Free The Lovers by Rod Nordland Page B

just footpaths that separated their two domains. Zakia dared not look at Ali, nor he at her.
    No one expected that she would try to bolt again that samenight, but that is what she did. When her family was asleep, exhausted from the day’s exertions, she crept out at about 11:00 P . M . and went again to Anwar’s home. This time Ali was half expecting her and was still up when she arrived.
    “My whole family wanted to send her back,” said Ali. “They wouldn’t agree. I saw there was no place to go, so I brought her to the women’s ministry.” It was late at night, but the guards at the ministry building summoned a woman who headed the provincial human-rights office, Aziza Ahmadi, who came down and arranged for Zakia to be admitted to the Bamiyan Women’s Shelter, a short distance away.
    “I was happy to be in the shelter at first, because I knew that my life was at risk now, and I wanted to see my case handled legally,” Zakia said.
    She had no idea then, in October 2013, that she would still be there nearly six months later.
    At first Zakia cried inconsolably. “She would cry for one or two hours straight, even during late nights,” said the shelter director, Najeeba Ahmadi (no relation to Aziza Ahmadi). Other than a small plastic bag of clothing she had brought along to Anwar’s house, Zakia’s lone possession was the tattered photograph of Ali that she kept beside her thin mattress on the floor. Ali’s mother gave it to her when she visited the shelter herself, partly because Chaman wanted to make sure the shelter authorities knew that Ali’s family was behind her and partly to reassure and comfort Zakia. Later the police would confiscate the photo from the shelter and make copies of it to distribute to checkpoints in the manhunt for the lovers.
    The shelter workers sat with her in those first days, trying to calm her down. “You are a brave girl, stop crying,” they would say. “You are the one who had the nerve to fight for your rights.”
    “I feel pity for my parents,” Zakia replied. “I miss them, but I am worried about what they will do.”
    Najeeba had seen this many times before. “In Afghan society families disown their children and do not forgive them,” she said. “Thinking about such things would disturb her and make her cry.”
    “I love him, and I’m not going to give him up,” she declared in one breath and then, in the next, “I don’t know what to do. On the one hand, there is my lover and on the other hand my family.”
    She appealed to Najeeba for guidance, but all the other woman could do was tell the girl to look in her own heart. “We would not tell her which side to take,” Najeeba said. “It is her decision. But we always said, ‘Think carefully before you make any decision.’”
    Zakia always came back to the same thing. “I want to marry the boy.”
    “If that is what you really want, then do it,” Najeeba said.
    “Don’t you think it is wrong?”
    “Whatever your heart believes cannot be wrong,” Najeeba said. “Now that you have fallen in love, you should fight for it till the end, until you achieve what you have wished for. Once you are married, you can still try to reconcile with your family. It might take a few years, four or five or even eight years. It might happen soon, or it might take a while.”
    The easiest way to calm her crying fits was to get her talking about Ali.
    “Tell us what his good qualities are. What qualities made you want to marry him?” Najeeba would say.
    “He is supportive, and when you have the support of someone, that’s everything you can expect in your life. You always seek someone who will stand by your side and support you all the time, and he has all these good qualities. He is very kind, active, and he belongs to a very gentle family,” she would reply. “I have so much love for him, and I feel that he loves me as much as I love him. He is hardworking, and he is ready to sacrifice everything for me,” Zakia