An Afghan village girl blossoms in the city

To publish an unsigned article or to use pseudonyms is an exception to Monitor policy. The housekeeper profiled in this story is wanted by authorities in her village for running away from a betrothal made when she was 6 months old. For security reasons, the writer is not named and names in the article have been changed.

KABUL – The only sound that I look forward to hearing in the morning is the jingle of Mojabeen's fake gold bangles. When I open my eyes from sleep, that's how I know that she's downstairs cleaning our dusty house and that as soon as she hears me call, she'll come upstairs smiling, with my breakfast and her lively conversation.

She never takes off her dozen bangles or her scarf, which she wraps around her ears to make sure her hair is safely covered. About five feet tall in pink plastic sandals, she's thin and pale beneath the long, loose dresses she wears, but she's stronger than she looks.

Mojabeen is my 21-year-old housekeeper and cook and the person I spend the most time with in Kabul. I work from my home while my husband goes to the office. A friend of mine introduced Mojabeen when I was looking for help in the house. "She needs training," Sarah told me. The most important thing was whether I could trust her. My last housekeeper stole $1,000 from me.

I was ready to be stern and aloof with her. But in the past four months, Mojabeen and I have formed a bond and trust that has broken the barriers of class and culture. We've learned about each others' worlds and become friends. She's an illiterate village girl who's rapidly urbanizing, and I'm a Western-educated Afghan-American appreciating her resilience and strength. But it would be unfair of me to compare my comfortable life to her troubled one.

When she was 6 months old, in a remote village in the north of Afghanistan, Mojabeen was betrothed to a deaf and mute man. That man's sister was promised to Mojabeen's brother, Ahmed. It was an exchange common in Afghanistan – it avoids the cost of dowries. Mojabeen's brother married the girl, but Mojabeen's fiancé went away to work in Iran as a laborer. She dreaded her marriage to the man, who she'd never even talked to.

"I only saw him once through my burqa on the street when I was walking to my cousin's house, and my heart fell. He was unattractive, and I wondered if my fate was forever sealed," she told me as she hung our laundry.

Mojabeen's father had passed away and her oldest brother, Tarek, was in charge of family affairs. There had been no ceremony or religious event to bind Mojabeen's union with the laborer, so in the the fiancé's absence her brother gave his 17-year-old sister's hand to another man – Mahmood, who had no idea that she was already engaged.

Mojabeen and Mahmood, a warm and open-minded farmer, made a life in their village and had a son. She was happy to be with her husband, but she dreaded the laborer's return.

After 15 months, the laborer came back and took Mahmood to court to get Mojabeen as his wife. Because he was only engaged to Mojabeen, the man had no case under Afghan law. But Mojabeen and Mahmood say the man's family bribed the judge to order their marriage and their son illegitimate. Mahmood was thrown in jail, and Mojabeen's family hid her.

Mahmood spent 4 months in the local district prison with three murderers. One day, the four prisoners found a small iron rod and dug a hole through the prison wall and escaped. Mahmood picked up his wife and son, who was four months old, and headed to the mountains to hide. For two years, the three of them lived among strangers in villages nestled against hills where people live on wheat and barley farming. "We're Tajiks, but it was Hazaras and Uzbeks who took us in and provided us shelter," Mojabeen said

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