There is a feminist in every woman – visible or
invisible – and she waits for the right time and right opportunity to come out.
Every person, be it father, brother, husband or son everybody has his own role
to play in awakening that feminist. But how about a place or a country that is
responsible for making a woman “a feminist”? Exactly, an American teenager became
a feminist after getting married, after visiting her husband’s home, his
country. She admits that her “stay in Afghanistan shaped her feminism”.
Phyllis Chesler, an 18-year-old Jewish-American girl
from Brooklyn, meets Abdul-Kareem, a dark and handsome man from Afghanistan, at
Bards College. Both fall in love, marry against her parents’ wish and embark on
a journey to his homeland. When they arrive in Kabul in 1961, authorities take away
Chesler’s American passport – which she never sees again – reducing her status
to a mere “Afghan wife”, the property of her husband’s family. She walks into
the “harem” on her “own free will”.
Unfortunately, western educated and modernized Abdul-Kareem
reverts to age-old traditions and customs of his society, making Chesler to
exclaim: “It is that Abdul-Kareem treated living in the tenth century as
completely normal, in fact as somehow superior to life in America.”
Chesler finds herself trapped in a rich and
polygamous family wherein Abdul-Kareem’s father has “three wives, 21 children
(who range in age from infancy to their 30s), two grandchildren, at least one
son-in-law, one daughter-in-law and an unknown number of servants and
relatives”, losing all her freedom – unable to get privacy, unable to go out
alone, unable to get “healthy food”, unable to enjoy her newly married life.
“This is how most Afghan women
experience life – they don't. Few rural women venture
beyond their own village or garden plot or courtyard. The same is true for most
city women – except if they are allowed to accompany their fathers
abroad when they are young…,” she writes.
Her woes double when her mother-in-law tries to
convert her from Judaism to Islam and her husband tries to permanently entrap
her in his country through childbirth. Chesler nearly dies before finally
escaping from the country with the help of her father-in-law. She returns to
the U.S., completes her studies and having secured a job, she makes a fresh
start.
While Chesler dedicates the first seven chapters of
her autobiography ‘An American Bride in Kabul: A Memoir’ (October 2013)
to the life spent in Afghanistan, she narrates what happened after she
returned to the U.S. in the last seven chapters. Chesler has not only seen the
beautiful, ancient and exotic country through western eyes, but also through
eastern eyes. She appreciates the culture and country while recounting her
ordeal and the kind of gender apartheid present there.
This kind of memoir is neither first nor going to be
the last. Several women writers have written books on their days spent in
Afghanistan. From Sally Armstrong (Veiled Threat: The Hidden Power of the
Women of Afghanistan, 2003) to Sushmita Bandyopadhyay (Kabuliwala's
Bengali Wife, 1995) to Fawzia Koofi (Letters To My Daughters: A Memoir,
2011; The Favored Daughter: One Woman's Fight to Lead Afghanistan into the
Future, 2012), everybody has more or less similar kind of misery to share. They
all have women rebelling against discrimination and gender apartheid and yearning
for education, healthcare and freedom.
An American Bride in Kabul
holds a unique position because it comes out just a month after the death of
Sushmita Bandyopadhyay, who like Phyllis Chesler had escaped from the clutches
of her husband’s family in Afghanistan.
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| Chesler's Afghan passport |
Both Sushmita and Phyllis were trapped in
Afghanistan after marriage, both made 2-3 unsuccessful attempts to escape, both
approached their respective embassies to get them out, both lived in polygamous
family, both raised their voice against gender apartheid, both fell sick and realized
how difficult it is to get healthcare in the war-plagued country, both forgive
their “husband’s other wife” – in fact, sympathizing with the other woman and
calling her “sister” – both were helped to leave the country by the head of the
family, last but not the least, both maintained good relation with their
husband’s family even after leaving the country!
While the memoir by psychotherapist and professor
emerita of psychology and women's studies no doubt sheds light into the life
behind the walls in Afghanistan, giving the first-hand account of a western
woman’s life in Afghanistan in the 1960s, there are some flaws in the book. The
book looks very sketchy, as it fails to give any in-depth account of her
experiences. The characters fail to impress readers.
The book could have given more insight into detailing
the character of Abdul-Kareem, his father Ismail Mohammed and his mother
Bebegul. Though there are some passages saying how Bebegul called her names, “spit
on her face” and tried to kill her when she was bedridden with hepatitis, the
author fails to give a strong reason behind her acts.
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| Phyllis Chesler and Abdul-Karim |
Moreover, Chesler goes on quoting passages after
passages from other books on Afghanistan which irritates readers, forcing them to
merely skim through pages. Maybe she wanted to make her point stronger by
giving references to other works and prove that it was not just she who has
gone through such agony.
Note: I had written this review in Kannada for Sakhi magazine, Nov. 15-30. Read the original review here...
