For the women of Afghanistan
Beneath the Sweater and the Skin
How many years of beauty do I have left?
she asks me.
How many more do you want?
Here. Here is 34. Here is 50.
When you are 80 years old
and your beauty rises in ways
your cells cannot even imagine now
and your wild bones grow luminous and
ripe, having carried the weight
of a passionate life.
When your hair is aflame
with winter
and you have decades of
learning and leaving and loving
sewn into
the corners of your eyes
and your children come home
to find their own history
in your face.
When you know what it feels like to fail
ferociously
and have gained the
capacity
to rise and rise and rise again.
When you can make your tea
on a quiet and ridiculously lonely afternoon
and still have a song in your heart
Queen owl wings beating
beneath the cotton of your sweater.
Because your beauty began there
beneath the sweater and the skin,
remember?
This is when I will take you
into my arms and coo
YOU BRAVE AND GLORIOUS THING
you’ve come so far.
I see you.
Your beauty is breathtaking.
Jeannette Encinias
1
THE MOUNTAIN PEAKS were silhouetted dark against the disappearing night as the morning call to prayer rang out across the ancient city. In a few minutes the sun would rise above the buildings, sending shards of light to splinter the icy peaks of the Hindu Kush before being reflected back in the windows of Kabul.
Sofia looked down at the men as they emerged from the dark corners of Shaahir Square, drifting toward the mosque in the half-light. She couldn’t see their faces but she knew each one by the way he moved and the direction from which he had come. On the mosque’s steps they took off their plastic flip-flops and old slippers, placing them in neat rows before disappearing behind the heavy wooden doors and into the arms of their beloved Imam Mustafa and his great and glorious god.
Shivering in the cool dawn, Sofia pulled the shawl more tightly around her shoulders before tucking her feet up under her to wrap warm fingers around icy toes. It was not yet winter in Kabul but already there was a gathering chill in the air. Soon shoppers would desert the square by late afternoon and the shopkeepers would huddle together around open fires in old metal drums. And then one morning the city would wake to find itself blanketed in a mantle of drifting white, and before it had turned into dirty brown slush, and before people had time to curse their city, this drab and smelly place would sparkle like a bright, shiny jewel.
For more than three thousand five hundred years, ancient Kabul had breathed and it had grown. It had been conquered, ruled, abandoned and all but destroyed by any number of dynasties, empires, sects and madmen. It was mentioned in the sacred Rigveda text of Hinduism and the Avesta of Zoroastrianism, and at least two centuries before Jesus was crucified on the cross, Buddhism had settled over the land. Eight hundred years later, Mohammad, from the warring Quraish tribe of Mecca, declared himself the last true prophet of the one true God. Two hundred years later, the great Persian warlord Ya’qub ibn al-Layth al-Saffar brought this new religion to the land. Sofia knew the history well, but for a few precious minutes it felt as if dawn over the Hindu Kush belonged to her.
Had her obsession with the country grown from the stories overheard late at night about the grandfather who had served in the British Army in Afghanistan? Or had this man she had never met planted the seeds of Afghanistan in her genes more than a century ago? None of that seemed to matter anymore because what Sofia did know for sure was the exact point in time when coming to Kabul had become inevitable. All the befores and afters led to and from the moment she had been told about a Dr Jabril Aziz seeking a female doctor to work with him in Kabul. The next moment in time – the one that assured she would remain in Afghanistan – had been in a village high in the Hindu Kush.
Sofia picked up her tea from where she had left it on the windowsill. Taking a sip, she stared up at the mountain range, remembering the village but also the man there who had looked at her with something more than longing, and had made love to her with something more than desire. Over the years, though, his memory had begun to falter and fade until Sofia could no longer put the whole of him together again. At first this had troubled her, but in time it became less troubling until his memory had become little more than a vague, worrying shape, a watery dream that might have belonged to someone else. And yet, if the hour was right, or the day had been of a particular sort, he might return and she would find herself turning each memory over and around, examining its colour and size and shape until she could see again – the way he smiled at her, or a particular way he moved or laughed – and she would feel again the pain of loving someone who had never loved her.
Sofia held the tea in her hands, drawing comfort from its warmth because in two hours he would be standing in front of her. She had no idea how she felt about that. Excitement? Fear? Apprehension? It had been five years. Would he even remember her? Placing the cup back on the windowsill, she leaned down and picked up the newspaper lying at her feet, opening it again to page two.
Dr Daniel Abiteboul from the United Nations arrived in Kabul yesterday. He will be spending the next month assessing the country’s most pressing needs on behalf of the organisation…
Without registering the name of the sender, she had flicked the email from the United Nations representative on to her receptionist, Iman, and it was she who had replied on Sofia’s behalf. But then she had seen his photo in the paper last night and pulled the email up again, reading it carefully for any hint of recognition, but there had been none.
Staring down now at Daniel’s photo, a long-forgotten memory began to form: hands strong enough to pull a broken bone back into place but delicate enough to sew tiny stitches into the face of a baby, and sensitive enough to set her skin on fire. She leaned back in her chair, following the memory. The first night he had come to her he had arrived in silence, placing his finger to her lips, waiting until she understood. Only then, when he was absolutely certain she wanted him as much as he wanted her, did he lean in and kiss her. Every night after that, when the village had settled down for the night, Daniel would leave his bed in the mosque and return to her. And every morning, before the village began to stir, he would go. As they worked together during the day, not a word was spoken of what had passed between them in the dark, but there had been times when she would look up from her work to find him watching her, as if she was a puzzle he could not solve. And then he had disappeared, and his leaving, like his lovemaking, had been a surprise.
It had been such a strange, haunting affair. Without the distraction of life outside the village, time and movement had slowed to a gentler pace until each moment was intensified. When Sofia worked with the village women, or she gazed up at the mountains, or made love with Daniel, there was nothing in the world but that single, complete moment.
Flipping the newspaper shut, she found herself looking at a photo of the aftermath of a suicide bombing outside Kabul’s main police headquarters from the day before. She had not heard that particular explosion, but she had heard enough.