Azita
She eats.
When she is told a number of ballot boxes from her province are invalid, she eats. When the landlord of the family’s apartment gives her a week’s notice to move out and find somewhere else to live, she eats. When her husband announces that his first wife and daughter are to come and live with them again in Kabul—and that his decision is final—she eats.
Azita rips through the soft naan bread, she reaches for the rest of Mehran’s cookies, she scrapes spoonfuls of rice from pots before doing the dishes.
It’s embarrassing, and she cannot stop.
For a woman to become fat, in Afghanistan too, is seen as a sign of weak character; of someone who is no longer in control. But there is no other drug available, and it’s not like she can choose to fall apart now. She tries to quell the anxiety as best she can and she overdoses on what is closest and most accessible to her. She eats furiously and she eats mindlessly; she stops only when she is full to the point of feeling ill, allowing nausea to trump worry for a few moments, when blood has left the brain and heads for the stomach, when the sugar spews into every vein and dims the mind.
Azita is no longer the lawmaker for whom people rise to their feet when she walks into a room. In the spring of 2011, almost a year after her failed reelection bid, she is without a salary, invitations from foreign dignitaries, or invitations to attend events abroad. There is not even a gun allowance. She never found the gun they gave her, but it does not matter now. Most of the diplomats and the international organizations have forgotten she even existed.
To them, Azita is not even marginally important anymore.
AT FIRST SHE won. Or at least she thought she had won.
The campaign had sucked the marrow right out of her, with the relentless Ramadan campaigning through desert lands of Badghis wearing a full-length chador and having an empty stomach between dawn and dusk, distributing her tapes and making speeches. Just as in other provinces, Taliban-affiliated groups had managed to retake some districts, which then became off-limits to her. Still, she spent three months knocking on doors, making her pitch to villagers, and feeding hundreds of prospective voters who showed up at her house in Badghis every day for a meal and to get a look at her.
Some of the competition had offered gifts, too, for supporters to show up at rallies, such as clothing, gas for motorbikes, or cash labeled “travel support.” Azita wished she could have afforded to give more, but she had only the tapes and her stern-looking posters.
After election day, in one of the primary election counts, she collected the most votes to again secure a seat in the “people’s house.” The count seemed certain, so victory was declared. She felt excitement paired with relief at the notion of returning to Kabul for a second term. She threw a large party in Badghis, basking in the glow from her proud parents and relatives. But a week later, in a very Afghan twist of politics, at a secondary election count declared even more valid than the first, Azita had suddenly and mysteriously fallen behind. As it turned out, the elections were riddled with fraud, and around the country nearly a fourth of the ballots cast were eventually declared invalid without much examination.
The victory declared then retracted left Azita feeling embarrassed at first. Then she felt numb. She had given the campaign her all; she had no plan B. Her job and her position were her identity, her self-respect, her emotional stability, and her income. It had made possible a somewhat functioning relationship with her husband. And it had promised her daughters a future. She did not know under what guise to step out next. Or if she could reinvent herself. The small expressions of respect her position had afforded her, being greeted by men and sometimes called by her name; these were privileges that would be no more.
Ashamed, she stayed inside the house in Badghis.
When she reluctantly turned her cell phone back on, messages had piled up from supporters, urging her not to throw in the towel. “Everyone” knew there had been foul play, they said. And they knew her not as a quitter who would buckle under corrupt Afghan politics but as a leader who stood for something—was that not exactly what she had told her constituents so many times over? They had gone to the polls for her and would not accept her just folding in the face of some blanket wipeout of votes due to the alleged fraud of others. Of course she had been cheated of her seat; more of the clean votes belonged to her. Unlike many of the others, she had not even been accused of fraud herself. Or did she in fact mean to tell her supporters that their votes were now suddenly worth nothing?
Slowly, Azita came around.
“It’s the right of the people who voted for me to see me fight for this. It’s a competition, and I won fairly,” she told herself.
