28
Metra Media
Mina is breathing heavily as she enters Sonbul Café. Once upon a time, she would have undone her headscarf at the door in
one graceful sweep and, with a smile, signaled the owner, Tabassum, for her usual order—a slice of carrot cake and a cup of
saffron tea. Her steps are cautiously defiant now. Too many of her colleagues have gone into hiding, disappeared by choice
or by force. She is here to prove to herself that she is not yet among the vanished, that she is present still.
“Mina!” Tamina embraces her, pulls her into the space. It is her birthday they’re celebrating, though no one is in a festive
mood. Pop music plays softly from a small speaker on a corner table, and Mina thinks of the previous birthday parties she
has attended for her colleagues, when they could dial up the volume on the music.
“I hope you didn’t have any trouble getting here,” Tamina adds.
“No more than anyone else,” Mina replies, nodding at the other women already in the space. She stood shoulder to shoulder
with many of them in last week’s protest, carrying signs with messages like “Freedom, Bread, Work” and “Let Girls Learn.”
They’d been thrust into the dark ages.
You are an intellectual and well-spoken too, but make no mistake, plenty of people are watching just to see your pretty face, her eldest brother once said. By all standards, he was a good man, well-read and with a sharp sense of humor. He loved his
wife and treated her well. He was a gentle father to his children. He was ready to help when a relative was in need. But he
was somehow forever between jobs and often complained about all the employment opportunities that the Westerners had created
for women only.
They’d barely spoken in the last year, not after a conversation that ended with Mina seeing red.
Women’s this, women’s that, he had groused. As if half this country isn’t men. A woman can marry a breadwinner. What the hell is a man supposed to do?
I wonder if a man might be afraid he’ll have to do more than the bare minimum, Mina had retorted.
The only thing I wonder is why your husband didn’t divorce you sooner.
Her brother always went for the lowest hanging fruit, which, in Mina’s case, was a pointed mention of her divorce.
Dear brother, at least you and I agree that we live in an unfair world, Mina had told him. Maybe we should leave it at that.
I’ve encouraged my daughters to go to school, Mina. Don’t get all self-righteous on me. I’m not one of them.
Mina had nearly screamed then. His daughters hadn’t even started high school yet. How low had he set the bar for himself as
a father?
She looks at the bulletin board behind a table of food. It is full of pinned notes, square flags of pink, yellow, green, and
blue with messages of love and friendship. One has the imprint of a kiss. Mina smiles to imagine a young woman pressing her
lips to the paper and leaving a token of affection on this wall of mementos.
A kiss is a sacred protest, the paper reads.
It is a small gathering of young women. Mina greets the others with light kisses on cheeks and lingering hugs.
She asks after every individual in their family by name, and when she’s finished making her rounds, she takes a seat by the window with a cup of tea.
For an hour or two, they will pretend they are unfazed by the upheaval in their country.
Mina loves this café. Immediately after her divorce from a man who guzzled his income and hers, a man who cozied up to the
very people Mina was reporting on, Mina went through a period of seclusion in her brother’s home. It was short-lived. Her
brother had told her she could stay as long as she liked but Mina thought it would be better for everyone if she found a place
for herself. Her apartment is not far from this café. Tabassum was outside cleaning the windows one day and invited Mina to
try a pastry. It was a café just for women, she explained. Inside, Mina had found a cluster of women gathered at each table,
much like the hyacinth blooms after which the café was named.
Tabassum’s customers are the women of Kabul. Mostly married, some uninterested in marriage and some eagerly seeking romance.
Most have jobs, but a few steal away for an hour while their children are in school. They are teachers, activists, artists,
and owners of small businesses. They come here to sip chai, to rant, to whisper about sweethearts, and to indulge in a water
pipe out of the view of their families.
They are here today to celebrate a friend’s birthday, their gathering a form of preemptive protest.
Tabassum emerges from the small kitchen with Tamina’s birthday cake on a gold platter. It is a round cake decorated with white
frosting, chocolate ganache dripping down the sides. Tabassum wears a white apron tied around her waist, and her hair is in
a bun on the crown of her head. She wears a black shirt with a purple hyacinth embroidered over the left breast pocket, the
café’s logo. Good thing Tabassum had opted for hyacinths when naming and decorating her storefront. If she’d had pictures
of women outside, she would have been painting over them as the beauty salons had done before the Taliban arrived. Tabassum
smiles when her eyes meet Mina’s.
