I Am a Bacha Posh, page 10
Your breast are apples, your lips are sugar, your teeth are pearls; she is everything, my beloved; she broke my heart, and that is why I am drowning in tears; so sweet, so sweet.
I owe my services to you; you, think of me, oh my love, forever. Morning and night, I sleep in your sanctuary; I am your first partner; so sweet, so sweet.
I knew nothing about this kind of love. And if someone ever said anything like this to me today, I would smack them across the face! I am not beautiful, and I am old—you can’t mock me. It’s me who laughs at other people now! I see the surprised look on the faces of those who meet me for the first time, like the Americans in the army, or like all the people who I saw in New York. They wonder if I like women, I’m sure of it.
A French person from an NGO that I knew well once asked me this question in Kabul—that was when I knew that it was possible that other people wondered the same thing. I did not know what she wanted to say, but, apparently, this exists, marriages between women. Between men also, elsewhere in the world. They use the word lesbian for women. When she asked me if I was a lesbian, she had to explain to me what it was. I had a look of disgust, because even the thought of contact with another body horrifies me. I cannot—that is all. I have no desire. I finished by saying that I did not know what love was. She laughed: “That is not possible, Ukmina—everyone knows what it is! You are not telling the truth.”
She did not want to hear it, so I thought about it and found an example: “Here is my secret: a dog came to visit me one night when I was little, and it bit me; he took out and carried away with him a piece of my flesh, the part of me that housed love and desire. Gone, evaporated, devoured . . . free!”
Now, for the fun of it, I make jokes. I tell the Westerners I meet that I find them beautiful and that I want to marry them under the condition that they convert to Islam. I say this while laughing, looking them straight in the eyes. And I see their discomfort. They are wondering if there is a bit of truth in it. This amuses me so much.
But no, I would never imagine such a thing and permanently offend Allah.
My pleasure is when I walk in the street, and people call me uncle. Here I am Hukomkhan, “the man who gives orders.” Here, I feel accomplished, and I say to myself that I have sacrificed nothing. I have done what I had to do. I became what I was. I found my destiny. And there is nothing that I lack.
EPILOGUE
September 2012
I recently bought a small mirror. Since the encounter in the elevator in New York, I now come face to face with my own image often. Each morning, I do my long gray hair, a feminine gesture maybe. Then I wrap the fabric of my turban, a ritual for men that I carry out with precision from practice.
I have an appointment with the French journalists. They wanted to film me this time, but that is out of the question! My long hair, my feminine quality, is far too intimate! They want to make a documentary about the bacha posh. I did not know that this term was known outside of our country. They explained to me that there were other women like me, designated as boys from their birth, who refused to give up their male clothes at adolescence, as was expected of them. They had tasted the freedom of men and did not intend to abandon it. The American military, with whom I worked in Khost, took an interest in me; one thing led to another, and more journalists came to see me. Mostly Americans. And then somebody nominated me for the Most Courageous Woman of the Year award. This is how I found myself in the United States. It has not been easy, believe me, to make the district understand. “How dare you go there, you, who were in the jihad?”
Yes, America, today, is the enemy.
So here I am, a small celebrity and a great curiosity. And people ask me this question all the time: To be a bacha posh—is it a freedom or an imprisonment?
Here is my answer: Living in men’s clothing has given me a certain freedom. A life as a woman in Afghanistan is a life of destruction. You saw where I come from, and where am I now? But I do not forget what I had to give up. For me, this is not a weight, to not get married, to not have children, to grow old alone . . . but, for others? I would not advise anyone to become a bacha posh.
If a little girl came to me and asked me for advice, I would say to her: I do not want to encourage you to wear men’s clothing; this depends on your character and your courage. Look, there have been plenty of girls who dress themselves as boys, but they were not brave enough for it, and they stopped, and they had to learn how to become girls. They played soccer with the boys, they came and went as they pleased, and then, overnight, they put a veil on their heads and locked their hearts in a prison. They could no longer go out alone; they were expected to find husbands. Their universe is now a summation of whatever lies between the walls of their homes. This has been the case of the bacha posh in my village.
Then I would tell this little girl: If you continue to wear men’s clothing, you must have the brave heart of a man, and the height. Men are strong and brave, sometimes unfair, and often cruel. Women have soft hearts; they cannot be like men. Me, I can be cruel when Satan takes hold of me. I have not killed anyone, but I can knock someone out. Therefore, I would say that everything depends on your heart and not on the garments. Abroad, I have seen women dressed in women’s clothing who have brave hearts. They are fighting, they are working, they are strong. Therefore, dressing as a man is not the solution. Me, I had no choice. That is all there is to it; I could not do otherwise. My father said, “You will be a boy, my girl,” and I have since remained a boy. In fact, I know that, at the bottom of me, that when he was pushing me to become his daughter, under the pressure of the mullahs, he was proud that I resisted. He had raised me that way; he made me a man.
But, you see, little girl, sometimes I think about death. And I know that I will be wrapped as a woman, because you can cheat everyone except Allah. The white sheet will overlap my head, and my hands will be laid on my chest. But in the next world, you see, I am going to ask Allah to make me a real woman or a real man. It is no big deal, but not half and half. Why? you ask. Because, without love and without desire, you sometimes feel lonely.
Ukmina Manoori, I Am a Bacha Posh