The image of her daughters back in a Badghis mud house also filled her with determination. They were Kabul girls now, who could make something of their lives. She would not do to them what was once done to her: Invite them to a better life and then exile them back to a province with little prospect of a decent education or a chance to escape an early marriage to a villager. Besides, Azita thought, she had run a clean campaign, so how hard could it be to prove that those additional votes were rightfully hers?
Together with hundreds of other candidates who disputed the election results, she decided to go into battle.
In all, a third of the country’s original candidates became embroiled in a heated national conflict, either as contested winners or as runners-up, claiming more votes should be counted toward their own results, or fewer to that of others’ results. In the meantime, Afghanistan was left with a frozen, inactive parliament and a crisis for the fragile, untested democracy.
At first, through chaotic official hearings and in the backroom negotiations Azita attended, she was told her chances of a favorable recount were good. They would increase, however, if she paid a fee of $60,000 to certain officials who handled the process. That could even reinstate her without any further queries, she learned. Several colleagues confirmed to her it was indeed the going rate; some even advised her to consider it. It was a small fee to pay to get her job back, suggested one of the officials when she argued that her higher vote count was indeed valid to begin with. She would soon make that kind of money–and more–in her salaried position of power, and by charging those who wanted to pay for the right decisions a little on the side.
“If I even had that money I would give it to the widows,” Azita shot back at him before storming out of his office.
At another visit with an official, he suggested she could sign a debt letter toward future income or assets. Several others had done just that, she was told. Surely she, or perhaps her father, had some land that she could put up as collateral? When Azita declined, she was called “a very silly woman.” After that, several officials advised her to “just forget about it.” Without an “investment” and some good faith money, she was informed it would be difficult to enter parliament again.
Spurred on by the resistance from officials searching to enrich themselves in the political turmoil, Azita put even more energy into tracing her votes and trying to prove their legitimacy. That promise of a new country that had appeared on the horizon when the Taliban first left still resonated deeply with her a decade later. She had not already spent five years in parliament just to sidestep the courts and the official justice system. And regardless of any respect for democracy, she simply did not have the money either.
But now, she was without an income and an office. With little savings, keeping the family afloat in Kabul was becoming harder by the week. Eventually her husband weighed in: This struggle to get back into parliament did not seem to be very fruitful, and it was taking too long. It was time to let go, he argued. They should move back to Badghis, or at least to Herat, where they could live like a normal family again.
It was unthinkable for Azita, who despite her setbacks had grown absolutely certain she should be reinstated as a Badghis representative to Kabul.
Again, she turned to her father and asked him to broker an agreement with her husband; she needed another few months to battle the election commission. Her husband agreed to extend their stay in Kabul, to await the final decision from officials on the makeup of parliament. In return, Azita said she would get a temporary job to support the family while she saw the legal process through.
She would continue, however, to spend almost every day immersed in meetings with election officials, carrying her ragged paper dossier between the ministries, courts, and informal gatherings with colleagues, while telling her family and friends “I am my own lawyer. But I have my supporters. The first is Allah. The second is my people.”
FINDING A JOB also proved harder than she had thought. It had become an issue of appearance. A public, high-paying job would potentially make people think she had given up on reentering parliament. A low-paying job would make her seem like a definite loser, which would not work to her advantage in her legal skirmishes either. Regardless, most of her energy went into the legal struggle, and it was not as though anyone were clamoring for her to work for them, either.
As the first months of 2011 went by, her savings ran out. She began to take small loans where she could—from her father, her brother, and from a few friends in politics. She made them promise not to talk about it with others.
The last of her saved money had gone to resettling the family in Golden City, a Pashtun-dominated development at the outskirts of Kabul. The Dubai-inspired houses rose up during Kabul’s development mania that followed a massive influx of money in the past decade. At first the buildings had been painted a luxuriously golden yellow that blazed toward the main road leading into the neighborhood. But a few years of desert winds soon sandpapered them into a more matte exterior and now paint was chipping away from the hallways inside.
