It's a boy's life for unwanted Afghan girls

SIX-YEAR-OLD Mehran Rafaat is like many girls her age. She likes to be the centre of attention and, like her three older sisters, she is eager to discover the world outside the family's apartment in their middle-class neighbourhood of Kabul.

But when their mother, Azita Rafaat, a member of parliament, dresses the children for school in the morning, there is one important difference. Mehran's sisters put on black dresses and head scarves, tied tightly over their ponytails. For Mehran, it's green pants, a white shirt and a necktie, then a pat from her mother over her spiky, short black hair. After that, her daughter is out of the door - as an Afghan boy.

There are no statistics about how many Afghan girls masquerade as boys. But when asked, Afghans of several generations can often tell a story of a female relative, friend, neighbour or co-worker who grew up disguised as a boy. To those who know, these children are often referred to as neither "daughter" nor "son" in conversation, but as "bacha posh," which literally means "dressed up as a boy" in Dari.

In a land where sons are more highly valued, since in the tribal culture usually only they can inherit the father's wealth and pass down a name, families without boys are the objects of pity and contempt. Even a made-up son increases the family's standing, at least for a few years. A bacha posh can also more easily receive an education, work outside the home, even escort her sisters in public, allowing freedoms that are unheard of for girls in a society that strictly segregates men and women. But for some, the change can be disorienting as well as liberating, stranding the women in a limbo between the sexes.

It is a commonly held belief among less-educated Afghans that the mother can determine the sex of her unborn child, so she is blamed, and often blames herself, if she gives birth to a daughter. This pressure to produce a son fuels the practice of cross-dressing young girls.

"Yes, this is not normal for you," Rafaat said. "And I know it's very hard for you to believe why one mother is doing these things to their youngest daughter. Some things are happening in Afghanistan that are really not imaginable for you as a western people."

From the fateful day she first became a mother - 7 February, 1999 - Rafaat knew she had failed, she said, but she was too exhausted to speak, shivering on the cold floor of the family's small house in Badghis province. She had just given birth to Mehran's older twin sisters, Benafsha and Beheshta. When her mother-in-law began to cry, Rafaat knew it was not from fear whether her infant granddaughters would survive. The old woman was disappointed. "Why," she cried, according to Rafaat, "are we getting more girls in the family?"

She faced constant pressure to try again, and she did, through two more pregnancies, when she had two more daughters — Mehrangis, now nine, and finally Mehran, the six-year-old.

Today, she is in a position of power, at least on paper. She is one of 68 women in Afghanistan's 249-member parliament, representing Badghis province. Her husband is unemployed and spends most of his time at home. "He is my house husband," she joked.

By persuading him to move away from her mother-in-law and by offering to contribute to the family income, she laid the groundwork for her political life. Three years into their marriage, after the fall of the Taleban in 2002, she began volunteering as a health worker for various non-governmental organisations. Today she makes $2,000 (1,300) a month as an MP.

As a politician, she works to improve women's rights and the rule of law. She ran for re-election on 18 September, and, based on a preliminary vote count, is optimistic about securing another term. But she could run only with her husband's explicit permission, and the second time around, he was not easily persuaded. He wanted to try again for a son.

"When you don't have a son in Afghanistan," she explained, "it's like a big thing missing in your life. Like you lost the most important point of your life. Everybody feels sad for you."

In an effort to preserve her job and placate her husband, as well as fending off the threat of his getting a third wife, she proposed to him that they make their youngest daughter look like a son.

"People came into our home feeling pity for us that we don't have a son," she recalled reasoning. "And the girls — we can't send them outside. And if we changed Mehran to a boy we would get more space and freedom in society for her. And we can send her outside for shopping and to help the father."

Together, they spoke to their youngest daughter, she said. They made it an alluring proposition: "Do you want to look like a boy and dress like a boy, and do more fun things like boys do, like bicycling, soccer and cricket? And would you like to be like your father?" Mehran did not hesitate to say yes.

That afternoon, her father took her to the barbershop, where her hair was cut short.

Khatera Momand, the headmistress, with less than a year in her job, said she had always presumed Mehran was a boy, until she helped change her into sleeping clothes one afternoon. "It was quite a surprise for me," she said. But once Rafaat called the school and explained that the family had only daughters, Momand understood perfectly.

Mr Rafaat said he felt closer to Mehran than to his other children, and thought of her as a son. "I am very happy," he said. "When people now ask me, I say yes and they see that I have a son. So people are quiet, and I am quiet."

But what happens to these boy-girls when they become adults? Another case is Shukria Siddiqui, raised as a boy but then plunged into an arranged marriage at 20. She remembered the day her aunt brought her a floor-length skirt and told her the time had come to "change back", as her parents had picked a husband whom she had never met.

At that time, Shukur, as she called herself, was a 20-year-old man who walked around with a knife in her back pocket and wore jeans and a leather jacket.

"When you change back, it's like you are born again, and you have to learn everything from the beginning," she explained. "You get a whole new life. Again."

Today, she is 36, a married mother of three, and works as an anaesthesiology nurse at a Kabul hospital.