What Can Love Conquer?

Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink, said the poet Edna St. Vincent Millay.

The woman on the left lived in Afghanistan during the Soviet years. Wearing minimal hijab, she once was a free person here with equal rights, while the younger women around her are peering through full burqas. Photo taken near Blue Mosque, Afghanistan, 2007 by Tim King Salem-News.com

(CALGARY, Alberta) - I remember being 17 and the magic of being in love almost as if it were yesterday. The girl I dated throughout high school was not allowed to date at all, but that didn’t stop us. I think her mother knew she was dating, but her (step)father was oblivious.

She babysat a lot—particularly on Friday and Saturday nights when we would meet and be together, often into the wee hours of the morning. There was no curfew for her because it was believed that she was babysitting and the people were twenty-something marrieds still addicted to partying and being out to all hours. Her parents never asked to see how much money she was making. This was our lifestyle for nearly two years.

If we had been discovered, I can’t imagine much would have happened. She was too old to be locked in her room or otherwise restrained. We might just have had to devise more imaginative techniques to be together. Young people in love cannot be (generally speaking) successfully separated. Except…

There is a young couple, both 17, under threat of death in Afghanistan. He is Rafi Mohammed and she is Halima Mohammedi. They met in an ice cream factory and exchanged furtive looks and hellos until one day she put her phone number on a scrap of paper and dropped it for him to pick up. They talked on the phone most nights, even though her stepmother disapproved. After a year they decided to meet in the town square, go to the courthouse and get married.

Disaster ensued.

They met and got in a car driven by an older cousin. Within 30 feet they were stopped and set upon by a mob of about 300 men who demanded to know why there were together and said they should both be hanged or stoned to death for adultery.

Security forces arrived and rescued the young couple. The mob became enraged and overwhelmed the police. The rioting went on for hours, during which a man was killed and a police station burned to the ground. The couple ended up in juvenile prison where they are still held.

Her uncle visited her and said she had shamed the family and would be killed when she was released. Her father, an illiterate labourer who works in Iran, agreed, saying, “What we would ask is that the government should kill both of them,”

The police have referred their case to prosecutors.

There is a further complication. The family of the man who was killed during the riot believes that the young girl is responsible for his death. But they said her debt would be considered paid if she married one of their other sons.

This story is not unique, but has, so far a happier ending than that of a young couple in Kunduz last year who eloped and were, on the orders of the Taliban, stoned to death by scores of people, including family members. The police are apparently “investigating” that incident and, even though there was a video of the killings, no charges have been laid.

I’ve often wondered about the injustices (by our standards) in such backward countries. What can we do? I’ve finally come to the conclusion that we can’t do anything. How many Westerners have died there in an attempt to bring Afghanistan into the modern world? Too many. I think that the West should get out of places like Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan and let them modernize on their own, which they will do, just not in a hurry. But there are similarities in cultures; they have the Taliban and America has the Tea Party.

Daniel Johnson was born near the midpoint of the twentieth century in Calgary, Alberta. In his teens he knew he was going to be a writer, which is why he was one of only a handful of boys in his high school typing class — a skill he knew was going to be necessary. He defines himself as a social reformer, not a left winger, the latter being an ideological label which, he says, is why he is not an ideologue. From 1975 to 1981 he was reporter, photographer, then editor of the weekly Airdrie Echo. For more than ten years after that he worked with Peter C. Newman, Canada’s top business writer (notably on a series of books, The Canadian Establishment). Through this period Daniel also did some national radio and TV broadcasting. He gave up journalism in the early 1980s because he had no interest in being a hack writer for the mainstream media and became a software developer and programmer. He retired from computers last year and is now back to doing what he loves — writing and trying to make the world a better place