Golden City has no playground and no football field. There are no trees, or even a patch of green anywhere to be seen. Not that there is a need, either: Children of the mostly conservative Pashtun families who live here are not allowed outside to play much. Azita’s husband has decided that their children—including Mehran—must stay inside after school. It’s not safe to go out anymore, even for an hour here and there. The children do not have many friends in the new place either, and they left their old ones behind in Macroyan.
Now, every day except Friday consists of the same routine for them: School starts at 7 a.m.; return by midday to do homework, napping, dinner, and then bed. Any play takes place on the apartment’s small balcony, but mostly, the children just watch cable television or pirated DVDs, from which the twins can quote most lines by now. Fights flare up more often during the hot summer months, when they circle one another like caged animals in and out of the apartment’s small rooms.
But Azita tries to be upbeat and is eager to show off everything that is new when I meet her in the new apartment for the first time, after she has spent months in Badghis and I have been out of the country.
There are wall-to-wall Oriental carpets and thick yellow curtains in every room. There’s a dishwasher, an electric oven, and a microwave in the kitchen. A pink porcelain bathroom. Not one but two television sets in the living room. The two wives each have a bedroom. As before, the children share a bedroom. Azita has installed a modern weight-training machine in the children’s room. She is planning to lose the weight soon.
A few more of her French-manicured fingers now glimmer with Saudi gold. Her wrists are wrapped in twisted yellow bands, and heavy pearl earrings weigh down her earlobes. That, too, is from the borrowed money. The added bling and the apartment are a careful investment effort, she explains. Around Kabul, appearance is everything, and no one will trust someone who looks like she is on the way out. Visitors still come to their home, and they need to be assured she is still a player. She needs to come off as worldly and sophisticated and confident; as someone who has a rightful place in the national parliament. And, in truth, buying things helps stave off anxiety, she has discovered.
She shrugs when I ask how it can be sustainable without a salary. It’s not. Money will need to come from somewhere. Soon.
Ironically, among those who seem not to have fully noticed her setbacks are the threat mongers. They want to make sure she does not return to politics. The anonymous calls keep coming, with the message that she needs to stop insisting she should be in parliament. She should behave like a normal woman before God, the callers propose, by staying home. That is, however, not Azita’s idea of what God wants for women, and it’s not what she wants for herself, either. But the confidence she built while she was in power is harder to challenge now, and only moderately helped by her gold-plated appearance: “Now I take taxis and people do not even greet me anymore,” she admits as we sit on pillows, having tea on her bedroom floor. “I feel worthless. I moralize myself up, and then I get down. I get negative ideas in my head that I can’t get rid of. I can’t focus.”
She begins to rise from the floor, to go and change into the all-black clothing for a meeting at the Ministry of Defense. But the four cell phones on the floor between us come alive at the same time. My text message is in all caps:
“ALERT: 1215H EXPLOSION NEAR MOD. AVOID THE AREA.”
As soon as a major blast goes off anywhere in Kabul, text messages ripple through the cellular networks, as anyone with a phone tries to ensure the safety of their friends, relatives, and colleagues. With one phone in each hand, Azita and I both perform the same routine, confirming back to each sender that we are nowhere near the Ministry of Defense, which is now under attack. More detailed messages filter in and we take turns filling each other in: A suicide bomber entered the ministry by disguising himself as an Afghan army officer in uniform. Once inside, he shot his way up toward his third-floor target—the minister’s office. He then blew himself up in such a way as to maim and kill as many as possible around him. The minister himself appears to have survived, but the total number of fatalities is yet unknown.
After a few minutes of texting, we put our phones down. Azita’s second meeting of the day is canceled. She does not mention her close call. It is one of many that have come before. We both know it means neither of us will be going anywhere before roadblocks are cleared. It also means we have more time for tea.
