Afghanistan: Our Wedding (8)
A memoir of life in Kabul, Afghanistan from 1976 to 1978: Part VIII
The rest of the summer flew by, and October was almost upon us. Hans and I discovered that to marry in Afghanistan, we needed to go through the bureaucratic paperwork process required of all Afghans.
Because our families were coming and we wanted to invite guests, we also asked Father Panigoti if he would marry us in the Catholic Church at the Italian Embassy—even though I was not Catholic and Hans had long since left its teachings.
“I have performed wedding ceremonies for Catholics, non-Catholics and even Buddhists,” Father Panigoti replied. “My only requirement is that the two people love each other.”
And so that was set.
The wedding dress
My parents and twin sister, Janice, arrived in Kabul a week before the wedding. (My brother, Charles, had to work and was unable to come.)
Hans and I had most of the details taken care of by then—except for our wedding clothes! I had wanted to be married in a beautiful Afghan dress I had bought when I was still sharing a house with my Peace Corps roommate, Alcy.
The dress had a dark red, heavily embroidered bodice typical of traditional Afghan clothing. Its long, flowing sleeves and full-length skirt were made of white cotton. I asked our servant, Faramurs, to wash the dress before the wedding, and unfortunately red dye from the bodice ran into the skirt and ruined the whole thing.
Luckily, my mother had brought me a wedding present of a beautiful white negligee and matching white robe. I loved the style of the negligee and thought it would be perfect for my dress. So Mother, Janice, Hans and I all went to the fabric bazaar.
Hans wanted to be married in white, and I wanted to be married in a dress with some color. Luckily, Hans found the perfect fabric for his suit in the bazaar, and I found some beautiful pale peach silk. Hans also chose fabric for a shirt, and Janice chose a piece of silk in fall colors for a dress for her. Mother—who was a fantastic seamstress—helped us decide how much of everything to buy.
Then Hans took his fabric to a male tailor, and Mother, Janice and I took ours to a female dressmaker who had been trained in France. We also took my new negligee and asked her to use it as a pattern for my dress. Both of our dresses were ready within two days—and the dressmaker had even added a row of white embroidery to the sleeves of my dress!
I also took some of the turquoise stones that Hans and I had bought in Mashhad, Iran, to a jeweler and asked him to incorporate them into a silver necklace and earrings for the wedding. In addition, I asked the jeweler to make matching gold wedding bands for Hans and me.
The Afghan Civil Ceremony
Three days before the church ceremony, Hans and I were married in the Afghan civil ceremony. This required Hans to go to several ministries to get paperwork signed. My presence (as a woman) was only required at the last ministry, which entailed going before three mullahs to obtain our wedding certificate.
For this, we needed two witnesses—if they were both male. We could also have one male witness . . . and TWO female witnesses. (Because a woman only counted as 1/2 of a witness, I guess.)
To keep it simple, we asked my father to be a witness as well as a Peace Corps friend named Chopin. Chopin was the husband of Jackie—the Peace Corps friend who had introduced Hans and me at the U.S. Marine Corps Happy Hour almost a year before.
Mother, Dad, Janice, Chopin, Jackie, Hussein (Hans’ right-hand man and interpreter), Hans and I all drove to the ministry, where we found a man with an old-fashioned camera box on the street outside of the office. First he took a picture of Hans, Dad and Chopin.
Then I sat down in the chair and smiled sweetly for the camera. Upon which the photographer got really angry with me and said:
“You ruined the picture!”
Mystified, I turned toward Hussein, who explained to me that women are not supposed to be happy to leave their families when they marry and that I should not have smiled.
The photographer was therefore forced to take another picture of me while I remained appropriately sober.
Armed with our tiny head shots, we walked upstairs to a simple, bare room with a long wooden table. Behind it sat three unsmiling mullahs dressed in turbans and long, flowing robes. Their full beards brushed their chests as they talked.
A long, thin piece of paper—about three feet in length and one foot in width—was lying on the table in front of them. The paper was covered front and back with words in Dari written in green Arabic script.
One of the mullahs pasted all of our pictures on the paper in the appropriate place. He also had each of us put our thumbprint next to our picture. Then he asked Hans (in Dari):
“How much is the bride price?”
“Five hundred Afghanis,” Hans jokingly replied.
The mullah looked at him in disapproval, but he wrote the sum down on the document anyway.
Why the disapproval?
In Afghanistan, men who want to marry must pay a dowry to the woman and her family that can cost thousands of dollars. This means that many men are unable to marry at all because they are too poor to pay the dowry. Five hundred Afghanis was the equivalent then of something like $50—which was a total insult to me and my family!
The mullah handed Hans the wedding certificate, and that was it. We were officially married. To celebrate, we all headed to the Intercontinental Hotel and had lunch together.
Two days before our church wedding, Hans’ mother and father arrived from the Netherlands. Both my parents and Hans’ parents stayed in the Gulzar Hotel, while Janice stayed in the guest room in our house.
The Wedding Ceremony
We woke up on the day of our wedding to a beautiful, sunny October morning. After some nan and tea, we got dressed and went downstairs, where Hussein was waiting to give us a paper wreath, crown and small bouquet of flowers. He explained that these are traditionally worn in weddings among Hazaras in Bamiyan, and I was really touched by his gift.
I wanted my wedding to be small, simple and intimate, with no bridesmaids or groomsmen. This is why we invited just 16 people to the actual ceremony in the church—including our families.
