We are taking this girl from her home and leading her to our

home

Bride, do not bow your head and cry bitter tears

This is God’s wish, thank God.

Oh, Muhammad, God’s messenger, solve her problems

Make difficult things easy!

Wakil’s women dance a sensual dance, framing their bodies and faces in shawls and scarves. The room is damp and smells of sweet sweat. All the windows are flung open and the curtains flutter in the breeze, but the fresh spring air cannot cool down these women.

It is not until there is a pause in the dancing that brimming plates of pilau are carried in. Everyone drops down on to the floor at the spot where they were standing or dancing. Only the oldest sit on cushions along the wall. Shakila’s little sister Leila and the younger cousins carry the food in, cooked in huge pots in the courtyard outside. Pots with rice, large hunks of mutton, aubergine in yoghurt sauce, noodles stuffed with spinach and garlic and potatoes in paprika sauce are laid out on the floor. The women collect around the pots. With the right hand they squeeze the rice into balls and stuff them into their mouths. Meat and gravy is mopped up with pieces torn off large chunks of bread, always using the right hand. The left hand, the dirty hand, must remain still. The sound of women eating is all that can be heard. The meal is consumed in peace. The silence is broken only when they urge each other to eat more. It is good manners to push the juiciest morsels over to your neighbour.

When everyone is replete the henna ceremony can begin. The night is far spent, no one is dancing. Some sleep, others lie or sit around Shakila and watch while Wakil’s sister rubs the moss-green paste over Shakila’s hands and feet and sings the henna-song. Once Shakila’s hands have been covered she must close them. Her future sister-in-law binds reams of material round each fist to ensure a pattern is formed, and then rolls them in some soft cloth to avoid dirtying clothes and bed-linen. She undresses her down to her underwear, long white cotton trousers and a long tunic, and lies her down on a mat in the middle of the floor with a pillow for her head. She is then fed with large pieces of meat, fried liver and uncooked onion sections, specially prepared by the sisters of the one who is about to leave the family.

Bibi Gul follows everything closely. She watches each piece the sisters put into Shakila’s mouth. She starts to cry. Then everyone follows suit; but they assure each other that Shakila will be well treated.

After Shakila has been fed, she lies down close against Bibi Gul, curled-up in the foetal position. She has never in her life slept in a room without her mother. This is the last night in the bosom of her family. The following night belongs to her husband.

A few hours later she is woken and the sisters unwrap the cloth around her hands. They scrape off the henna, and an orange pattern has formed on the palms of her hands and on the soles of her feet. Shakila washes off last night’s doll-face and eats a good breakfast, as usual: fried meat, bread, a sweet pudding and tea.

At nine she is ready to be made up, have her hair dressed and be titivated. Shakila, little sister Leila, Sultan’s second wife Sonya and a cousin troop into a flat in Mikrorayon. This is the beauty salon – a salon that also existed under the Taliban. Then too, in spite of it being illegal, brides desired glamour. They wanted to be dolled up to the nines. Here a Taliban decree was an actual help. They arrived in a burka and left in a burka, but with a new face underneath.

The beautician has a mirror, a stool, and a shelf full of bottles and tubes, which, from appearance and design, look to be several decades old. On the wall she has put up posters of Indian Bollywood stars. The beauties in low-necked costumes smile ingratiatingly at Shakila, who sits silent and broad on the stool.

Few would say that Shakila is beautiful. Her skin is coarse and the eyelids swollen. The face is wide and the jaw powerful. But she has the loveliest teeth, shining hair and a cheeky look, and has been the most sought after of Bibi Gul’s daughters.

‘I don’t understand why I like you so much,’ Wakil said to her during the dinner in Mariam’s house. ‘You’re not even beautiful.’ But he had said it lovingly and Shakila took it as a compliment.

Now she is nervous about not being beautiful enough and the playful look has disappeared. A wedding is deadly serious.

First the dark mop of hair is rolled round little wooden curlers. Next the bushy eyebrows, which are so strong they have met in the middle, are plucked. This is the most important sign of her intended marriage, as unmarried women cannot pluck their eyebrows. Shakila screams, the beautician plucks. The brows are turned into beautiful arches and Shakila admires herself in the mirror. Somehow her face is lifted up.

‘If you had come earlier, I would have bleached the hairs on your upper lip,’ says the woman. She shows her something mysterious. On the peeling tube are the words: ‘Cream bleach for unwanted hair’. ‘But we won’t have time now.’

Then she rubs Perfact over Shakila’s face. She applies a heavy shimmering red and gold eye shadow on the eyelids. She outlines the eyes with a thick kohl pencil and selects a dark, brown-red lipstick.

‘Whatever I do I’ll never be as beautiful as you,’ Shakila says to her youngest sister-in-law Sonya, Sultan’s second wife. Sonya smiles and mumbles under her breath. She is pulling a pale-blue tulle dress over her head.

Once Shakila has been made up it is Sonya’s turn to be beautified. Shakila is being helped into her dress. Leila has lent her a tummy belt, a broad elasticated band that will give Shakila a waist. The dress is of a penetrating, shining, mint-green material, with synthetic lace, ruche and gold borders. The dress must be green – the colour of happiness and Islam.

When the dress has been fitted and her feet have been forced into sky-high, white, gold-buckled pumps, the hairdresser unrolls the curlers. The hair is now frizzy and is fixed on top of the head with a tight comb, whilst the fringe, aided by copious amounts of hair spray, is forced into a wave and fixed to one side of the face. Now it’s the turn of the mint-green veil, and the icing on the cake, right at the end, are little stickers strewn over the hair, sky-blue with golden borders. Shakila’s cheeks are given the same treatment, three little silver stars on each side. She is beginning to look like the Bollywood stars on the wall.

‘Oh no, the cloth, the piece of cloth,’ sister Leila suddenly cries. ‘Oh no.’

‘Oh no,’ exclaims Sonya and looks at Shakila, who does not bat an eyelid.

Leila gets up and rushes out. Luckily home is not far. What if she had forgotten about the piece of cloth, the most important item of all?

The others remain behind, unaffected by Leila’s panic. They all apply stickers to hair and cheek and then on with the burkas. Shakila tries to get into hers without ruining the bridal hairdo. She refrains from pulling it tight over her head, but lets it rest lightly on top of the frizz. That means that the grille is not in the right place, in front of the eyes, but rather on top of her head. Sonya and the cousin have to lead her, like a blind person, down the stairs. Shakila would rather fall over than be seen without a burka.

The burka is removed only when – the frizz slightly crushed – she is in Mariam’s backyard, where the wedding is being held. The guests fling themselves on her when she enters. Wakil is yet to arrive. The backyard is teeming with people in full swing, stuffing themselves with pilau, kebabs and meatballs. Hundreds of relatives have been invited. A chef and his son have been chopping, cutting and cooking since dawn. 150 kilos of rice have been bought in for the wedding meal, 56 kilos of mutton, 14 kilos of veal, 42 kilos of potatoes, 30 kilos of onions, 50 kilos of spinach, 35 kilos of carrots, 1 kilo of garlic, 8 kilos of raisins, 2 kilos of nuts, 32 kilos of oil, 14 kilos of sugar, 2 kilos of flour, 20 eggs, several varieties of spice, 2 kilos of green tea, 2 kilos of black tea, 14 kilos of sweets and 3 kilos of caramels.