decide upon, the school should help perpetuate. Even when it is a lie. The school has other things to worry about, such as how many armed guards are needed by the front gate. The teacher expresses some solidarity with Azita: “Mehran’s mother is in parliament. She is a good woman. We do what we must.”
“We women, or we Afghans?”
“Both.”
As for academic skills, Mehran is “intelligent, but a little lazy,” according to her teacher. She is quick to smile, and equally quick to put on an angry-looking, annoyed face when she is not immediately understood or agreed with. A few years after leaving Mahnoush behind, Mehran’s personality has grown louder. She spends breaks floating in and out of the boys’ football games and other outdoor activities, depending on where the action seems to be at the moment. And whereas most other students want to stick to friends their own age, Mehran appears eager to catch the attention of older boys, often trying to impress them and seek some attention by being obnoxious. She will yell, touch, and push those around her. Most of the time she is ignored, but at times she needs to be pulled away from a clash with an older boy. Mehran is well aware she is a girl, according to the teachers. But she always introduces herself as a boy to newcomers. Since Mehran was a girl for several years before she was remade into a boy, there should be little confusion to her in that regard.
Sigmund Freud claimed that children are not even aware of genital differences until around the age of four or five,but in the 1980s, Dr. Eleanor Galenson and Dr. Herman Roiphe proved that children’s understanding of a sexual identity begins much earlier. According to their findings, a child can be aware of his or her birth sex as early as fifteen months.
Yet in Afghanistan, there is a certain interest in keeping children in the dark or at least blurring the lines about boys and girls. Specifics about anatomical differences are purposely not explained by many parents, in order to keep the minds of children—and especially those of little girls—“pure” for as long as possible before they marry.
It goes along with how my mother once told me the story of how she, as a ten-year-old in a more conservative version of Sweden of the 1950s, proclaimed to her mother that she intended to become a boy when she grew up. My mother had only one sister and a dim view of differences between men and women, never having seen her fatheror any other men without clothes. My grandmother scoffed at her daughter and called her stupid but did not offer any explanation for why the plan wasn’t feasible.
At Mehran’s school, children are never supposed to see the opposite sex naked, either; that is absolutely forbidden. The headmaster tells me that at this stage, she is certain that to most students, what sets little boys and girls apart is all exterior: pants versus skirts.
That, and the knowledge that those with pants always come first.
O N F EBRUARY 7, 1999, Azita knew she had failed, but she was too exhausted to speak or to show any reaction at all. She had just given birth—twice. She was in her mother-in-law’s small freezing house, insulated only with dried grass baked into the mud walls. The first twin had been born after almost three days and three nights of labor, one month prematurely. She weighed a mere 2.6 pounds and her breathing was shallow. Ten minutes later, her face had turned blue and she showed few signs of life as her sister arrived. She, too, was unconscious. The women who had helped Azita deliver her children did not wash the babies. Instead, they just handed them to her wrapped in cloth—it was too obvious to all those present that the children would not make it.
When her mother-in-law began to cry, Azita knew it was not from fear that her granddaughters might not survive. The old woman was disappointed. “Why,” she cried, according to Azita, “are we getting more girls in the family? What will I
“We women, or we Afghans?”
“Both.”
As for academic skills, Mehran is “intelligent, but a little lazy,” according to her teacher. She is quick to smile, and equally quick to put on an angry-looking, annoyed face when she is not immediately understood or agreed with. A few years after leaving Mahnoush behind, Mehran’s personality has grown louder. She spends breaks floating in and out of the boys’ football games and other outdoor activities, depending on where the action seems to be at the moment. And whereas most other students want to stick to friends their own age, Mehran appears eager to catch the attention of older boys, often trying to impress them and seek some attention by being obnoxious. She will yell, touch, and push those around her. Most of the time she is ignored, but at times she needs to be pulled away from a clash with an older boy. Mehran is well aware she is a girl, according to the teachers. But she always introduces herself as a boy to newcomers. Since Mehran was a girl for several years before she was remade into a boy, there should be little confusion to her in that regard.
Sigmund Freud claimed that children are not even aware of genital differences until around the age of four or five,but in the 1980s, Dr. Eleanor Galenson and Dr. Herman Roiphe proved that children’s understanding of a sexual identity begins much earlier. According to their findings, a child can be aware of his or her birth sex as early as fifteen months.
Yet in Afghanistan, there is a certain interest in keeping children in the dark or at least blurring the lines about boys and girls. Specifics about anatomical differences are purposely not explained by many parents, in order to keep the minds of children—and especially those of little girls—“pure” for as long as possible before they marry.
It goes along with how my mother once told me the story of how she, as a ten-year-old in a more conservative version of Sweden of the 1950s, proclaimed to her mother that she intended to become a boy when she grew up. My mother had only one sister and a dim view of differences between men and women, never having seen her fatheror any other men without clothes. My grandmother scoffed at her daughter and called her stupid but did not offer any explanation for why the plan wasn’t feasible.
At Mehran’s school, children are never supposed to see the opposite sex naked, either; that is absolutely forbidden. The headmaster tells me that at this stage, she is certain that to most students, what sets little boys and girls apart is all exterior: pants versus skirts.
That, and the knowledge that those with pants always come first.
O N F EBRUARY 7, 1999, Azita knew she had failed, but she was too exhausted to speak or to show any reaction at all. She had just given birth—twice. She was in her mother-in-law’s small freezing house, insulated only with dried grass baked into the mud walls. The first twin had been born after almost three days and three nights of labor, one month prematurely. She weighed a mere 2.6 pounds and her breathing was shallow. Ten minutes later, her face had turned blue and she showed few signs of life as her sister arrived. She, too, was unconscious. The women who had helped Azita deliver her children did not wash the babies. Instead, they just handed them to her wrapped in cloth—it was too obvious to all those present that the children would not make it.
When her mother-in-law began to cry, Azita knew it was not from fear that her granddaughters might not survive. The old woman was disappointed. “Why,” she cried, according to Azita, “are we getting more girls in the family? What will I
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