Letters to My Daughters Read Online Free PDF Page A

dispute; still others brought news of errant tribes or violence in the mountains; and some were simply needy and desperate for his help. His door was closed to none, and he had no time for light relief or relaxation. How, then, could he be blamed for demanding great things from his family?
    Of course, I don’t condone my father for beating my mother, but in those times it was the norm. In other ways, he was a good husband to her, as far as tradition would allow. Perhaps today I understand him more than I ever have because I understand his workload. I understand the pressure of political life, the feeling of never having any time alone, free from duty and the burden of responsibility. I think my mother understood too, and that was why she endured so much.
    Under the sharia law system my father espoused, a man is supposed to treat all his wives equally, sharing himself without favour among them. I too believe in sharia justice. In theory, and in its purest form, it is a fair system based on Islamic ethical values. But affairs of the human heart do not follow theoretical principles, and in polygamous marriages such equality cannot exist. How could a man help it if his heart preferred some wives over others?
    My father’s suite of rooms was called the Paris suite and was decorated with hand-painted murals by an artist who had been brought especially from Kabul. The room had two windows looking out over an apricot garden, and in summertime a fresh apricot-scented breeze wafted into it. No modern air conditioning could ever compete with that delicate scent.
    When he was home, a different wife would share his bed each night. The exception was his first wife, the Khalifa. In order to take more wives than the sharia-allowed maximum of four, my father had divorced two of his original wives and made his first wife what is known as a Khalifa. Under this agreement, a woman retains the title of wife and is cared for financially but loses the intimacy that comes with marriage and never sleeps with her husband again. I remember the sadness in this woman’s eyes, the power and status that should have come from being first wife totally destroyed by her forced sexless status. Instead, my mother, the second wife, became head wife. The Khalifa never showed my mother any anger or disrespect, but I wonder if she too had felt devastated and hurt when my father first brought my mother home or when she was given the head wife status. How was it for the poor Khalifa to be usurped by a teenage girl?
    I like to think my father looked forward most to the nights he spent with my mother. She recalled how after the necessary marital intimacies, they would lie there together until the early hours just talking. He would tell her stories of his work, sharing with her the strains of his political life in Kabul, and give instructions on how she was to handle the land, the latest wheat harvest or the sale of some cattle in his absence. She was so authoritative when he wasn’t there that she earned the local nickname of Deputy Wakil sahib, or deputy representative boss.
    The harder things were for him politically, the more he relied on my mother. As long as his home was harmonious and ran like clockwork, he could deal with all the machinations of parliament. It was she who ran the farms and business, who kept order in the house when he was away and who solved disputes between the wives. She needed a large amount of her own political skill to negotiate such matters.
    Certain wives, particularly the third one, Niaz bibi, resented my mother’s status and tried to turn my father against her. This woman was intelligent and frustrated by her life of drudgery, so it is easy to understand why she would be jealous of the few freedoms and small powers my mother enjoyed. But her attempts to win my father’s favour in this way always failed, not only because my father didn’t like to believe ill of my mother, but also because my mother could foresee