Shukria
IT WAS THE most painful moment Shukria can recall. It was also the moment when she felt love for the first time. She knew then, at least to some degree, that she was a woman.
Giving birth made her certain there was something female in her, a confirmation that she did indeed have the body, and hopefully something more, of a woman. It came as a relief that she had perhaps not destroyed it altogether by being a man.
With all that she had tried to learn and observe—how to dress, how to behave, and how to speak—she finally would not have to worry that the other women would catch her slipping up.
She had the proof now: She was a mother. One of them. In all, she would have two sons and one daughter.
As for how children were created, it was not discussed much among her friends. No one wants to be known for knowing too much or seeming too willing to discuss anything to do with “the secret parts,” which is only one of the many ways Afghan women refer to their reproductive organs.
Sex is, by definition, illegal in Afghanistan: The marriage contract is what finally turns it into a permissible act between husband and wife. At times Shukria’s female friends joked about the unfortunate “chore” of being in bed with their husbands. About how everyone knows “what men are like.” Some husbands wanted to do it more often; others insisted only on Afghanistan’s Thursday-night conjugal tradition, when the workweek is over and both men and women take extra care to wash and groom in advance of Friday prayers. But Shukria did not dare ask any of her friends about what was normal and how anything related to the secret parts was supposed to feel or function. None of her friends ever mentioned enjoying sex, either, though they had all been told there were women who did: whores, with unnatural and obscene desires. And of course foreign women—more or less the same category.
Shukria’s own particular issue always seemed much too strange to bring up as well. None of her women friends grew up as boys, and she could not exactly ask her old male friends, either, why it is that sex makes her feel like “a nothing.” She laughs nervously when she tries to describe it: “I cannot give my husband love as a woman. I tried, but I think I got a very low score in this. When he touches me, I don’t feel comfortable. I just don’t feel anything. I want to ignore him. When he gets excited, I cannot respond. My whole body reacts negatively.”
What actually makes her cringe is not the physical contact, but shame: It is not right for her to be in bed with a man, even though she is his wife. “I don’t have those feelings other women have for men. I don’t know how to explain this to you.…”
She looks at us and hesitates: “Sometimes it is very hard for me to be in bed with my husband because he is a man. I think I am also a man. I feel like a man myself, on the inside. And then I feel it is wrong, for two men to be together.”
So perhaps she is gay?
Shukria is not the least bit offended or embarrassed when after dancing around it for a while I finally just ask the question. She is almost sad to admit she feels no attraction to women, either. Avoiding them and cultivating a deep belief that they are the weaker sex brought no romantic allure for her. Being intimate with a woman would be wrong, too.
She is actually quite sure she prefers men over women in general: “Men are strong, strict. Women are very sensitive. I understand men. I feel them very easily.”
MY QUESTION OF whether Shukria, or other bacha posh, may automatically develop homosexual preferences by living as boys turns out to have been entirely misguided.
First of all, as Dr. Robert Garofalo, the expert in Chicago on development of gender, explains, growing up as a gender different from one’s birth sex does not by default translate to homosexuality in adult age. But perhaps most important, whether bacha posh become homosexual presupposes that women who live in Afghanistan have an opportunity to embrace, develop, or practice sexuality of any kind.
They do not.
In Afghanistan, sex is a means to an end, of adding sons to the family. But nowhere in that equation is a sexual orientation or preference a factor for women. Having sex with a husband in a forced marriage is an obligation—one fulfilled in order to have children. But when, or how, to have it is not a question of lust, willingness, or even conscious choice. To identify as either heterosexual or homosexual, and define what that means, can be very difficult for an Afghan woman, who is not even supposed to be at all sexual.
That any woman, anywhere in the world, is capable of being sexual is a fairly recent idea. Not until the 1950s, with the help of research by Dr. Alfred Kinsey and others, did the idea that women’s sexuality is in many ways similar to that of men’s begin to take hold. Before that, a healthy woman, in Western literature and science, was an asexual woman.
A woman who showed tendencies of being at all interested in sex was often subject to treatment to cure this bothersome and dangerous predilection. The reproductive organs of women were thought to be at the root of trouble: In nineteenth-century Europe, contemporary literature documented how a woman’s uterus could be surgically removed in order to stem any unruly and exaggerated sexual behavior. This sentiment still forms the modern-day argument for female genital mutilation around the world: An asexual wife is always preferable in order to promote a stable family.
