Kabul Beauty School Read online

  As Roshanna finished her story, she sobbed, and I held her just as I had once held my children. Even though I hadn’t been in Afghanistan long, I knew that things could hardly be worse for a girl. People don’t dismiss a divorce with a benign label such as “irreconcilable differences” in Afghanistan. If a man divorces you, other people assume there must be something wrong with you. People will whisper that you are lazy or willful or a bad cook or—worst of all—that you were not a virgin. I love the Afghan people, but their true national sport is gossip. As a hairdresser—someone whose professional motto could be “Do tell!” and who takes great pleasure in the whirl of divulged secrets and suppositions that goes on in every salon—I consider myself an expert on the subject. I wondered if the taint of Roshanna’s almost-marriage had made its rounds though the tea shops and neighborhood stores. She confirmed this, telling me that many of the Afghan men she encountered while she worked as a secretary had already made the mental leap from divorcee to whore. They’d take every opportunity to push her into dark corners and grope her in a way that they would never treat “nice” girls. Her father had been imploring her to leave her job because of this; when I mentioned that I might want to come back to Kabul and start a beauty school, she leapt at this opportunity. But on that day back in 2002, my heart sank as I realized that this lovely girl would probably never be chosen as a man’s first wife again. She would likely be considered only as a second or third wife for a much older man. She was sure of this, too; that was why she cried every time we spoke of it.

  Or at least that was why I thought she was crying.

  Then this engineer’s mother waltzed into her salon two years later, and Roshanna’s fortunes changed dramatically. I was back in America when it happened, but still planning to return to Afghanistan as soon as I could. Roshanna and I had been keeping in touch by e-mail, and all of a sudden, the whole tenor of her messages changed—it was almost as if music played when one of them dropped into my in-box. She had always hoped she’d be able to marry a man from a good family and have children. Now it seemed that she would get this wish. I was happy for her and didn’t even want to ask about the problem with her first engagement. It seemed impossible that the engineer’s family had not heard about it, especially since they were distantly related. Maybe they ran in vastly different circles. Or maybe they were a progressive family who weren’t about to think ill of her because some cad of a cousin had toyed with her briefly, not caring if he ruined her reputation. Maybe they saw past the innuendo to Roshanna herself, as perfect a wife as any man could want. I hoped this was the case.

  BEFORE THE ENGAGEMENT PARTY, there had been yet another party—a sort of seal-the-deal gala to celebrate the end of the families’ negotiations. Roshanna invited me to attend as her honored guest, and I was back in Kabul by that time and eager to share my friend’s big day. The party was held in a large house in one of Kabul’s old neighborhoods. Men and women from both families filed inside, and then the men stayed downstairs and the women went upstairs and into a room heaped with good things to eat. When the mother-in-law arrived, she gave a basket of imported candies to Roshanna’s mother, then kissed Roshanna, her mother, and then me and Roshanna’s sisters three times on the cheeks. The grooms’ sisters and seven of his aunts and girl cousins followed with their kisses. There was so much kissing that my neck started to feel unhinged. Then the mother-in-law hung a gold necklace around Roshanna’s neck. It was huge, like something a wrestler would win at a tournament. Each of the groom’s sisters and aunts placed a gold ring on one of Roshanna’s dainty little fingers, until she had gold all the way up to her fingertips. I could hear laughing from the men’s room downstairs and then clapping. I went to the landing and peered down, but one of the groom’s sisters pulled me back. “They sign the papers now,” she explained. Her father was probably giving Roshanna’s father the fat envelope stuffed with her dowry.

  Then the groom’s female relatives started to clap their hands and sing as one of them pounded a small drum. The mother-in-law and one of the groom’s sisters unfolded something that looked like a huge umbrella draped with a soft netting stitched with flowers. They held it high, and the other women from the groom’s family danced over to take up the edges of the netting; then they floated it over Roshanna’s head and circled her, singing still, dancing, keeping step with the beat of the drum. It was as if Roshanna were at the center of a bright, noisy carousel. She stood still as the room turned around her, touching her hands to her hair nervously, her face pale against the moving backdrop of her in-laws’ brightly colored dresses, her lips pinched together. In the back of the room, her mother and sisters held one another. They looked at the dancers sadly.

