Defiant Dreams by Sola Mahfouz & Malaina Kapoor

Author:Sola Mahfouz & Malaina Kapoor [Mahfouz, Sola & Kapoor, Malaina]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2023-06-06T00:00:00+00:00

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Even as I moved through Khan Academy at an electrifying speed, even as I proved to my family that I was as serious about my studies as Yousef and Javid, the threat of marriage continued to haunt me. In October 2012, when she was just nineteen, Roya got engaged to a young man from Norway. As Aisha had done ten years earlier, Roya would escape the throes of Afghanistan’s instability by marrying a man with a European visa. Roya had attended just a few years of school and spoke only Pashto. She spent most of her time preparing for her inevitable role as a wife and a mother. By most measures, this match seemed like the best possible outcome for her, and she was happy with the arrangement.

Her engagement ceremony was held on a freezing autumn day, hosted by her husband’s family in a tiny run-down hotel with peeling wallpaper and layers of dust carpeting the floors. I woke up early to dress for the event. The morning was so cold that our water heater stopped working and my cousin Mojdeh and I had to take ice-cold showers. Our uncle then drove us to a nearby salon to get our hair done. I usually enjoyed the rare outing in the early morning before a big event, but that day I was grumpy, snapping at the stylist and making her redo my updo over and over. “Who do you think you are, some movie star?” the woman asked, irritated. I was ignoring her by then, consumed by the thought that my wedding would be next. I had no more unmarried older sisters to point at to deflect questions of my own marriage.

By the time I arrived at the hotel, Roya was already there, tugging unhappily at her bulky dress, which looked out of place on her slim figure. It was a cheap approximation of the styles she’d dreamed of since her preteen years. Her makeup had been applied heavily and unevenly, distorting the youthful glimmer of her fresh face. “Oh, that bride looks so old,” I heard a woman whisper to her friend. I felt a rush of hot anger, that someone could speak of my sister that way on what was supposed to be one of the happiest moments of her life. It seemed to me like a bad omen for us all.

A few weeks later my cousin Mojdeh, younger than me by four months, was engaged too. She was only sixteen. My grumpiness grew to terror at the prospect looming before me. I was certain in my mind that I just could not get married. But I lacked the audacity to stand before my mother and ask her to stop her discussions with the various matchmakers who approached us. And I couldn’t bring myself to risk my fragile new relationship with Baba and beg him to help delay my wedding.

Still, Moor must have sensed my hesitation and discontent. “There are so many unmarried Kandahari women who are forced to live with their brothers,” she told me one afternoon.

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