Dear Zari: Hidden Stories from Women of Afghanistan by Zarghuna Kargar Page A

pay their respects and then ask for the daughter’s hand in marriage. My mother had a kind heart and she knew that I loved Abdullah, so she was pleased that his family had begun to pay their respects to us in this way. She mentioned as much to my father when he came home from work one evening, but he didn’t like what he heard one bit, and when my mother tried to persuade him that they were a respectable family and that their son and his daughter already knew each other he flew into a rage. ‘Just how well does our daughter know this bastard?’ My mother’s voice shook as she told him that although I had obviously seen Abdullah around the house, I’d not actually had any kind of contact with him. But my father was not to be fooled quite so easily .
    ‘ Don’t you realise, woman, that we are Pashtuns and they are Tajiks. We don’t belong together at all, so just forget all about this .’
    My mother protested saying she thought marriage would make me – their daughter – happy and that my happiness should count for something .
    ‘ Well, it might be the most important thing for you, but people will say that my daughter married the neighbour and probably had an affair with him beforehand. This is what people will say, you silly woman! ’
    The more my mother insisted, the more angry my father became untilfinally he slapped her. When I heard the commotion I rushed into the room and clung to my mother who was weeping. I was furious with my father for upsetting her so much when she was only defending me .
    The days passed and my love for Abdullah grew. After a week or so, the men in his family came to see my parents and asked for my hand. My father wouldn’t talk to them, but nor would he refuse outright to give them what they wanted. Instead, he called on my uncle to join him in the negotiation process, and together they decided to ask for such an unfeasibly large sum of money in return for my hand that Abdullah’s family would never be able to afford it. My father and uncle couldn’t bear the idea that their daughter, and niece, had decided to love a boy of her own choosing. According to my family I had committed a terrible crime. As Abdullah’s family wasn’t rich, they asked for some time to consider this. But a few days later they returned and said they were prepared to pay the price my father and uncle had set, because their son’s happiness was more important to them than money .
    Nasreen cried throughout telling me her story, and whenever she spoke of her love for Abdullah I could feel her pain. She told me how lucky Abdullah was that his family respected his love for her enough to be prepared to pay a lot of money to see him happy.
    But no one in my family really cared about me or my feelings. I was on my own, and even my mother was unable to help me. Instead she found herself being blamed for bringing up a daughter who had brought shame on the family: a daughter who had dared to love the man of her choice. Meanwhile, my father continued to make excuses for the fact that he’d refused to allow me to marry Abdullah. If he had let me marry Abdullah it would have meant that he’d accepted our love for one another, but he just wasn’t enough of a man to do this. He kept using the excuse that Abdullah was not a Pashtun like us, and in the end I just couldn’t bear it any more and demanded to know why he was behaving so unreasonably. My father almost had a fit when he heard his fourteen-year-old daughter challenge him in this way, and began beating me, calling me a prostituteand berating me for daring to love ‘that boy’. He hit me so hard I had bruises all over my face and my lips were bleeding. My body ached from the blows .
    ‘ You, you are a girl and in our culture girls are not allowed to question their father’s authority. Now I am going to make you suffer .’
    Abdullah’s parents must have been able to hear my screams from next door as I was beaten like an animal. My mother wept and pleaded