Åsne Seierstad - The Bookseller of Kabul

When Sultan Khan had delivered his message, the parents said, as could be expected: ‘She is too young.’

Anything else would be to sell short to this rich, unknown suitor whom Sultan recommended so warmly. It would not do to appear too keen. But they knew Sultan would return; Sonya was young and beautiful.

He returned the next day and repeated the proposal. The same conversation, the same answers. But this time he got to meet Sonya whom he had not seen since she was a young girl.

She kissed his hand, in the custom of showing respect for an elder relative, and he blessed the top of her head with a kiss. Sonya was aware of the charged atmosphere and flinched under Uncle Sultan’s searching look.

‘I have found you a rich man, what do you think of that?’ he asked. Sonya looked down at the floor. A young girl has no right to have an opinion about a suitor.

Sultan returned the third day and this time he made known the suitor’s proposition: a ring, a necklace, earrings and bracelet, all in red gold; as many clothes as she wanted; 300 kilos of rice, 150 kilos of cooking-oil, a cow, a few sheep and 15 million Afghani, approximately £300.

Sonya’s father was more than satisfied with the price and asked to meet this mysterious man who was prepared to pay so much for his daughter. According to Sultan he even belonged to their tribe, in spite of their not being able to place him or remember that they had ever met him.

‘Tomorrow,’ said Sultan, ‘I will show you a picture of him.’

The next day, fortified by a sweetener, Sultan’s aunt agreed to reveal to Sonya’s parents the identity of the suitor. She took a photograph with her – a picture of Sultan Khan himself – and with it the uncompromising message that they had no more than an hour to make up their minds. If the answer was yes, he would be very grateful, and if it was no there would be no bad blood between them. What he wanted to avoid at all costs was everlasting bargaining about maybe, maybe not.

The parents agreed within the hour. They were keen on Sultan Khan, his money and his position. Sonya sat in the attic and waited. When the mystery surrounding the suitor had been solved and the parents had decided to accept, her father’s brother came up to the attic. ‘Uncle Sultan is your wooer,’ he said. ‘Do you consent?’

Not a sound escaped Sonya’s lips. With tearful eyes and bowed head, she hid behind her long shawl.

‘Your parents have accepted the suitor,’ her uncle said. ‘Now is your only chance to express an opinion.’

She was petrified, paralysed by fear. She did not want the man but she knew she had to obey her parents. As Sultan’s wife her standing in Afghan society would go up considerably. The bride money would solve many of her family’s problems. The money would help her parents buy good wives for their sons.

Sonya held her tongue, and with that her fate was sealed. To say nothing means to give one’s consent. The agreement was drawn up, the date fixed.

Sultan went home to inform his family of the news. His wife Sharifa, his mother and sisters were seated around a dish of rice and spinach. Sharifa thought he was joking and laughed and cracked some jokes in return. His mother too laughed at Sultan’s joke. She could not believe that he had entered into a proposal of marriage without her blessing. The sisters were dumbfounded.

No one believed him, not until he showed them the kerchief and sweetmeats the parents of a bride give the suitor as proof of the engagement.

Sharifa cried for twenty days. ‘What have I done? What a disgrace. Why are you dissatisfied with me?’

Sultan told her to pull herself together. No one in the family backed him up, not even his own sons. Nevertheless, no one dared speak out against him – he always got his own way.

Sharifa was inconsolable. What really rankled was the fact that the man had picked an illiterate, someone who had not even completed nursery school. She, Sharifa, was a qualified Persian language teacher. ‘What has she got that I haven’t got?’ she sobbed.

Sultan rose above his wife’s tears.

No one wanted to attend the engagement party. But Sharifa had to bite the bullet and dress up for the celebrations.

‘I want everyone to see that you agree and support me. In the future we will all be living under the same roof and you must show that Sonya is welcome,’ he demanded. Sharifa had always humoured her husband, and now too, in this worst circumstance, giving him to someone else, she knuckled under. He even demanded that Sharifa should put the rings on his and Sonya’s fingers.

Twenty days after the proposal of marriage the solemn engagement ritual took place. Sharifa pulled herself together and put on a brave face. Her female relatives did their best to unsettle her. ‘How awful for you,’ they said. ‘How badly he has treated you. You must be suffering.’

The wedding took place two months after the engagement, on the day of the Muslim New Year’s Eve. This time Sharifa refused to attend.

‘I can’t,’ she told her husband.

The female family members backed her up. No one bought new dresses or applied the normal amount of make-up required at wedding ceremonies. They wore simple coiffures and stiff smiles – in deference to the superannuated wife who would no longer share Sultan Khan’s bed. It was now reserved for the young, terrified bride – but they would all be under the same roof, until death did them part.

On a freezing cold afternoon in November 1999, a bonfire blazed on the roundabout at Charhai-e-Sadarat in Kabul. Street children gathered round the flames that cast dancing shadows across their dirty faces. They played a game of dare – who could get closest to the flames? Grown-ups stole a glance at the fire and hastened by. It was safer that way; it was obvious to all that this fire had not been lit by street watchmen to warm their hands. It was a fire in the service of God.

Queen Soraya’s sleeveless dress curled and twisted and turned to ash, as did her shapely white arms and serious face. King Amanullah, her husband, burnt too, and all his medals with him. The whole line of kings spluttered on the fire, together with little girls in Afghan dress, Mujahedeen soldiers on horseback and farmers at a Kandahar bazaar.

The religious police went conscientiously to work in Sultan Khan’s bookshop that November afternoon. Any books portraying living things, be they human or animal, were torn from the shelves and tossed on the fire. Yellowed pages, innocent postcards, and dried-out covers from old reference books were sacrificed to the flames.

Amidst the children round the bonfire stood the foot soldiers of the religious police, carrying whips, long sticks and Kalashnikovs. These men considered anyone who loved pictures or books, sculptures or music, dance, film or free thought enemies of society.

Today they were interested only in pictures. Heretical texts, even those on the shelves right in front of their eyes, were overlooked. The soldiers were illiterate and could not distinguish orthodox Taliban doctrine from heresy. But they could distinguish pictures from letters and animate creatures from inanimate things.

Finally only ashes remained, caught by the wind and swirled with the dust and dirt in the streets and sewers of Kabul. The bookseller, bereft of his beloved books, was bundled into a car, a Taliban soldier on either side. The soldiers closed and sealed the shop and Sultan was sent to jail for anti-Islamic behaviour.

Lucky the armed half-wits did not look behind the shelves, Sultan thought on his way to detention. The most prohibited books he had stashed away ingeniously. He only brought them out if someone asked specially for them and if he thought he could trust the person who asked.