There is a contradiction, of course, in the fact that medical experts in nineteenth-century Europe, as well as many Afghan men and women today, insist that a woman can and should feel nothing sexually since she exists only for procreation. At the same time, they fear and suspect an underlying, explosive sexuality in women that must be contained. Once it is ignited, a woman’s sexuality might be impossible to control, so best not to encourage it in any way. Most discreet if convoluted conversations in Afghanistan about sex usually end there: Men are sexual; women, not so much—unless there is something horribly wrong with them, making it difficult, or even unlikely, for many Afghan women to explore their sexuality or develop any sort of preference.
Still, women’s sexuality, and sexual feelings, of course do exist in Afghanistan. But as with gender, they are convoluted and often do not correlate to how we have learned to describe them. Interestingly, the sexual feelings described by several young unmarried Kabul women I privately pressed on the forbidden topic were abstract and in soft focus. It is the opposite of porn: Their fantasies are not directed at men and do not include visualizations of sexual acts, but are described as more meditative; a fantasy while masturbating may include something about “heaven,” “beauty,” or just a sense of calm and pleasure. But the act of masturbating is not only hindered by shame and fear—in small quarters where children and parents often sleep together, a moment of privacy is often very hard to come by. A young woman is also often told that touching oneself too much below the waist in any way may endanger her virginity.
For a married woman, having recognized some sexuality of her own and having figured out how to touch herself may not translate to enjoying sex with her husband. On the male side, a Pashtun doctor in his thirties confirms that he, just like Dr. Fareiba, is often asked by men for advice on how to make sons, which is a pretext for discussing sex. The conversations follow a similar pattern: While some men are interested in making their women “happy,” there is a fear that if women are made “too happy” they will fantasize about, or even turn to, men other than their husbands; they may develop an interest in sex and become uncontrollable. As for his own marriage, he states with confidence: “According to my opinion, how should I put this … before I come to the end, my wife should come to the end. It’s better if she can come to the end twice.”
But the response from one Kabul woman was typical of several other married women’s view of sex: “If it were up to me, my husband would never touch me again.”
WHERE SEXUALITY IN general is suppressed and the idea that women can be sexual at all is a matter of indifference or fear, homosexuality is at the next level of taboo. If sex barely exists, homosexuality absolutely does not—and certainly not in the case of women. An attempt to speak of homosexuality with Afghans will most often render nervous laughter or an outright refusal to engage in conversation.
Even among educated Afghans, the idea that women could be sexual with other women is both ridiculous and mysterious, since, as was explained to me, it challenges the very definition of what a sexual act is. As one man said: Without a penis involved, sex just seemed physically pointless for both parties.
Comparative sociologist Stephen O. Murray and historian and anthropologist Will Roscoe, who have scoured history and literature for definitions of homosexuality in the Muslim and Arab worlds, found only “paltry” references to lesbianism throughout time:
Within most present-day Islamic states, where representation of even married heterosexual conduct is heavily censored, woman-woman sexuality remains thoroughly submerged.
In their book Islamic Homosexualities, they also quote a passage from Muslim geographer and cartographer Sharif al-Idrisi, who lived in the twelfth century. This rare writing acknowledged the early existence of women who preferred women; it even offered an intriguing explanation of why they did—while at the same time explaining how they posed a danger to society:
There are also women who are more intelligent than the others. They possess many of the ways of men so that they resemble them even in their movements, the manner in which they talk, and their voice. Such women would like to be the active partner, and they would like to be superior to the man who makes this possible for them. Such a woman does not shame herself, either, if she seduces whom she desires. If she has no inclination, he cannot force her to make love. This makes it difficult for her to submit to the wishes of men and brings her to lesbian love. Most of the women with these characteristics are to be found among the educated and elegant women, the scribes, Koran readers and female scholars.
Note how he underscores that this occurrence is due solely to the lack of suitable male partners—so-called situational homosexuality. Also, he suggests that an educated woman may become more sexual and therefore choose women over men as sexual partners. The implicit conclusion remains a concern to this day with many in Afghanistan: Education for women can be detrimental for society, and ultimately the end of mankind. It is best to keep women’s intellects in the dark, or they may get strange ideas, such as choosing to abandon men in favor of women, with the added consequence of no more babies being born.
