WHAT IT MEANS TO BE A WOMAN IN THIS WORLD
'What does it mean to be a woman?' That is existential question...
A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
'One could not count
the moons
that shimmer on Kabul's roofs,
or the thousand splendid suns
that hide behind the veils,
the thousand splendid veils
that hide behind Kabul's walls.
All
these women
know
is war...'
/paraphrasing the poem about Kabul by Saib-e-Tabizi from the 17th century/
'One could not count
the carcasses
of burned out tanks
and wrecked helicopters.
The landscape shifted from snowcapped peaks
to deserts
to canyons,
to sun scorched outcroppings of rocks.
There was a young girl,
standing
in front of the black tent
of Koochi nomads,
looking on an ancient looking wall
of sun-dried red
in the distance.
It used to be a fortress,
built some nine hundred years ago,
Genghis Khan himself
raped her ancestors,
they became his slaves,
'the prize of the war'.
One could not count
the invaders,
Macedonians,
Sassanians,
Arabs,
Mongols,
now the Soviets
and Americans...
A gust of wind rose
from the horizon
The Koochi girl
caught a glimpse
of a man
and she ran to safety
of her tent
covering her face,
remembering,
all of them
and no one
in particular.
Was he the Soviet
looking for someone
to rape
before
going
back home,
disgraced?
Was he the greedy Mujahideen
armed to the teeth,
rich of heroin,
declaring jihad
on everyone
and raping every woman
in between?
Was is he the armed bearded man
in black turban,
dragging her
by the hair.
Hair was ripped
from her scalp
while he shouted in Pashto:
“Long live the Taliban.”
Or is he
the greedy Mujahideen,
armed to teeth,
again,
by Americans,
coming back to rape her,
before hunting down 'bin Laden' and Taliban?
Then a giant roar,
something hot and powerful
slammed into her
from behind,
she crashed down
on a bloody chunk of something,
the lifeless bodies
of her parents
separated her
from the ground.
The bombs were falling
once again,
this time American ones.
The man found the girl,
dug her out.
His beard was streaked
with parallel stripes of grey.
He wanted to touch her,
but he stopped himself from doing so.
Something behind this young girl's eyes,
something deep in her core,
something as hard and unyielding
as the red ancient wall
shimmering in a distance,
caught him by surprise.
The girl took one last look
at the hole in the ground
and followed the man
in chapan
to his village
of flat kolbas
built with mud and straw.
Soon she is the one
of the sunburned women
cooking,
her face sweating
in steam rising from big blackened pots.
In the shadow of the straw wall,
her children are squatting,
playing with mud.
The little Koochi girl is a woman now.
A woman,
who is like a rock
in a river bead,
enduring without complaint,
her grace not sullied,
but shaped
by the turbulence
of her beloved
Afghanistan.
She is expecting,
again.
She shines
with the bursting radiance
of a thousand suns.
It is a girl,
this time.
From the darkened spirals of her memory
rise images of wars,
in which her people perished,
in their homes,
where the smoke of bombs is only now settling down.
Seasons have come and gone,
presidents in Kabul have been inaugurated and murdered,
and the corrupted Hamid Karzai is the president now.
An empire has been defeated,
old wars have ended and new ones have broken out.
An international peace keeping force is in her land now,
but it does not help to rebuild Afghanistan.
The Koochi woman speaks to her unborn daughter:
“My love, the only enemy an Afghan can not defeat
is himself
or herself.
Tajik, Pashtun,
Hazara or Uzbek,
man or woman,
we are all Afghans
and is all that should matter.”
“One could not count
on the help from outside,”
she plans to tell her daughter,
“The promised aid money to Afghanistan
will never arrive,
the rebuilding will never end,
corruption will thrive,
The Taliban will keep regrouping,
the world will forget
once again
about Afghanistan,
but we are here,
because we are like those ancient walls of the Red City,
battered and beaten,
but still strong,
still standing
and because of us,
Afghanistan will survive.
/paraphrasing the thoughts and beliefs of Laila's father as she remembers them from her childhood in Kabul from 1987 to 1992 and reflects on them later in her own life from 1992 to 2003/
Khaled Hosseini let us
look
beneath the veils
of two ordinary Afghan women,
brought jarringly together
by the tragic sweep of wars.
They feared and hoped,
living their ordinary lives.
An illegitimate Mariam,
married off
to the middle-aged
and violent man,
Rasheed,
who had become
Laila's husband as well.
Laila,
her neighbour,
whose father,
an university professor,
had died
in a bomb attack,
dreaming about
the constitution
and laws of Afghanistan,
where women are FREE.
'WHAT IT MEANS TO BE A WOMAN IN THIS WORLD?'
They kept asking each other.
“In HERAT
where I was born,
the Queen Gauhar Shad
raised the famous minarets in 15 century,”
Mariam said:
“And yet
today,
we are banned
from work,
from education,
from public places.
We are in mercy
of our fathers,
husbands and brothers,
who decide our destiny.”
She looked at Laila
continuing in her litany:
“My mum believed,
that there is only one skill
in life,
I need,
TAHAMUL-ENDURE.”
She put on her burqa,
the padded headpiece,
felt tight and heavy
on her skull.
“IT IS STRANGE SEEING THE WORLD THROUGH A MESH SCREEN.”
Laila replied:
“There is more to life,
my dear Mariam,
believe me,
more to life,
than
to be afraid
all the time.”
'LISTEN. LISTEN WELL. OBEY.
DEATH THOSE,
WHO DON'T,
ALLAH-U-AKBAR!'
A look passed
between Laila and Mariam.
In this fleeting,
wordless exchange,
they decided to act.
Rasheed's hands
wrapped around Laila's neck.
Her face blue now
and her eyes rolled back.
He's going to kill her,
Mariam thought
and she could not,
would not
allow that to happen.
Mariam raised
the shovel high.
As she did,
it occurred to her,
that was the first time
that she was deciding
THE COURSE OF HER OWN LIFE.
And with that she brought down the shovel.
She gave it everything she had.
'WHAT IT MEANS TO BE A WOMAN IN THIS WORLD?'
She asked her husband of twenty-seven years,
before the final blow touched his head,
“YOU CAN TAKE EVERYTHING FROM A WOMAN
AND YET YOU CAN NOT TAKE ONE THING,
LOVE
EVERY WOMAN KNOWS HOW TO LOVE,
EVERY WOMAN HAS LOVED,
EVERY WOMAN HAS BEEN LOVED BACK.”
“Tashakor, brother,”
a murmuring sound
rippled through the stadium,
when Mariam was helped
down from truck.
She imagined
heads shaking
when the loudspeaker announced
her crime.
“Kneel here, hamshira, and look down,”
the Talib said and she obeyed for once.
She was leaving the world
as THE WOMAN.
It was not so bad,
that she should die this way,
and with that last thought,
she smiled and closed her eyes.
