“Good morning, girls!” sang Imo in her cheerful tone as she stepped out of her blankets, her head still wrapped in her scarf.
An hour later we shared breakfast with Malik and Hanif in the same room where we’d had dinner. Malik offered us green tea and warm flatbread with honey. It was delicious and I ate ravenously. An unexpected feeling of calm and well-being had finally descended upon me. We ate in silence, then Malik stood up and gestured for us to follow him. We walked a little way, then he pointed out the door to a small mud-brick house and he and Hanif turned their backs on us. This is the school, they said. The fact that men could not enter, or even look inside, electrified me.
The morning sun slanted in from the small windows, slashing light into the room. We were sitting on the floor covered in mats and carpets in the middle of a bare room, Imo, Shirin and me, surrounded by about twenty women staring at us as if they were in front of an otherworldly apparition.
The colors the women wore were faded but magnificent: pink and emerald-green veils, purple and orange draping. With the exception of a few withered, toothless ones, who looked worn more by fatigue than by time, most of the women were startlingly beautiful. They had fair skin and light eyes, some of them as green as grass, with dark, thick braided hair. Others had full pink lips and thick eyebrows, straight noses. After all those days spent in male company, striving to interpret their gestures, their expressions, to weigh the danger, it was a relief to be alone with women at last. And yet, now that I finally had them in front of me, these women seemed more indecipherable than the men. I had seen men drive cars, talk on cell phones and somehow or other I felt they belonged to the world I lived in, but these women seemed to have been cast out of a time machine. Everything about them was archaic; the smell of mud, flour, sweat and livestock, the feral energy they emanated. I couldn’t begin to imagine them undressed (what would they be wearing underneath? did they have panties and bras?) or as they had sex with their husbands (were they modest, experienced? did they enjoy different positions?). In other words I couldn’t find any indication that suggested our parallel existence on the planet.
They were staring at us, hardly stirring—I could even hear the sound of their breathing—and we were watching them with equal astonishment. In terms of our reciprocal curiosity we were equal, but I felt their gazes were impudent and unsettling, just like those of the men working on the dam, revealing a morbid, almost sexual curiosity.
I felt the urge to photograph them there and then, capture those hungry eyes, those bent knees, the way their elbows were resting on them, their chins on their hands, the small blue tattoos between the eyebrows that some of the older women had, the henna red tresses spilling down their backs, the cheap earrings made of tin and colored glass, as they listened to what Shirin was explaining to them. That is, that we had come from a long way away to talk to them about what had happened to Zuleya.
“Many countries in the rest of the world are concerned about the plight of Afghan women and want their suffering to stop,” Imo said and gestured to Shirin to translate, “so we’re here to listen to your stories, and hear what you have to say. Women among women.”
A worried silence ensued. The women exchanged wary glances. Shirin plowed on in a courteous tone but received only monosyllabic grunts. A tall woman, a Julia Roberts look-alike, with the same thick mouth, perfectly arched eyebrows, long silky lashes framing eyes the color of moss, jerked her chin to indicate a younger woman with fair hair and a straight nose who looked like the bas-relief of a goddess from the Parthenon frieze. The bas-relief nodded, looking down at her bare, cracked feet.
“That one is Zuleya’s sister,” Shirin said. Then she pointed to an older woman huddled at the back of the room. “And that’s her mother.”
The mother made an abrupt gesture with her hand, then covered her face with her veil. She drew herself in even tighter, like a spider hiding in a crack in the wall.
“Would any of you like to tell us what happened, why did Zuleya want to kill herself?” Imo asked gently and smiled around the room.
Another lengthy silence followed. Then, as if they had been given an invisible clue, the women all began talking at once, the tone growing louder and louder, increasingly excited. Shirin directed them, interrupting them, translating what she could, getting worked up herself.
It was the same old story, the women said: Zuleya was unhappy, she didn’t want to marry a man who was too old and who would have taken her away from her village and her family. She was afraid he’d beat her, that he wouldn’t allow her to come back and visit her mother and her sisters. That’s why she thought it better to kill herself, rather than dishonoring the family with a refusal.