“How are you doing?” she asks.
“Well enough, I suppose,” Mina replies with a shrug. “And you? How have things been here since last week?”
Sonbul Café was where Mina and a handful of other women organizing the protest had gathered last week to discuss their plans.
They didn’t want too many details floating around on messaging apps.
While the Taliban clung to stone-age ideologies, they also fully embraced modern technology.
They were dependent on them, really. They issued official statements and flooded Twitter with propaganda.
They managed to obtain contact lists and send threatening messages to WhatsApp numbers of former military and government workers.
“I don’t know if I’ll be able to keep this place open for much longer,” Tabassum admits. “I’ve always been the baker, the
server, and the cleaner here. I can’t be the only customer too.”
“Your customers will be back,” Mina offers, but her optimism is forced. Tabassum knows it. She squeezes Mina’s hand, tells
her to try the food, and returns to the kitchen.
Mina doesn’t have much of an appetite, but she wants to be able to compliment Tabassum sincerely. She stands and walks toward
the long table set up with small bites of food.
Just as she passes the front door, it swings open and she is violently knocked off her feet. She hits the ground hard, landing
on her hip.
“Attention!” a man’s voice bellows. Mina looks up. Four Talibs have stormed into the small café. They take up nearly half
the space. Mina is so close to the one standing above her that she can see the individual hairs of his beard and the scratches
on the barrel of his rifle.
“Get up,” the first Talib orders as he kicks at Mina’s feet. She scrambles to rise, her mind racing. Will they recognize her?
Will they check her phone and find pictures from the protest? She would sooner die than be the reason her family is punished
by these animals. The women are adjusting their headscarves, doing their best to hide their faces from the intruders.
Everyone is on their feet. Mina wills them all to be strong.
She thinks of all the broadcasts she has done, her face on television screens talking about the way the Americans were mistaken to engage in cozy talks with the terrorist group.
She had, as any good journalist would, named names, and she surely has no friends among the Taliban leadership.
She eyes the back door. She considers making a run for it to spare the others from being punished for their ties to her.
Would the Talibs chase her? Were there more outside?
“Shut up!” a Talib with a whip shouts into the face of a young woman Mina doesn’t know. “We know what is happening here. You
bitches and harlots are up to no good. Shame on all of you. Shame on your families. Stand up in a line. We will find exactly
what deviant acts you are hiding.”
“But we have done nothing,” someone pleads. “We have only come for a birthday.”
One Talib eyes the birthday cake. He elbows the man next to him and nods in the direction of the cake. He carries his weapon
casually but with a hand close to the trigger. Mina decides against running.
“Stay calm,” she whispers to the young women on her right and left. “Do not give them a reason.”
Another Talib slams the speaker to the floor, cracking it in half and silencing the music. He walks over to the bulletin board
on the wall. Against the colorful flags, he looks even more stark and joyless. The paper kiss catches his attention. His turns
back to the room, scowling and freshly validated.
Having heard the ruckus, Tabassum emerges from the kitchen with a large scarf draped over her head and shoulders. A Talib
barks at her to join the line the others have formed against the long wall of the café, and she obliges in a hurry.
The Talibs consider the women. One takes out his phone and walks down the line, recording their faces. The young women look
away, shielding their faces. He brings the phone close to each of them, grabbing them by the chin when they try to look away.
The Talib’s whip cracks against the table. The clap jolts the women and sends two glasses to the floor, where they burst into
shards.
“Do you admit you have come here for sinful reasons? Do you admit you are a prostitute? Look into the camera and say it now.”
There is crying. Mina tries to steady her breathing.
Her body is tense, her skin prickled. She is aware, as is every woman in this room and every woman on the streets and every woman in her home and every girl on a city bus, of the catastrophic damage that can be done to a woman at a man’s hand.
She does not fault these young women their practical cowardice, their false confessions.
She is almost relieved to hear them, voices small and breaking, give in to the Talib’s demand.
These are the very definition of white lies, are they not?
“And you. Do you confirm you are here to sell yourself in sin?”
Mina looks straight into the Talib’s phone. His is a fair question, she realizes. What are you willing to do with your body?
“Turn the camera around if you want to see the face of a sinner,” Mina says. The blow to her face sends her to the floor for
the second time, her mouth meets a shard of glass. She tastes blood on her lips.
When she lifts her head, she sees a smear of red on the café floor. It is true, she thinks. A kiss is a sacred protest.