An American Bride in Kabul: A Memoir by Chesler Phyllis

Author:Chesler, Phyllis [Chesler, Phyllis]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Published: 2013-10-01T00:00:00+00:00

From the last days of 1961 to the last days of 1964, Abdul-Kareem refuses to take no for an answer. I write, saying that I will never return and that we must divorce. He responds, “It is important to know your decision because I am going mad in this limbo.”

It is as if I have not spoken or as if whatever I—or what any woman—might say can be overruled by persistence and force. Abdul-Kareem begins to experience my desire to divorce him as a form of persecution. He also believes that we are still one, that what he feels is what I feel, too.

Abdul-Kareem thinks to instruct me: “Marriage is sacred.”

Six months later Abdul-Kareem writes to my college president (!) to inform him that I am expected “back home” in Kabul. He does so with the authority of an Afghan husband, as if I am his chattel.

I am apoplectic and a little afraid. What power does this man think he has over me? Does he believe it extends to America?

Abdul-Kareem tells me that I should use my American passport when I travel to Europe but that I should use my Afghan passport when I enter Afghanistan.

But I do not have an American passport. It was never returned to me. Why does he think I have it? Abdul-Kareem also orders me to cut off all contact with our Afghan friends in New York. They will gossip and it will be used against him. I write another letter to Abdul-Kareem:

Dear Abdul-Kareem:

My decision is final.

I am not interested in your philosophies of divorce. You could divorce me in an Afghan religious court in a matter of minutes, and you could take three other wives before that.

You write about love, love, love. Please try to think of me confined upstairs in bed, cold, lonely, hungry, sick, and frightened while you are hiding from me as I keep crying for orange juice. . . . Try to imagine me as I limp downstairs, doubled over, to find you, and find you giggling and tittering behind a door, hiding from me. . . . Do you remember the first night you attacked me, telling me bitter little nothings in my ear, and then how you cried, said you hated yourself and wanted to die, and then fell asleep—as I remained awake, and the dogs howled in hunger, and the stars were close enough to touch? The next morning, you acted as if nothing had happened.

Abdul-Kareem, don’t evade the truth any longer. I will not return to Kabul, I will not return to you.

Nevertheless Abdul-Kareem continues to ask me to “give our marriage another chance.” He views divorce as “an amputation of a limb.” He believes that my parents have influenced my decision to terminate our marriage. He has the audacity to write to them, to call their attention to “their moral duties.”

Meanwhile he implores me to make up your own mind and then stick to it, adding, “Please let me know how soon you can come home!”

Abdul-Kareem knows that I am struggling economically.

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