Moving to the other gender, male homosexuality is referenced only in a range between ridicule and disgust by most Afghan men; such acts are committed by the lowest of people. Male homosexuality officially does not exist in Afghanistan, either, nor in neighboring Iran or most other Islamic societies. At most, it is viewed as a sin, a crime, or both.
This includes some stark contradictions, however.
In Afghanistan, as well as in the historical context of male homosexuality, a man may well engage in homosexual activity. That, however, does not automatically turn him into a homosexual. A distinction is made between the active and the passive role in the sexual act, between “taking” pleasure and submitting to someone. The penetrator is the manly man, whereas the penetrated is the weaker party, likened to how a woman submits to a man. The receiver may not be a homosexual, either, unless he shows signs of liking it too much, in which case he may actually be denounced as a homosexual person, or a bedagh: a word for the passive homosexual.
Male homosexual behavior, in the active role, is traditionally explained in Afghanistan by the lack of available women. Women should also primarily be used to create children, not necessarily used for pleasure.
Pederasty can be justified similarly. Since men’s sexuality is a force of nature that must be released, exactly how that occurs is of lesser importance. A younger, weaker boy may even be preferable, since he cannot be dishonored the way a woman can be. There is also less risk of retaliation by an infuriated family: Raping a boy is a lesser offense than raping a woman. As a bonus, the perpetrator is considered macho and as far from “homosexual” as one can possibly be.
When children’s rights organizations have attempted to explore the abusive practice of bacha bazi, or “boy play,” in Afghanistan, in which young boys are traded as dancing child entertainers and also kept as sex slaves by military commanders and other powerful men, they are often met with a wall of silence; many Afghans confirm its existence, but few will admit it happens in their own communities.
Radhika Coomaraswamy, the UN special representative on children and armed conflict, came right out and said it in 2011: “Very powerful warlords and regional commanders from all the security forces as well as anti-government forces have young boys who are taught to dance.”
The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) also warned in 2010 that the number of boys sexually abused through this traditional activity is likely small in proportion to the more commonplace sexual abuse of “ordinary” boys by “ordinary” men. So despite legal and religious censure of homosexual behavior, research indicates that man-boy sexual relationships are considered neither exceptional nor criminal in the traditional or modern cultures of Afghanistan.
Afghan men are often equally careful with their phrasing; they will never speak in the first person, but sometimes say they “know someone” who as a young boy was subjected to a violent assault by another, older man. In his study on Pashtuns during the 1980s, anthropologist Charles Lindholm reported: “The first sexual experiences of many, if not most, boys is with one of their passively inclined peers, or with an older man who is a confirmed bedagh. Older men still may cultivate a handsome young protégé who will accompany them everywhere, though the practice is hardly universal.”
These underage victims of sexualized violence, who have been assaulted by other men and are too ashamed to ever speak of it, are also expected to eventually grow up to function sexually with women in marriage, in order to have children.
What we may think of as homosexuality, involving two consenting parties, had not been much documented in Afghanistan until an Afghan refugee to Canada wrote about his experiences.
Author Hamid Zaher recounts how he began feeling attracted to other boys in the eighth grade. He states that whereas sexualized abuse of young boys is widely accepted in Afghanistan, it is “absolutely impossible” for two adult men to have an equal, consensual sexual relationship there. For that reason, his road to discovering and exploring his own sexual orientation was a painful one, which included a diagnosis of mental illness and culminated in his fleeing his country.
Just as female homosexuality took much longer than male homosexuality to be recognized in most of the West, it may take decades before an Afghan woman is able to define her sexual orientation as lesbian or bisexual. Or anything else. In a distant future, each human may not need to be defined as either heterosexual or homosexual in a lifetime, but with the recognition that a person’s sexuality can be more fluid and situational.
BUT IN A place where marriages are arranged and sex is about reproduction, shreds of romance still endure, as demonstrated by the giddy female wedding guests who find allure in what is most forbidden. Even though marriages for love are rare in Afghanistan, tales of them abound, and both women and men harbor fantasies of unions inspired by the appearance of adventurous and often tortured but passionate relationships in literature and poetry. The rush of a high school crush may have to last a lifetime here.
