The Dressmaker of Khair Khana Read Online Free PDF Page A

truck. It looked new, certainly newer than most cars in Kabul. And then she saw three men standing beside the pickup. They wore turbans wrapped high and thick and carried long rods in their hands that looked like batons. They were striking at something or someone, that much she could tell.
    With a start Malika realized that the figure huddled in front of them was a woman. She lay in the middle of the street, crouched in a ball, and was trying to fend off the blows. But the men would not stop. Malika heard the dreadful slapping sound of the wooden batons as they hit the helpless woman--on her back, her legs, over and over again.
    “Where is your chadri?” one of the men shouted at his victim as he lifted his arms above his head to strike her. “Why are you not covered? What kind of woman are you to go out like this?”
    “Stop,” the woman pleaded. “Please have mercy. I am wearing a scarf. I don't have a chadri. We never had to wear them before!”
    She began to sob. Malika's eyes teared as she watched. Her instincts commanded her to run into the street and rescue this poor woman from her attackers. But her rational mind knew it was impossible. If she left the doctor's office she would be beaten as well. These men would have no problem hitting a pregnant woman, she thought. And she had a sick child to protect. So she stood helplessly by the window listening to the woman cry, and wiped her own tears away.
    “You think this is the last regime?” one of the young men shouted. His eyes were black with kohl, the night-colored cosmetic that Taliban soldiers wore. “This is not Dr. Najibullah or the Mujahideen,” he said, his club hitting her once more. “We believe in sharia, Islamic law, and this is now the law of the land. Women must be covered. This is your warning.”
    Finally the men got back in their truck and left. The woman bent over unsteadily to grab her handbag from the street and slowly limped away.
    Malika turned back to Hossein, who was folded up in his chair and moaning softly. Her hands shook as she held his small fingers. Like the woman outside, she was from a generation of Kabul women who had never known life under the chadri. They had grown up in the capital long after Prime Minister Mohammad Daoud Khan had embraced the voluntary unveiling of his countrywomen in the 1950s. King Amanullah Khan had attempted this reform unsuccessfully thirty years earlier, but it wasn't until 1959, when the prime minister's own wife appeared at a national independence day celebration wearing a headscarf rather than the full chadri, that the change finally took hold. That one gesture stunned the crowd and marked a cultural turning point in the capital. Kabul's next generation of women had gone on to become teachers, factory workers, doctors, and civil servants; they went to work with their heads loosely covered and their faces exposed. Before today many had never had reason to wear or even own the full veils of their grandmothers' generation.
    Suddenly the tide had turned again. Women would now be forced to dress in a style--and assume a way of life--they had never known, by rulers who had known nothing else. Was this what was in store for her, too, once she left the doctor's office? Malika felt her heart pounding in her chest as she wondered how she was going to get Hossein and herself safely home. Like the woman's outside, Malika's scarf was large, but it was hardly big enough to cover her whole face and convince the soldiers of her piety. She held Hossein tightly, trying to comfort herself as much as her son.
    Just then the doctor returned.
    After a quick but thorough examination he assured Malika that it was nothing serious. He prescribed plenty of fluids and gave her a prescription to fill, then walked Malika and Hossein back to the waiting room. When they reached the front door Malika stopped.
    “Doctor, I wonder if we could stay here for a few more minutes?” She pointed her chin down in the direction of the