  If I’d known then what I know now, I might not have been alarmed by Roshanna’s forlorn appearance during this ceremony. Afghan brides aren’t really supposed to look happy at these events. Just as her parents turn down the first offer of marriage to show how precious their daughter is—and continue to look sad at all the wedding events—the daughter isn’t supposed to act as if she welcomes the union, either. She’s supposed to show that she’s sad to leave her parents’ home for that of her husband’s family. Her sadness is a sign of respect for her parents. But even now that I know this, I don’t think all the sadness is feigned. After all, the bride is leaving behind the tight embrace of her own family for one that may bring as much pain as pleasure. A mother-in-law sometimes turns into a tyrant after the wedding is over, expecting that her son’s wife will become a sort of unpaid household servant who will sweep the floors, bring in the firewood, and even rub her feet when they ache. Husbands sometimes turn into tyrants, too. Or they turn into distant shadows as they spend all their time working and socializing with other men, returning to the home only for a meal or two. A man’s new wife will serve this meal without any expectation that he will talk or even eat with her.

  But I didn’t know then what I know now, so I joined the forlorn-looking Roshanna after the dancing stopped. I took her hand, protective and suddenly apprehensive about her future since I knew so much about her past. She looked at me with terror and leaned toward me to whisper, while her new in-laws continued to sing and clap. “Oh, my God,” she said hoarsely. “This is really happening, isn’t it? What am I going to do?”

  It was then that I divined her secret. She was not a virgin.

  I couldn’t sleep that night; I couldn’t stop thinking about what she must be going through. The next day she came to the beauty school, and we ran out to a quiet place in back, between the building and the compound wall. She leaned against the wall and wept, tears of kohl streaking her cheeks. “My first husband, the one in Germany—he forced me the day after our engagement party!” She gasped. She had never had the nerve to tell her parents about this. They would have been distraught and outraged if they’d known, since there is always a formal consummation ceremony at the beginning of a marriage in which the couple spend their first night as man and wife and the family wait outside for proof that the girl was a virgin. That’s the proper, time-honored way to consummate a marriage, but her cousin had grabbed her for a brutal quickie when he got the chance—and then bolted.

  Roshanna had even been too ashamed to tell me until this moment.

  And now she was headed toward another marriage with another man who lived abroad. Once again, the groom and a representative from her family would be signing the nika-khat at the engagement party because her husband—whom she still hadn’t met—would be going back to Amsterdam a few days after the party. He wasn’t planning to return to Afghanistan for the wedding party—odd as it may seem, this happens pretty often—and his family had announced that they wanted to have the consummation ceremony right after the engagement party.

  I HADN’T FORGOTTEN any of this in the few months since the contract-signing party. I suppose, like Roshanna, I put it out of my mind because there was nothing I could do about it. Nothing she could do, either, if she intended to go ahead and marry the engineer from Amsterdam.
His family would never accept her as his first wife if they knew she wasn’t a virgin. Neither would any other family. So when she visited my salon during those months, we talked only about her dresses for the upcoming engagement party and wedding, her hair, the food that would be served, the guests who would be invited, and so on. We chatted about inconsequential matters. We enjoyed the gossip that followed my customers into the salon and filled it like strong perfume. Even when we were alone, we never talked about what might happen at the consummation ceremony. I didn’t even want to think about it. I felt sick every time I tried.

  But today is finally the day for the engagement party followed by the consummation. In the main part of the salon, I inspect the foils on Roshanna’s mother-in-law and help the sisters-in-law pick out the right shades of nail polish to offset their gowns. Then I head back to the waxing room to see the sheets neatly folded on the foot of the bed. I go to look for Roshanna in the facial room, and she’s there under a spotlight and Topekai’s penetrating glare. Topekai has already shaped one of Roshanna’s eyebrows into a delicate arch and is now inspecting the errant hairs on the other one, which she will remove by threading—an ancient technique Afghan beauticians employ to whisk away hair using a piece of thread that is rolled across the skin and looped around individual follicles. Topekai holds one end of the thread in her mouth and has the rest of it wrapped around her fingers like in a game of cat’s cradle. She points at the corner of Roshanna’s eye, where a tear has formed, and rolls her eyes. She thinks Roshanna is crying because threading hurts. It certainly can be that painful, but I know better.