Like many Afghan women, Shukria wears no wedding ring. But there is an intriguing bulky silver ring on a right-hand finger that she initially refuses to address. Until I dare suggest she may be the object of a secret crush by whoever gave her the ring. She denies it: No, no, it’s not like that.
“I had a very good friend who was close to me. The ring is from him. But I have never been in love.”
There are two identical rings. When her friend gave her the ring, he kept the other one. He, too, has worn it ever since.
It sounds very romantic. I look to Setareh for support. She keeps her game face. To her, I’m the one who knows nothing of love. We have had a disagreement in the car. She has asked me to cover for her when she meets up with “a friend” from the university. Should her father call, I am to say that she’s with me. I tell her it’s much too dangerous. What if there is a blast, and I can’t tell her parents where she is? When I am responsible for her, we should be together, I insist. In turn, she has let me know I am a cold-hearted machine.
I know Setareh will eventually just gamble and tell her father she is with me anyway, and I can only pray she doesn’t get caught or get too close to a suicide bomber. I know she fears neither.
Shukria does not waver on the ring. There is no romance. Only the eight men she counts as friends. Her gang from childhood. They still stick together. When she gets sick, they come to visit, and they all check in regularly. Shukria is especially close to one of them—they went to school and later worked at the hospital together. His parents love her like their own child. He still calls her Shukur. To demonstrate how their bond has been misinterpreted before, Shukria recalls how his mother once thought that she was in love with him and arrived at Shukria’s parents’ house to make a marriage proposal on behalf of her son.
“I was so upset. I went to his mother and said, you have misunderstood everything. We are not in love; I am a man and if I was together with your son we would be in fights all the time—is that what you want? I was very angry. And she said, ‘But I thought you were in love.’ ”
Shukria laughs. The idea is too ridiculous. They were brothers! Not some sappy romantic couple. He eventually married, too, as she knew he would.
Shukria is not entirely sure how love is defined.
“He is my best friend, and sometimes I think that if something happened to him, how could I live? Maybe that is love.”
She has tried to have civil conversations with God on the topic. But too often, they turn into silent, one-sided arguments. Perhaps she should be grateful; God made her both a man and a woman in one person. Yet she feels completely alone most of the time. The noise inside her head is painful, and only occasionally can she shut it down. It works best when she is at work, in her scrubs. It also feels good when she gets to be protective of other women, just as Shukur always was. Whenever she sees a woman being harassed by a man, she will jump in and forget all her womanly manners. She doesn’t pull a knife anymore, but she will not hesitate to shame any man by getting too close, waving her arms, and threatening to beat him up.
Shukria has seen this dynamic played out in pirated American DVDs. There is always a hero and the woman he rescues. Even when the main character is a woman, she will fall in love with a man, who is always stronger. It gives Shukria a great deal of satisfaction to watch the men scoop up women in distress. And like every other woman with a television in Kabul seems to do, Shukria follows the soap operas from India and Turkey.
“When you see stories of love, can you relate to the feeling?”
“No. But I feel love for my children, my parents, my friends, and my coworkers. Love is not just for a partner, I think.”
Perhaps the notion of romantic love is another social construct. Do we actually learn how to fall in love and expect certain behavior from those we fall for? If it’s reciprocated, we call it chemistry. Just as giddy Afghan teenage girls speak dreamily of marriage as presented in Bollywood movies, perhaps we, too, have read books and watched many movies to learn what romance looks like and how it should feel. We perform certain rituals we have been taught are romantic. Then we go about piecing together our own romantic comedy script in the best way possible, with the material we have already collected.
Biological anthropologist Helen Fisher at Stanford University has defined three different forms of love: Lust, which is mainly sexual attraction. Romantic attraction, defined by an intense yearning for another person, not unlike a substance addiction, where the affected craves someone or something. The wanting is the key feeling, just as a heroin addict needs a fix. Finally attachment, signified by a calm feeling of deep union with another person.
Shukria has no answers as to why romance never appealed to her. But she knows why she enjoys her television so much. Even though the concept of romance between the protagonists feels foreign to her, it still excites her to follow a love-struck couple for a very specific reason: “I like happy endings.”
That may be what is truly universal.