Åsne Seierstad, The Bookseller of Kabul, 2002, Virago. Seierstad is a Norwegian journalist.
The Beehive [my bookclub] is reading this book for October. While there is information in the book, as context, about the national and international circumstances of Afghanistan and her peoples, this is a book about a family, about the circumstances of daily life in a relatively privileged family living in Kabul. It is also a book about the lives of women.
The Beehive member who chose this book for us, asked us to consider what the book told us about the country as well as the family, what was missing, what might be needed.
I am glad to have read this book, it has furthered my understanding about women's lives in a culture so different from the one in which I live in 21st century western canada. Fatema Mernissi, Morrocan feminist and anthropologist, opened my eyes with her memoir, Dreams of Trespass: Tales of a Harem Girlhood [1995]. Geraldine Brooks', 1994 book, Nine Parts of Desire showed me what women's lives looked like in the Middle East, from the point of view of a western [Australian] reporter. Sally Armstrong, once editor of Homemaker magazine, wrote Veiled Threat: The Hidden power of the women of Afghanistan, which is in my reading stack, half-finished.
There are many more magazine articles, tv news stories, newspaper columns and stories which, over the last two decades have infuriated and/or informed my understanding of what it might be like to be a woman, living under the revolving ideological constraints of Islam, the Taliban, and imperialism. Then there is the dominance of patriarchy, the rule of the fathers, everywhere.
Seierstad has the experience of an insider and the eye of a journalist/story teller to inform her engaging account. She lived several months with the large and complex family of Sultan, the bookseller. The tensions of the intimate life of the family controlled by one man who's word is law, reflect the tensions of life in Kabul. The brutal rule of the Taliban controlled the lives of everyone, their departure from general power eases the public lives of men, but not of women. The return of the King means the burka can be discarded, women's faces can be seen in public.
Sultan's word is the law in his house, in his shops. His sons do as they are told, and when they are rebellious they act like teenage males we might know. The women are kept from any public interaction, for the most part. When Sultan's youngest sister tries to register for a job as an English teacher she is foiled at every turn. She cannot go to the office alone. She must rely on her family connections for success. She discovers she is missing one signed form when she finally gets to the Ministry of Education. Her hopes fade, as no one will return with her to the Ministry.
What's missing, my sister Bee asked? The French Enlightenment. The notion that women are the same and different from men. That women have a place in community life. What's missing? Women's liberty.
Many times we will read that women have satisfaction in their lives under the circumstances Seierstad shows her reader. Sheltered from the hustle/bustle, from contact with brutal men, protection from sexual assaults. Sure, it's all that provides physical safety for women and children, and that is not entirely reliable either, given the incidence of violence inside the intimate relationships. Sultan's female relatives lead lives with little stimulation, for the most part. This could be part and parcel of their living in the city, where along with everything else the scars of wars and lack of transportation limit their view to only the walls of the apartment or the house. Family events make it possible for women to see other women in the family, or they go to the baths together. Many women have subsided into silence. Others are consumed by the disagreements and struggles of women who have no choice to do anything else.
The male relatives all seem to want a piece of the power Sultan has in his public life, and as it turns out if they toe the line, they will get it. Here lies the most outstanding difference between women and men. Men, along with their other privileges when they have them, may have access to power in public life. Class and ethnic origin determine how much power and in which places men will have that power. For those women who break the barriers, class and ethnicity will also have their expected effects.
The doors are closed, and barred. There is a stack of brick outside them. The metaphors for barriers impossible for women to overcome are legion. Afghani women face barriers on the inside of their homes and on the outside, should they manage to get through the door.
Leila, who wants to be a teacher, is the family member who looks after Seierstad. They speak English together. We have a clearer view of Leila's internal life. She is desperate. She's not sure what life she wants, but she knows it is not the life she leads in Sultan's house. She seeks a way out. All of the doors are closed.