Among the guests were Frau Farhadi, owner of the Gulzar Hotel and Restaurant, and four Peace Corps Volunteers (Alcy, Jackie, Chopin and Betty, a 50-something woman who was a good friend of Hans’). I invited Anne and Ilhan, my fellow teachers at USIS, plus their Afghan husbands. Hans invited Bernie, a 60-something British man who was most likely an MI6 agent, and Rick, a big, tall, blond 30-something American who—along with his father—was involved in some questionable business dealings in India, Afghanistan and the U.S.
In other words, the guest list was eclectic!
The ceremony was lovely and simple. I asked our parents to sit on either side of Hans and me at the front of the church. When it came time to exchange rings, Father Panigoti looked at Dad, who was standing next to Hans in the position of groomsman, and Dad shook his head, panic spreading across his face.
At the same time, Hans reached into his pocket and produced the ring, so all was well again.
The ceremony soon came to an end, which surprised my father because he had prepared himself for a long, drawn-out Catholic service. In fact, his head suddenly jerked up, and he said,
“Is that it?!”
“Yes,” I laughed. "That’s it.”
After the ceremony, Father Panigoti handed us our wedding certificate, which was written in Latin. So I ended up with two wedding certificates, neither of which I could read!
The Luncheon
The wedding took place at 11:00 am in the morning. After it was over, all of the guests headed to the Gulzar Hotel, where Frau Farhadi had prepared a delicious luncheon and multi-tiered wedding cake. We were all able to sit together around two tables that had been pushed together, which made it easy for everyone to talk and laugh together.
After the luncheon was over, we went back to our respective homes and hotel rooms to rest up for the evening dinner-reception.
The Evening Dinner-Reception
There was an Afghan restaurant in Shahr-i-Nau that had delicious food and a large upstairs dining room. So Hans and I reserved the entire establishment for our wedding dinner-reception and invited something like 100 people to join us.
The restaurant provided a live band that played Afghan music for dancing, as well as a feast of food. My favorite Afghan dish—Kabuli Pulau—took center stage. Kabuli Pulau, which is the national dish of Afghanistan, consists of rice, lamb, carrots and raisins and is absolutely delicious.
We invited all of my students, Hans’ business partners and their families, the Peace Corps Director and many other Volunteers and friends. Our Sikh doctor and his sari-clad wife were there, as were two hippy couples (Brits and Americans), decked out in their finest Kuchi nomad clothes. Even a few relatives of the former king were there.
I have pictures of all of these people in my scrapbook in Portland, and I really wish I could show them to you. Three of them are my favorites. In the first one, Hans and I are sitting at a table with my five female students standing behind us. In the second one, all ten of my male students are standing behind us. In the third one, I am dancing with one of my male students, my arms raised high in Afghan style.
Unfortunately, my sister only ended up with one picture of the reception in her scrapbook, which is my least favorite. It is the one above of young members of the royal family.
The Honeymoon
Both sets of parents returned home soon after the wedding. But my sister, Janice, stayed with us for another month. As a result, Hans’ reputation on the street skyrocketed because our neighbors thought he had married a second wife! (I had been living with Hans for almost a year, and our neighbors naturally assumed we were already married.)
Before Hans was arrested, we had talked about going to Sri Lanka for a honeymoon. Without a passport, however, our options were limited to Afghanistan. So we decided to go to Jalalabad, which is the largest city before the Pakistani border.
What can I say about Jalalabad and our honeymoon?
Absolutely nothing.
Because for some reason, I don’t remember anything about it at all! I don’t remember where we stayed, what we did, or how many days it lasted. Neither does Janice, who accompanied us on our honeymoon.
I do remember two things, however. The first is how heavy, moist, fragrant and warm the air felt when we reached Jalalabad. Kabul is 1800 m (6000 ft) above sea level and has a semi-arid climate very similar to the one in Salt Lake City, Utah. In contrast, Jalalabad is on the other side of the Hindu Kush Mountains. At 575 m (1,886 ft) above sea level, its climate is semi-tropical, so oranges and lemons grow there in abundance.
The second thing I remember is driving through the Kabul Gorge in our jeep. The Kabul-Jalalabad road is 80 miles (130 km) long, and about half of it consists of a treacherous mountainous gorge, where sheer rock cliffs rise 2,000 feet above the Kabul River. A narrow road has been blasted out of the cliffs, and it descends in constant hairpin turns from the Hindu Kush Mountains of Kabul down to the plains of Jalalabad.
This is the major road between Afghanistan and Pakistan, so thousands of buses, cars, trucks, and nomads with their camels use it annually. Thanks to such traffic (and to poor driving habits), numerous people have died in car accidents in the gorge and plunged to their death in the Kabul River far below. This makes the road through the Kabul Gorge one of the most dangerous in the world. But it is also breathtakingly beautiful.
Below is one of the pictures in my sister’s scrapbook. We took the picture in the Kabul Gorge on our way to Jalalabad. The little girls are Kuchis, which are Afghan nomads who used to travel throughout the high mountain ranges of Afghanistan. If you look at the picture carefully, you can also see a couple of camels and some black tents.
After a month-long stay, Janice returned to Seattle, and our lives in Kabul got back to normal once again. For a brief moment, anyway.
What happens in Jalalabad, stays in Jalalabad, 😔
.. a unbelievably remarkable & detailed recollection.. & so well told that I’m exhausted.. !