What I did on 17 June 2007

On the day of the deadliest suicide bomb in Afghan history, I:

• finished my morning coffee, wondering if the loud noise had really been a bomb.
• donned my headscarf and walked the two blocks to the office, with eyes lowered to avoid men's attention.
• interviewed someone that may become my boss (I hope he still wants to move to Kabul).
• gasped as the number of dead passed 35, most of them instructors at the Kabul Police Academy.
• edited a research paper on the struggle to reform the Afghan National Police.
• posed for pictures with a Scottish friend wearing a kilt for the Queen's birthday party.
• thought about the families of those who died.
• went for a long swim in the UN pool, followed by a Heineken at the poolside bar.
• asked myself whether I should really turn down law school admission this year.
• tried on a burqa for the first time.
• watched CNN and BBC footage of the carnage that had taken place five minutes from my house.
• contemplated how life does not ever stop or pause, even in the face of disaster.

Becoming a wife

Homaira handed in her resignation today. She is the only Afghan woman I feel really comfortable with; my only Afghan girlfriend. She is almost 19, stunningly beautiful, and a bit shy before you get to know her. She wears long skirts and tight long-sleeve blouses and matching headscarves embroidered with glitter and rhinestones. She used to wear jeans, she says, but her fiance put an end to that.

Her fiance, who after seeing her at the Afghan Telecom office sent his parents to ask for her hand in marriage.

After a yearlong engagement, during which she has been allowed to work in order to pay for her dowry, Homaira is getting married on July 1. That day she will be leaving her parents' house and go live with her husband, his parents, his brothers and their wives and children. She will no longer be able to work, or to leave the house without a man from the family accompanying her. She will spend her days at home, with the other women of her new family, cooking and cleaning and having children.

She was smiling as she told me this, so I asked whether she was happy with the way in which her life is about to change. I asked her if she liked her new family. "No," she said, "I don't like them. They're uneducated. They are not enlightened minds like my family. You know, my sister went to Cape Town for ten days on a study tour. I want to travel, too, but they don't let their women travel." The worst part of it all, she said, is that she will be allowed to visit her parents' house only once a week.

Like so many Western women before me, I asked "Why did you not refuse to marry into this conservative family?" And like so many generations of Afghan women before her, she shrugged her shoulders and said "it's my destiny".

I think her wedding will be the last time I ever see her.

Pick a wife

“The problem is,” he says, “that I love three girls. I don’t know which one to choose.”

“What about them?” I ask, “maybe neither of them wants to marry you.”

“Well, I’m sure they will not object. I should choose, because the girls cannot. ”

My coworker is in the process of choosing a wife, and I am having a difficult time with it. While I do agree that he needs a woman in his life -- he’s 27 and spends too much time chatting with girls in other countries over instant messenger -- the wife-picking exercise is quite painful for me to watch.

I suspect that the three contenders are all his classmates at Kabul University: Young, beautiful Afghan women, ambitious and brave enough to be students. After he picks the lucky one, they will get engaged, and she will no longer be able to study. After they get married, he will probably be too jealous to let her out of the house. Because despite the cowboy boots, clean-shaven face and love for Jack Daniels, he’s only marginally more liberal-minded than the white-bearded mullahs.

On the other hand, maybe it’s true as he says that any of these girls would not want to work once they’re married; and maybe they want to be chosen by a man rather than choosing one themselves. I have no Afghan girlfriends, so what do I really know? Perhaps the real reason why I suffer observing this wife-picking excercise is that I judge it based on my own Western notions of gender equity and romantic love?