An Afghan village girl blossoms in the city
She ran from an arranged marriage into a Western household.
from the September 4, 2007 edition
Page 2 of 3
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
Mahmood was often unemployed, but he would find odd jobs to survive. Mojabeen had another son and nearly died in childbirth because there was little medical help in that remote area. It filled Mojabeen with fear that she'd die, leaving her children orphans. Her oldest brother Tarek and Mahmood's sister had moved to Kabul and they encouraged the couple to join them in the bustling capital where the police from their district did not have the power to capture them.
• • •
They settled in with Tarek, his wife, and their two small sons in the servant quarters of my friend Sarah's house. Each family has a small room; they share a squat toilet and makeshift kitchen.
Not long after Mojabeen arrived in Kabul, I called Sarah asking if she knew a trustworthy housekeeper. Mojabeen considers our meeting a turn of fortune in her life.
She works eight-hour days, five days a week, and goes home for lunch to breast-feed her younger son. It's the first time she's earned money – $150 a month. Mahmood stays home to take care of the children – unusual for an illiterate Afghan family in which patriarchy calls for men to work outside and women to play the caregivers. But Mojabeen and Mahmood are eager to modernize.
She observes my life carefully, seeing how I interact with my husband. We often call each other "dear." One day she told me that she suggested to Mahmood that they also call each other dear instead of the usual "eh," she said, because"it shows more respect."
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