Gulabi Dil

Afghani men do not choose their own wives on the basis of having any feelings for them. They are not allowed to interact with non-family females except on the most superficial and chaparoned basis (lest the potential bride be stoned for unchaste conduct.) Their marriages are negotiated between the males of the families and the girl has little say in the matter. More personal involvement would take place in picking out a goat or a puppy. So if the whole thing executed like a business transaction, well, the wife must be property. We're kidding ourselves if we think these attitudes will change overnight. It will probably take a couple of decades of women being able to make choices for themselves. We only have to go back one or two generations in Canada to see very different, socially enforced role expectations for husbands and wives. Not to say my grandmother was a slave, but for the two years my grandfather was overseas in WWI, my young, newly wed grandmother didn't dare go to a dance or community event unless her brother or other family member went....too scandalous.

I thought I would post this comment from a benighted poster at the CBC just to illustrate how many misconceptions are out there about Afghan society. And of course, as always with current media, there are MANY. Afghans historically have gotten married in the "marriage market", where boys and girls go together to pick out mutually agreed upon mates. They stroll the aisles of the market, talk and date. Marriages that are arranged between families have frequently been influenced by relatives acting on behalf of the girl- like in one book that I read in which the girl had a "love match" because she had liked this boy since she was in her early teens- so she instructed her female relatives to help her set it up and intervene with her father. It worked, and the boy had secretly been in love with her, too. He sent her this beautiful love note the night before their final wedding. It was so, so sweet. He called her "gulabi dil", which means "pink desire" in Dari. I will always remember how much he cherished his bride.

This poster wasn't harsh, and I didn't mean to criticize him/her overmuch. After all, he allowed how his own family was similar. What the person didn't account for is that human beings don't change that much from generation to generation. Inside, we are all the same tender people that we have always been. Its just that its sometimes structured differently :)