Imo pondered. “Right. So, if a woman refused to get married, what would actually happen? Her family would disown her?”
The women shook their heads vigorously: impossible. There’s nothing you can do when a marriage has been decided. Nobody can refuse.
“I see. Okay. Then let’s say a girl and a boy from the same village are in love with one another, right? But the girl has been promised to someone else. Ask them what would happen,” Imo whispered to Shirin.
Shirin swallowed hard and nodded. She seemed wary, as if the word “love” had some dangerous possibility attached to it. She translated the question slowly, neutrally, as if she were handling explosives. Again, the women started speaking one on top of the other, more and more excitedly. Everyone seemed to have a strong opinion about this. Julia Roberts stood up—she was very tall and statuesque—silencing the others, and drew her index finger across her neck. The women burst out laughing.
“What did she say?”
“She says love doesn’t make a difference. That either you do what the father decides or you end up like that,” said Shirin, mortified.
“Like what?” Imo had put on her red glasses and was taking notes.
“Like that, with your throat cut.”
“Ha? With your throat cut?”
Shirin nodded. Imo eyed me with a triumphant look. This was just the kind of quote she’d been hoping for.
“So why do you think they’re laughing?”
Shirin shrugged.
“I don’t know.”
“No, I’m sorry, I’m interested. What’s the joke?”
“Nothing. They’re laughing because they think it’s funny,” Shirin replied, her words tinged with a nuance of sarcasm, which Imo didn’t seem to notice. “They too have a sense of humor.”
“A pretty dark one, it seems.” Imo made a face. “Ask them if that’s ever happened in this village. You know, whether a father has killed his daughter who disobeyed.”
The women nodded vigorously, without any hesitation, as if it were a silly question that only a foreigner would ask, then carried on a lengthy discussion among themselves, completely oblivious to our presence.
“See? Probably our friend Malik would too,” Imo whispered to me as she scribbled it all down. “Isn’t that just insane?”
She turned back to Shirin.
“Please ask them whether they know that in the West a woman’s life is worth the same as a man’s and if a father kills his daughter, he’s sent to prison for life.”
Shirin dutifully delivered the translation and the women stared back at us, in a sort of impenetrable way.
“Do they know that?” Imo asked.
A little discussion ensued among Shirin and a couple of older women.
“Yes, they do,” Shirin said. “But they say that according to Islam you can’t, that it’s not possible, that you have to obey your father and then your husband. These are the rules, the tradition.”
There seemed to be no way out of it. All that mattered was the rules. Their volition didn’t seem to exist anywhere in between.
“Yes, I understand that, but then why are so many women committing suicide? It must mean they don’t want to follow the rule, right? Or do you think these women are afraid to speak?”
Shirin adjusted her glasses on her nose. Then she nodded and looked down at the floor.
“Yes, maybe they are a bit afraid to speak,” she admitted.
I had a sense that Shirin’s feelings were becoming more and more ambivalent as the day in our company progressed. I couldn’t tell what was making her more uneasy, having to translate what she felt was her compatriots’ backwardness to us or having to translate our lack of tact to them. The Parthenon Frieze, Zuleya’s sister, took the floor and suddenly there was silence. The girl spoke for some time. Her stretched arm was resting on her knee, and the cheap bracelets around her wrist kept tinkling as she moved her hand.
“She said that if she could turn back time, she would have killed herself too,” Shirin translated impassively. “Now she can’t, because she has children. She says she had to marry a man three times older than her who has always beaten her, since the very first day. She says that the life of a woman is a very sad life; in truth she says that it’s not a life at all.”
Imo leaned slightly towards me.
“What a fabulous profile this one has, try and shoot her while she’s talking. Can you work with this light?”
“Yeah, sure…but first shouldn’t we…I mean, I’m afraid that if I start shooting without asking permission they’re going to go crazy again like those—”
“Just give it a go and let’s see what happens.”