  When Roshanna finally comes downstairs, the skin on her face is so clean that it looks naked. She is pale except for the red patches where her hair has been yanked off. All the other women applaud when she comes into the room, glad for her that her first big ordeal of the day is over. She fans her face and smiles. Bahar rushes to get a basin of hot water; then she begins Roshanna’s pedicure, moving on to her manicure as I finish the mother-in-law’s hair. Finally, I begin to work on Roshanna’s hair after Baseera washes and blows it dry. I section off small pieces with a rat-tail comb and pin them back, then sink one hand into a special pot of gel that has gold glitter mixed into it. I begin shaping one of the clumps of hair into a big barrel curl on top of her head using the gold glitter gel. It seems as if everyone in the salon holds her breath, waiting to see if the big curl will collapse, but it stands. Then I shape some of the other clumps into big glitter-crusted curls until there is a mass of them on top of her head, like a pile of gold bangles. Next, I work some of the other strands in and around the big gold curls using red, green, and blue glitter gel. Everyone else leans in with suggestions. How about curls that slink across her cheeks like snakes—held in place with gel, of course? When I point out that I’ve already used all of Roshanna’s hair to make the big curls on top of her head, Baseera kindly offers to cut off a few pieces of her own hair and glue them on the bride’s cheeks. Roshanna declines.

  Finally, everyone crowds around to watch me work on Roshanna’s makeup. It’s customary to coat the bride’s face with a heavy white matte base, almost like that of a geisha, but I don’t like this look, and it bothers me even more today—I feel as if I’m erasing my friend’s face. So I use a light hand, and I can tell by Roshanna’s look that she approves. After this base is applied, I put green eye shadow—to match her dress—on her lids, then swoop it out to the sides of her face. I put a layer of glittering peach eye shadow above that, just below her eyebrows, then shape her eyebrows with a black pencil so that they arch and swoop, too.

  My hands don’t feel steady enough for the next step, so I hand Roshanna’s little bottle of kohl powder to Baseera. She tells Roshanna to lick the kohl stick, dip it in the bottle, and blow away the excess powder. Then Baseera inserts the coated stick into the inside corner of Roshanna’s eye, tells her to close it, and moves the stick across her eye so that it coats the inner lids, top and bottom, with black kohl. If this is done right, the stick glides across the inner lids, just barely missing the surface of the eye. While Roshanna’s eyes are closed, Baseera also attaches a huge pair of false lashes. Roshanna opens her eyes and flaps her lids so vigorously that one of the sisters-in-law laughs. “You make the hair on the floor blow away,” she says. Finally, I work on Roshanna’s lips, lining them in dark reddish brown and filling them in with a bright candy-apple red. I apply some contouring makeup and some rouge, then step back. The mother-in-law takes Roshanna’s chin and inspects her. She’s pleased but wonders about gluing a row of rhinestones just under Roshanna’s eyebrows, which she saw on another bride several weeks ago. No, her daughters tell her; this is good, more would be too much. Then I have to rush off to do my own makeup and change clothes.

  Soon there are cars honking and men shouting outside, and the compound guard comes to knock on the salon door. All of us walk outside in a cluster around Roshanna, the groom’s sisters holding their hands around her crown of curls to keep them from blowing over, the mother-in-law trying to lift the hem of her dress enough that it doesn’t drag in the dirt but not enough that her legs show. Outside the wall, the groom’s male cousins point to the bridal car proudly. They’ve spent the day decorating it with fabric and flowers, so that it looks kind of like a huge piece of cake with lots of icing. Roshanna and the groom’s female relatives pile inside the car, pulling me in as well.