Azita looks down, quietly picking at a piece of cake. It is the bloodiest year yet of the war: American troop losses will reach new highs, and the war will claim the most civilians since counting of them began. In the capital, suicide blasts, kidnappings for ransom, and targeted killings are a regular occurrence.
“This is Kabul now,” she says.
AROUND THIS TIME, the military and diplomatic corps in Kabul still officially upheld a rather optimistic view of developments in Afghanistan. But in private, by 2011, many had already lost much of their initial enthusiasm for whether the war could be “won,” or how Afghanistan would reach some semblance of peace.
President Obama’s two-year “surge” of thirty thousand additional troops meant to quash the insurgency, quickly followed by the announcement of a withdrawal by 2014, had ultimately not prevented various Islamic militants, warlords, criminal networks, and Taliban-affiliated groups from boldly expanding in several provinces. Expensive American efforts to train and equip Afghan government troops to defend their own country still did not prevent the Taliban from successfully widening their territory by aligning with locals and criminal networks, fueled by the ever-expanding opium trade.
And inside the armor-clad and tank-protected enclave of the capital, suicide bombers found new ways to infiltrate and induce terror, at times blasting themselves in pairs, followed by fighters who could hold out for hours, occupying buildings and shutting down entire areas of the city. Rockets were regularly launched at government buildings and even reached as far as the well-protected U.S. Embassy.
Those who could afford protection responded by erecting ever higher walls around themselves.
The pace at which the remaining low-key, elegant 1950s Kabul villas were turning into indistinguishable cement-gray fortresses seemed to increase exponentially for every month with the waning interest of the Western world. One row of sandbags for blast protection became two; those who once employed two guards hired four; and a thick steel door was the new standard. More small huts with security guards for body searches popped up outside houses and hotels, and every tree seemed to be ensnarled in razor wire, preventing both humans and stray cats from getting onto the high walls.
But officially ending America’s longest war, with a price tag of upward of $700 billion and counting to American taxpayers, and with its many changing narratives—from “rooting out” terrorism to just fighting the Taliban in general—had become a political necessity back in the United States.
Fear of what would come next was all over Kabul. Those speaking for the foreign military dropped the word “victory” in favor of the more ambiguous “exit,” with the silent understanding that battles would most likely continue to rage in some form, ranging from a complete descent into civil war or a full-fledged, lawless narco state, to warlords dividing up provinces through regional battles. The United States and its allies, however, could no longer afford to be much involved.
What Sherard Cowper-Coles, British ambassador to Afghanistan from 2007 to 2009, writes in his memoir echoes Russian accounts of their journey into the harsh and mountainous country that refused to be conquered or controlled:
This time it was the United States leading the war in Afghanistan without a clear idea either of what it was getting into or of how it was getting out. Without realizing it, we have become involved in a multi-player, multi-dimensional, multi-decade civil conflict, the origins of which go back many years. It is an unresolved struggle over the nature of Afghan policy, between Islam and secularism, tradition and modernism, town and country, Sunni and Shia, farmer and nomad, Pashtun and Tajik, Uzbek and Hazara.
With the war’s downward spiral on everyone’s mind in Kabul, finding a viable “exit strategy” was no longer only on the minds of military and foreign policy scholars. Afghans had heard this story before, when six million of them fled the Afghan-Soviet war in the 1980s. After the fall of the Taliban in 2001, many returned from Pakistan and Iran only to find themselves plotting yet another departure a decade later, with those with means hiring smugglers to take them to Europe or Canada.
However, for the foreigners “to leave with some sense of honor intact” and a semblance of at least a “dirty peace,” in the words of a European diplomat, some kind of agreement would ideally be brokered with the militant opposition; a stark change of tune from refusing to speak to the Taliban a decade earlier. Paving the way for “peace talks” with the Taliban became a favorite new diplomatic term in Kabul, and already in 2011, “soft” issues, such as the rights of women, had been taken off any high-level agenda, according to several diplomats. That any political deal with extremists would sacrifice every shred of women’s rights achieved in the past decade was largely ignored by all but human rights organizations.
