Afghan Wedding

I’d been invited to a “divided” wedding, where the women sat in one room and the men in another, the band separated from the women by a curtain. My friends warned me it wouldn’t be terribly lively, but I hoped the segregation of the sexes might give the women a chance to let their hair down, so to speak.

However, the groom’s family, which hosted the party, was of a conservative bent. When my friend introduced me to the groom’s sisters, they gave me the fish eye, staring coldly when I issued a bright, “Salaam!” They had some reason for their reticence, as I was certainly the least respectable-looking woman in the room. The other ladies had done their hair in elaborate do’s, make-up pancaked on their faces, and wore gowns glittering with sequins and metallic thread. I felt quite ratty by comparison. My friend nervously hustled me off to the bride’s table in the corner, where the cowed ladies there made me promise not to take photos of any of the groom’s family, nor say or do anything that might embarrass them. I shrank back into my plastic-wrapped chair and tried to look respectful.

Then the bride and groom entered for photo ops. At Afghan weddings, the bride is supposed to appear miserable and in this she was wildly successful. I probably could have taken pictures at this point, but decided laying low was the wiser course. I admit it. I was terrified.

After the bride and groom departed to say their vows, the groom’s sisters tried to get the dancing going, but the mood in the room was off, and they were having a hard slog of it. Eventually they gave my table the nod to dance. A woman next to me took my hand, and we joined the Sisters Grim. I am a competent Central Asian social dancer (for those of you who scoffed at my belly dance lessons – HA!), and once the room got over the shock at seeing an American doing their “national dance,” I kept getting pulled back to the dance floor. The mood of the room didn’t improve, but the attitude toward me certainly changed, and when the music ended, the sisters dragged me to sit in a chair beside them. It was a kind gesture on their part, but uncomfortable since we couldn’t really communicate with each other. I scuttled back to my dark corner as soon as I gracefully could. But at least I had progressed from freakish foreigner to mildly entertaining foreigner.