  At the hall, the groom’s mother and sisters sweep Roshanna inside right away for pictures. There is a blinding fluorescent light overhead in the photo room, and I can barely even look at her with the light shining off all the glitter and gold and spangles. The photographer makes her turn this way and that—arms this way, head angled that way, mouth just so. He wants poses that make her look innocent yet seductive, kind of like the shots of movie stars from the 1940s—assuming that they were getting photographed while their sweating older sisters were holding a Koran over their heads. Roshanna sees that one of her sisters is standing next to me, and she makes a face at us, then folds her hands together under her chin and puts on a dazed-by-romance smile, looking kind of like the heroines in the Indian Bollywood movies that everyone watches in Afghanistan. “Should I start to sing now?” she jokes, because that’s what the Bollywood stars do in the unlikeliest moments. The photographer puts down his equipment and shouts. He wants her to look like the haughty wedding mannequins in the stores.

  The photographer finally finishes and starts packing away his things. Roshanna stares at him as if stunned that this diversion is actually over. Her sisters and mother flutter around her, and then one of her sisters opens the door to the party room and the noise of all the guests roars in. Roshanna turns a pale face toward me. “Walk with me,” she pleads and holds her hand out, so I come over to her and hold her trembling hand and we move through the door.

  The room is so full of glitz that even I am dizzy. Ornate chandeliers drip crystal tears over the heads of hundreds of women who are dressed like all the glamorous mannequins. Velvet, gold brocade, tassels, seed pearls, embroidered silk—and that’s just one of the dresses! As we make our way down a long white cloth that leads to an archway twined with roses, I see another side to the women of Kabul, who usually dress as if they’re headed to a funeral. Here, they truly strut their stuff, with slit skirts, plunging necklines, and heels so high they could swan-dive from them into a pool. Later, I’m told that this is where many potential mothers-in-law find wives for their sons; today, I’m just dazzled by the sight of them. As are the videographers, who pan the crowd and prompt one table after another to preen and smile. One of them walks backward along the white cloth in front of Roshanna and me with a camera the size of a tree trunk, so I smile as if I’m one of those movie stars who escort Oscar winners across the stage. Roshanna looks down at the white cloth, and her mother and sisters follow us, dropping rose petals in our wake. One of her sisters is still holding the Koran over Roshanna’s head, but her arms are drooping dangerously and the Koran nearly flattens Ros
hanna’s barrel curls. Over to the side, a band is playing.

  As we clear the archway, I see that the room is divided in two by a huge curtain—all the women are on this side, so I figure that all the men must be on the other. As if to prove this, a man’s head pops up through a slit in the curtain and he gapes lecherously at the women, then is pulled back and the curtain drops. I see that we are making our way toward a stage on the women’s side of the room, where two golden chairs—like those of a king and queen—are set up. There is a table in front of the chairs with what looks like a treasure chest, and a spotlight shines on the empty chairs. As we get closer to the stage, the curtain rustles, and all of a sudden, a man appears on the stage. I can’t see his face well because the lights are so bright. “I think that’s the groom,” I tell Roshanna, but she won’t look up. I want to turn around and ask her mother if that’s the groom, but she hasn’t seen him, either. Besides, the glare of the spotlights is still making it hard to see anything. We keep walking toward the stage, the noise of the crowd pulsing around us, the music picking up tempo, and Roshanna trembling so much that it’s hard to keep a grip on her.

  Finally, the man on the stage comes into focus, his face pale and dazed—and suddenly there is the mother-in-law, reaching out to Roshanna. The mother-in-law pulls Roshanna up on the stage and takes the groom’s hand and places it on Roshanna’s, but Roshanna flinches as if his hand were on fire. Then all the members of the families climb on the stage, and I’m jostled away by a crowd of photographers and videographers. Lights flash, cameras whir and click, and the men wielding them push against one another for the best angle. I stand on my toes to see how Roshanna is holding up, and I resist the urge to yell “Smile,” as we do at all such events back home. But she continues to look mournful, as do the members of her family. The groom doesn’t look mournful, but he doesn’t look happy, either. He looks stunned, as if someone knocked him out a few minutes ago and he just woke up to this assault by the cameramen.