As Setareh reached a spokesperson for the Taliban in Kunar province with a burner phone procured especially for the occasion, he confirmed that once—as he fully expects to happen—the Taliban regains more power in Afghanistan when most American and allied forces withdraw, bacha posh will immediately be banned, as those who attempt to change their gender wrongly “touch on God’s creation.” The spokesperson also informed Setareh that women will be removed from all universities, courts, the parliament, and provincial councils, because “God does not want women in any of those places.”
ON MOST SPRING Fridays, Babur Gardens in Kabul, which overlook the dust cloud that hovers over the city’s downtown, is a picnic destination for families who decide to risk bringing their children outside for a few hours. Teenage boys balance on the stone terracing and climb onto clusters of low trees in high midday sun. Women stay strictly covered and close to their husbands. Teenage girls are rarely seen. Not much actual picnicking takes place on the brown lawns, but a lone ice cream man does good business by offering cones from a battered box held by a strap around his neck. In the afternoons, the park becomes almost pretty as the low sun begins to set. A man on the grass plays a flute and the dust whirls have stilled.
But Azita both looks and feels a bit out of place in her gold- adorned sunglasses and swaths of black fabric, with the pointy heels just visible underneath. She never went to public places like these as a parliamentarian; now, as a regular person and one among many, she is uneasy. She fears someone will recognize her and think she doesn’t belong there—that she should confine her children to the family’s own private garden, as a richer, more proper woman might do. It’s not entirely appropriate for her to be in a crowd like this, within sight of so many other men, though she is in the company of her own husband. More than anything, Azita is hoping she will not run into a friend or a colleague from parliament. It would be best if no one recognized her at all. They may start to ask questions about her family and want an introduction to her husband and his first wife. It would embarrass her, that she—the former parliamentarian—has a polygynous family where she is the second wife.
Azita sits down in a stone alcove while her four girls make a bid for the nearest tree. Mehran, in pants and a shirt, yells in triumph as she hangs upside down from a branch. Twins Beheshta and Benafsha smirk and turn to each other, saying something to the effect of “Enjoy it while you can” to their youngest sister. No one cares that Mehran’s untucked shirt falls over her head, exposing her belly as she waves to onlookers.
Now seven, she is still served first in the family, and she still demands to be listened to at all times. Those who surround her encourage her to be smart and strong and loud. The twins don’t even attempt to climb the tree; they wouldn’t want to get dirty. Middle sister Mehrangis announces that she would actually like to try it, only to be rebuffed by her older sisters. She is too clumsy and chubby, they tell her. She would likely fall and injure herself.
Between the money troubles and the political struggle, Mehran’s gender is the least of Azita’s concerns right now.
But how does Mehran make a difference as a boy anymore, when Azita is no longer a parliamentarian and the children rarely go out anyway? “Why would I make my daughter into a son if this society was working?” she snaps back at my question. “Nothing has changed, and nothing will change. It’s only going in the wrong direction here.”
I still don’t understand. There used to be a specific purpose to Mehran being a boy?
Azita closes her eyes briefly, in a rare plea for questions to stop. The family’s life has changed in many ways since the year before, but now is not a good time to talk about it.
A fifth girl, her dark hair in a ponytail, cautiously watches Mehran in the tree, placing herself a few steps behind the twins. She is their half sister, who moved into their new apartment in Kabul along with her mother a few months ago. At thirteen, she is the oldest child in the family, but next to the twins, who always present as a team and always seem to have something to say, she can rarely find the words. She has been taught not to be loud or move about very much—it’s not what girls do.
Her mother carefully sits down on the stone alcove next to Azita. In a white cotton head scarf, she is absolutely still, looking down at her hands. Her bulky jacket and full-length pale blue skirt are typical of how village women dress, and offer a stark contrast to Azita’s all-black and gold-ornamented sunglasses.
