also help. Dr. Fareiba makes most of them at home and trades them with other doctors. Her female patients are instructed to insert the potions into their vaginas, meant to help along those sperms carrying the male-determining Y chromosome.
Conventional medicine does acknowledge that male sperm swim faster and tire sooner, while the female-chromosome-carrying sperm are slower but have more stamina and stay alive longer in the uterus.
Dr. Fareiba also advises her female patients to lie flat after intercourse, to allow the precious male sperm every advantage without gravity derailing things. According to conventional medicine, however, there is only one way to ensure conception of a specific sex: to remove the egg and vet the sperm in advance before implanting a fertilized embryo back into a woman’s womb. When I tell Dr. Fareiba this, she just smiles. She has too successful a track record, and her science is ancient: “Tell me,” she says. “What do
you
believe?”
I will remember her question. In Afghanistan, as Carol firstsuggested, believing can be more important than anything else, and mythos counts as much as logos.
But even Dr. Fareiba concedes that failure must sometimes be declared. After she and other experts have done all they can, parents do resort to other solutions.
Yes, she says, there may be other girls like Mehran, who masquerade as boys. Simply because everybody knows that a made-up son is better than none at all. Dr. Fareiba lowers her voice when she speaks of a certain type of family. As a physician, she has attended several births where an infant girl is announced as a son. The child is then presumably brought back to the village and reared as a boy for as long as the lie will hold, or as long as the community goes along with it, knowing that it is merely an honorary boy. Dr. Fareiba and her colleagues have also learned not to ask too many questions when young boys have been brought to the hospital’s emergency room, only for the doctor on call to make a startling discovery when examining the child. They all keep face, in a silent agreement with the parents.
Children’s rights are a concept unacknowledged in Afghanistan. If parents want a girl to look like a boy, then it is within the right of the parents to make that happen, Dr. Fareiba believes. This temporarily experimental condition will right itself later on. Children, just as Carol le Duc mentioned, take a predetermined path in life. For girls, that means marrying and having children of their own. For boys, it means supporting a family.
Dr. Fareiba does not imagine there is any documentation about what she refers to as the private circumstances of each family. Nor is she keen on offering referrals to anyone who might know more about it. The creation of such a son would be the parents’ decision, and their choice should be respected. And what does it matter, anyway? These girls are hidden, and that is exactly the point. To everyone on the outside, they are just
bachas
.
CHAPTER FIVE
THE POLITICIAN
Azita
I T WAS TEMPORARY , she was told.
As the oldest sister, Azita was immediately put to work when she arrived at her grandparents’ house in Badghis in 1995. For laundry to be done, a wood fire first had to be kindled and tended to. Fresh water then had to be hauled from a long walk away with two heavy buckets. Homemade lye was extracted by pouring ashes in salt water. The lye took the dirt out of fabric—and the skin from hands. The student from an elite school in Kabul found herself in what is still today one of the country’smost rural and undeveloped provinces. Close to Iran and bordering on Turkmenistan, Badghis is named after the strong winds that come across the mountains and blow across its deserts and scattered pistachio forests. Most residents are farmers. Few can read or write.
Without functioning schools to go to, there was not much to do, and Azita’s parents insisted that when the war was over, they would return to the
Conventional medicine does acknowledge that male sperm swim faster and tire sooner, while the female-chromosome-carrying sperm are slower but have more stamina and stay alive longer in the uterus.
Dr. Fareiba also advises her female patients to lie flat after intercourse, to allow the precious male sperm every advantage without gravity derailing things. According to conventional medicine, however, there is only one way to ensure conception of a specific sex: to remove the egg and vet the sperm in advance before implanting a fertilized embryo back into a woman’s womb. When I tell Dr. Fareiba this, she just smiles. She has too successful a track record, and her science is ancient: “Tell me,” she says. “What do
you
believe?”
I will remember her question. In Afghanistan, as Carol firstsuggested, believing can be more important than anything else, and mythos counts as much as logos.
But even Dr. Fareiba concedes that failure must sometimes be declared. After she and other experts have done all they can, parents do resort to other solutions.
Yes, she says, there may be other girls like Mehran, who masquerade as boys. Simply because everybody knows that a made-up son is better than none at all. Dr. Fareiba lowers her voice when she speaks of a certain type of family. As a physician, she has attended several births where an infant girl is announced as a son. The child is then presumably brought back to the village and reared as a boy for as long as the lie will hold, or as long as the community goes along with it, knowing that it is merely an honorary boy. Dr. Fareiba and her colleagues have also learned not to ask too many questions when young boys have been brought to the hospital’s emergency room, only for the doctor on call to make a startling discovery when examining the child. They all keep face, in a silent agreement with the parents.
Children’s rights are a concept unacknowledged in Afghanistan. If parents want a girl to look like a boy, then it is within the right of the parents to make that happen, Dr. Fareiba believes. This temporarily experimental condition will right itself later on. Children, just as Carol le Duc mentioned, take a predetermined path in life. For girls, that means marrying and having children of their own. For boys, it means supporting a family.
Dr. Fareiba does not imagine there is any documentation about what she refers to as the private circumstances of each family. Nor is she keen on offering referrals to anyone who might know more about it. The creation of such a son would be the parents’ decision, and their choice should be respected. And what does it matter, anyway? These girls are hidden, and that is exactly the point. To everyone on the outside, they are just
bachas
.
CHAPTER FIVE
THE POLITICIAN
Azita
I T WAS TEMPORARY , she was told.
As the oldest sister, Azita was immediately put to work when she arrived at her grandparents’ house in Badghis in 1995. For laundry to be done, a wood fire first had to be kindled and tended to. Fresh water then had to be hauled from a long walk away with two heavy buckets. Homemade lye was extracted by pouring ashes in salt water. The lye took the dirt out of fabric—and the skin from hands. The student from an elite school in Kabul found herself in what is still today one of the country’smost rural and undeveloped provinces. Close to Iran and bordering on Turkmenistan, Badghis is named after the strong winds that come across the mountains and blow across its deserts and scattered pistachio forests. Most residents are farmers. Few can read or write.
Without functioning schools to go to, there was not much to do, and Azita’s parents insisted that when the war was over, they would return to the
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