, satin pillowcases, fancy wedding baskets and the like. She sells these and other things bought from other women in the bazaar. She is very skilled and works hard.
I made arrangements to visit the women at their place of work, where I bought some samples to bring back to the United States. I was looking forward to going to Anis Gul's farm in Kamery, but unfortunately Alean's father told me the area was not safe for me to visit. Suraia laughed and said she herself had "no fear"; I am sure this is true. After spending a year in Pul-e Charki prison for her activities, a little trip outside Kabul can hardly be daunting.
But when I suggested a trip to Istalif, a little village famous for its beautiful green and blue glazed pottery that has been restored after being utterly destroyed during the wars, she said that was not a safe for place for me to go. This kind of thing happened several times during my trip, where one person thought an outing was ok and another said it wasn't. One of my fellow travelers at the guest house, an American who was doing his PhD on urban planning in Kabul (!) liked to venture to the ancient bazaar down in the center of town where established merchants and craftsmen sold traditional Afghan goods of every possible type and often high quality. I was dying to ramble around Monde'ye, the bazaar, but though I induced Faisal to take me there on three occasions, he always found some reason not to let me out of the car. "Mrs. Stephanie, it is not safe for you. You see that guy? He is not good kind, very bad. You see him? He is pickpocket. You cannot go there, it is dangerous for you. I go all the time. But it is ok for me, not safe for you." Instead he drove me at a snail's pace down narrow alleys packed with merchants and shoppers (almost all of them male), even causing damage to one of his rear taillights when a wooden push cart banged into it after the car made a sudden stop.
I couldn't even wander around the neighborhood near the guest house. I wanted to walk up to the side of the mountain and view the steep paths up its rocky side. I would have liked to talk to the people I saw in the street, or at least exchange a friendly "salaam." I would have liked to go into the mosque, but women are not allowed in the mosque. Alean told me that to her it seemed very ironic that "the first time I went the mosque it was in US."
This feeling of confinement, although it had the compensation of providing escort for me wherever I went, an unaccustomed pleasure for one who spends a lot of time tootling around alone in her little car, was also frustrating. Imagine the frustration of Afghan women, some of whom remember days of greater freedom back in the 60s when King Zahir, seeking to modernize the capitol, publicly removed his wife's scarf. Those days, Afghan women went to school, entered professions, and wore fashionable western clothes. Even the Soviets encouraged the education of women.
But when the tribal wars began, and certainly when the Taliban took control, the clock was set back on women's freedom.
Today, though they are freer to move around than foreign visitors, Kabul women do not go out unaccompanied. Faisal, who loves to talk about the wife he will have one day, (he is 20), says his wife will stay home. "When I come home, then with me she will go out, together we go for shopping to the bazaar." To him that is completely natural. Alean does not agree. "My family is liberal," she told me as we strolled around the gated Women's Garden, where women and children come to relax and play away from the men, "yet even then I argue with my father and my brothers." She resents the way men here stare at her wherever she goes. "In the US, I am free to go wherever I want, even at night."
Alean has to be even more careful than other Kabuli women. Because she has studied abroad, her neighbors consider her a foreigner now.
It is foreigners, especially foreigners who work for NGOs, who are so suspect to the fundamentalist Islamic extremists like the Taliban, who want all foreigners out of the country. Though their frustration with European and US intrusion in their affairs bespeaks the long heritage of feisty Afghan resistance to all invasion, it also obstructs well intentioned efforts to assist this impoverished nation in the development it so desperately needs to achieve independence. Seen in this light, the relentless movement of the global economy, despite its many errors, appears urgently necessary. Water, reliable electric power, medical services and all the gifts of modern civilization, can never be secured in Afghanistan without the help of foreign powers, and most of the people want this help. But those who benefit from the old tribal ways that for so many centuries maintained the fierce independence of Afghanistan -- the war lords especially -- resist development and change that the flow of foreign aid and foreign advisors might bring.
Alas, this suspicion extends to women who have studied abroad. "If the Taliban comes back," Faisal told me sadly, "all of our family could be killed for that."
Accompanied by Faisal, Alean and Torpakhy, I was able to visit most of the other women at their businesses. It was a full day's excursion throughout the city. Unfortunately I do not have a grasp of where these neighborhoods were located. I was too entertained talking with Alean and joking with Faisal to ascertain exactly where we were, and when I did ask, often I was unable to transliterate the Dari names into a word that I could remember.
Our first stop was at Khadija's nephew's shop on Chicken Street, Kabul's famous shopping district, packed with small shops selling carpets, antiques, clothing, jewelry and other real Afghan wares. It was great fun to admire all the beautiful jewelry in the shop, especially Khadija's and select a few things to bring home. It was a difficult choice -- I am not a great shopper -- but one selection was beyond question, a bracelet of polished amber stones set in silverwork curved artfully around them. It was Khadija's design.
Khadija and her nephew in front of their shop on Chicken Street.
From there we drove to another district to visit the tidy little shop that Nasima rents with seven other women. There she displays her gorgeous scarves, which sell, she tells me, as fast as the weaver can make them. Each scarf takes a full day to make. Nasima buys her silk thread from Herat, and is proud to be furthering the return of the ancient silk business for which Afghanistan was long famous. It was for such silks that the "Silk Road" was named, a 7000-mile route from Europe all the way to China. But the silk farms were destroyed in the war. I like to envision a "women's silk road," where women's businesses would thrive. Nasima is doing her part. In addition to the scarves, she works with as many as 40 craftswomen who sell some of their products in her neat, amazingly dust free and well organized shop. Her nephew helps her.
On we went as the day gathered heat. It was a long drive out to Shaima's. On the way we passed through Timmoney, a relatively upscale district. I remarked that this neighborhood seemed less scarred by bombs than most of the others and Alean said, yes, this area had been spared (for reasons she did not explain) and many people came here seeking relief from the bombing. Her family had been one of those, leaving their home in Microrayon, on the other side of the city, to stay with a relative here.
"We walked all day," she said. "Missiles were flying over our heads the whole time."
"You must have been very young then?"
"Yes, I was just a little girl. It was so hard. We didn't have anything to eat or drink. My mother carried my youngest brother but we had to walk. It was the worst time I can remember."
Seated next to me in the back of the car, Alean's sadness seemed to carry from past memory into the uncertainty of the present time. This summer the situation in Afghanistan has been deteriorating, even in heavily protected Kabul.
Alean's mother Khobra, with Alean
In silence now we looked around at what is becoming one of the high end districts of Kabul, dotted with wedding "palaces" -- weddings are frequent now -- and fancy properties built by warlords -- the very warlords whose vicious rivalry caused families like Alean's to flee their homes.