“Would you like us to pose for a picture together?” Azita asks me.
She moves closer and puts her arm around the other woman, who immediately turns her head away. Where she is from, women are not supposed to have their picture taken. It’s awkward, but Azita insists: They are in the capital now—it’s different here and they must all adjust. Azita flashes her professional smile, while the woman next to her reluctantly lifts her head just enough to show her eyes under the head scarf.
Their mutual husband is in a good mood, sending Mehran off with ice cream money after only a minimum of begging. He says he feels good. He is a normal husband now, out with his two wives and their children. Actually, it’s both a relief and a disappointment that Azita no longer has her seat in parliament. But mostly a relief: It was a long and excruciating campaign, and he was always ambivalent about the prospect of living another five years as the husband of a politician. It also embarrassed him a great deal that they first announced victory and then had to pull back. He certainly doesn’t mind the new, bigger apartment, and he knows Azita wants to get back into parliament, but in his view, life is still better this way. He has fewer responsibilities now than when she was in power. Back then, he had to work with her and greet guests or escort constituents who had come traveling. It was exhausting, and sometimes he had to lie down in the afternoons. Most important, for the five years Azita was in parliament, he could not shake the guilt of living in Kabul while his first wife was still in the village.
That situation has been rectified now, to everyone’s benefit, he says. He is pleased with his decision: Before, he was too busy, shuttling between them in different provinces. Now the women can share responsibility for the household, making it easier on everyone. And with an uncertain outlook for the country beyond 2014, it is probably for the best that Azita is not in parliament anymore. Her being a politician always posed additional risks for the children. For now, he has agreed to stay in Kabul for a few more months, but he is looking forward to a quieter life in Badghis soon. It will be better for the children, too, not having a mother who is constantly questioned and recognized. As a stay-at-home wife and mother, Azita will be more of a role model to them as they look forward to their own future marriages.
AFGHAN FRIED CHICKEN has only one Kabul branch, and the chipped sign advertises its menu as “Clean, Healthy and Tasty.” Azita’s daughters have all been there before, on a few special occasions. The four of them almost fall over one another as they jubilantly skip-step into the restaurant, followed by their older half sister, who walks behind them.
The older girls are too tall and too big to fit comfortably inside the main attraction—a plastic play area with a yellow slide and a house to hide in—but they all squeeze in there anyway. Mehran goes on the mechanical rodeo horse three times in a row, with coins from her father’s pocket. For her sisters, straddling the toy animal is not an option. Two other families are in the restaurant this evening. They might disapprove, or be offended.
Azita quickly orders for the table. She gets the fried chicken for herself, and the chicken burger special with fries for the children, her husband, and his first wife. This is an expensive restaurant for Kabul—fast food is a Western-style luxury. But Azita has decided to splurge, since the children so rarely leave the house these days. She first took them here to celebrate their move to Kabul and her new position. Her husband sits at one end of the long table, and the wives on the other, with the children’s empty seats between them. There is no conversation.
When a burger on a paper plate lands in front of her, the village wife silently looks at it for several seconds, hands still in her lap. Then she removes the bun on top and looks at the piece of fried meat inside. She puts the bun back. As the children are called back to the table, she does not move again until Beheshta has poured ketchup all over her burger. Only after Beheshta’s first bite into her burger does her stepmother pick up hers and mimic the move. She chews a small bite carefully and puts the burger down again.
Azita’s husband exclaims his confusion out loud. Why is there no bread on the side? There should be bread with every meal, regardless of any burger buns. The restaurant must have made a mistake. He calls on the waiter and complains.
Azita looks down. “It’s not easy for him,” she mumbles. His daughters can all read and write now, on different levels. Their father has made clear his intention not to learn. Why should he, when Azita makes all the decisions anyway, he has joked.