I took out one of my cameras and held it for a second so they could get used to its presence. Every woman looked in my direction and stared at the object in my hand. I acted like I was not aware of their attention and started to fiddle distractedly with the lenses. But just then a wan, sickly-looking woman, older than the others, shouted something. She was pointing to the camera and instantly I felt the same hostility wind through the room that I had encountered the day before in the hospital.
“You cannot take their picture,” Shirin warned me with her usual stern gaze. “Malik told you yesterday that you are not allowed.”
“Did he, really? Sorry, I didn’t hear.”
It was true. I hadn’t heard, or perhaps understood, so I looked at Imo, who nodded imperceptibly so as to suggest that somehow yes, that had been the message. Slowly I lowered my camera and slung the strap around my shoulder, so it hung unobtrusively by my side. “I thought that—”
Imo interrupted me with a gesture and turned to Shirin. “Please explain to them that the pictures we are taking will never be shown in this country. I give them my word of honor.”
Shirin complied. The women were listening, some of them nodded.
“But tell them also that in order to bring about change in their lives it’s important that the rest of the world sees their faces and knows who they are.”
The women shook their heads vigorously in protest. Some started to cover their heads with their veils, getting ready to conceal their faces.
“No,” Shirin said, firm. “They say you can’t, that it’s not permitted.”
“Okay.” Imo tried to conceal her disappointment. She knew she couldn’t rush it this time. We looked at one another. I felt my camera resting against my side.
She glanced at her notes, scribbled something and then gazed around the room with a sympathetic expression. Then she turned to Shirin.
“Well. You should tell them that there are many organizations in Kabul that help girls like Zuleya and that soon, if they change the laws here, a father will no longer be allowed to kill his daughter if she dishonors him.”
While Shirin was translating, Imo tried quickly to elaborate the rest of her argument. She still had to come up with an explanation as to why they—out of millions of Afghan women—had been designated to be the ones to show their faces to the rest of the world. But somehow I knew her rhetorical skills wouldn’t fail her, not even in this predicament. She paused and sighed, casting a glance around the room. The women were waiting. She leaned over to Shirin and said, “Tell them this, that we’ve come all this way because we want to take not just your voices, but your faces as well back to our country.” Imo continued, “So you won’t be ghosts but real people. If Afghan women keep hiding their faces behind burqas, they will always be only ghosts, and ghosts don’t exist.”
She’d taken a short run-up, pleased with the efficacy of the image she had conjured.
“Yes, exactly. Tell them that. You know, that ghosts don’t exist.”
Imo smiled at her small audience, but the women seemed unswayed.
“I do not think it will be possible, I am sorry,” Shirin said quietly. “It is very difficult to make them understand what you’re saying.”
I noticed Shirin was beginning to act restless. I had a feeling that the way Imo sounded so pleased with her imaginative metaphors, heedless of the fact that they didn’t even translate, was clearly beginning to irritate her.
“They’re very simple, very ignorant and are all afraid of what their husbands will do to them if they let you,” Shirin added, somehow severely.
Imo sighed. I think by now she had realized it was a lost battle and that none of her seductive skills or the force of her personality was going to make these women change their minds. They would have had to take an enormous risk in exchange for—most probably—nothing at all.
If the photos of the women were going to bring advantages to anyone’s life, it was more likely that the beneficiaries would be Imo and me. Pierre had suggested it when he had first offered me the job: more World Press Photo award material.
And even so, I could still imagine the outcome. The
Sunday Times Magazine
spread open on the table of some elegantly furnished kitchen in London. A couple (certainly in favor of the emancipation of Afghan women) distractedly flicking the pages while sipping a foamy cappuccino made with an expensive espresso machine. The supplement being tossed in the recycling bin by Monday morning.
But then, something happened.
Julia Roberts stood up again, Junoesque and commanding as a queen. She harangued the room, raising her voice if anyone tried to interrupt her. A subdued grumbling rose from the back of the room. It was Zuleya’s sister, who had come to the aid of Julia Roberts’s arguments, and who quickly raised her tone a couple of octaves until the two of them were rebutting and countering the others, and the room went finally quiet.