His first wife hushes the children. She never asked to be brought from the village to the capital, nor does she feel particularly at ease here. After living together and then splitting up the household due to too many conflicts, the two wives had developed a courteous but distant relationship. It worked when they occasionally saw each other in Badghis, when Azita was there campaigning or visiting her parents.
Now it’s different.
The first wife never commented much on Azita’s children before, but here in Kabul, she has begun to voice her concerns about how frivolous the family has become, adopting strange customs and behaviors. In her view—and she has let it be known—Azita’s daughters have become spoiled and inappropriately spirited. They speak back to their parents, are reluctant to help out at home, and in general seem to take too much for granted, she has explained.
The first wife, who is also illiterate, has made it clear to Azita that she will not allow her daughter to be influenced by any such Kabul behavior, which in addition to fantasies of higher studies includes dancing in the living room and watching American movies. She has also noted that Mehran seemed to have her father’s ear, more so than the other girls. It has come to bother her quite a bit. There is no reason to extend extra privileges to his youngest, she has told her husband. After all, she is only a girl. But he brushed off her concerns about Mehran’s behavior. After that lack of response, the first wife told Mehran to wear a head scarf to school—a demand Mehran completely ignored. The blatant disobedience triggered her stepmother even more. She began to taunt Mehran, to imprint the truth in her: “You are not a real boy—you know that, right? You will never be a real boy.”
It works well, as it takes Azita almost a half hour to talk Mehran out of each meltdown that follows.
Just a week earlier, the first wife lectured Mehran about how she should never think she is any closer to her father than the other children, nor that there was a special bond between them. Mehran responded by throwing another fit and yelling at her stepmother. When Azita came in, intending to plead with her husband’s first wife to stop, she instead lost her patience with Mehran, who furiously screamed back. Azita slapped her across the face to make her stop.
It was the first time she had hit her daughter.
“You must never speak to your other mother like that again!” she yelled at her daughter. Mehran went silent immediately. Azita froze as she watched the surprised look on her daughter’s face and the tears that ensued. The red marks on Mehran’s cheek faded, but she did not speak much until the next day.
Azita pleaded with her husband’s first wife to recognize that the bacha posh arrangement is to their joint advantage. It helps control the pressure to bring another child into the family. Or a third wife. But that argument gains no traction with the first wife, who has firmly argued that Mehran must look, behave, and be treated like the girl she is. Until Azita understands this, it is necessary to remind Mehran that she is indeed a girl—and an ugly one at that—if she misbehaves.
Underneath these forced but polite conversations between the two wives, they both know exactly what is at stake: If Mehran is stripped of her role as a son, it will also remove Azita’s fragile status as a somewhat more important wife. There is a traditional ranking order between multiple wives married to one husband, where the first-married holds a higher status and more clout in the family. But that is, in turn, calibrated by who produces the most sons. Mehran is all that stands between Azita as she lives now and potentially reverting to the traditionally lower status of second wife. Making an already complicated childhood even more difficult, Mehran thus holds some of the power balance between her mother and her stepmother.
The first wife has also taken to reminding her husband that his youngest daughter needs to be cultivated into decent marriage material. If nothing else, her current loud and talkative manner will grow into a problem later on. She is already hard to control. He should not let it escalate, she keeps reminding him. “She’s a girl, and you have to treat her as one.”
Azita’s husband has not taken kindly to the brewing conflict centered around his oldest wife and his youngest child, demanding of both wives that they get along and make the children behave. He has even snapped at Mehran a few times himself—something he did not use to do. It should be a happy time for all of them, he insists, now that they are all together again.
After the meal is finished at Afghan Fried Chicken, Azita pays the bill. She wants to leave in order to catch her Turkish television series: In the previous episode, a young woman was being threatened with an arranged marriage, and Azita is curious to see how the drama will evolve. She hurries her husband and the children out through a side door where the four-wheel drive is parked. They had to get a new car to fit the family of eight.
Tonight, Mehran still rides in the front seat.