Read Online The Underground Girls of Kabul by Jenny Nordberg - Free Book Online
Authors: Jenny Nordberg
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capital and resume a normal life. Azita would become a doctor and she would travel abroad. All according to plan.
But the eighteen-year-old’s prospects gradually turned darker.Badghis is dominated by Tajik tribes and has a Pashtun minority, and the Taliban was closing in, ferociously fighting to take full control ofthe province. At the house, where Azita spent most of her time, the windows had to be covered, so no passersby could see her shadow. When she left the house, always with a male escort, she viewed the outside world through the thick grid of a burka that made quick turns of the head disorienting and breathing more difficult. It had taken a week of burka training at the house before she mastered pulling the fabric tight over her face so that she could navigate past what little she saw while walking. She learned to move more slowly, making sure she did not flash her ankles.
While local rulers in Badghis in peacetime had not taken a very liberal view of women, nor did the warlords who followed, the Taliban who eventually came to control most of Afghanistan had a particular hatred for half the population.
In his book
Taliban
, Pakistani authorAhmed Rashid describes those who fought for the Taliban: Many were orphaned young men, mostly between fourteen and twenty-four, educated in an extremist version of Islam by illiterate mullahs in Pakistan, and having no sense of their own history. They were Afghan refugees who had grown up in camps and knew very little about a regular society and how to run it, having been taught that women were an unnecessary and, at most, tempting distraction. For that reason, there was no need to include them in decision making and other important matters. The Taliban leadership also argued for sexual abstinence and maintained that contact between men and women in society should be avoided, as it would only serve to weaken warriors.
Controlling and diminishing women became a twisted symbol of manhood in the Taliban’s culture of war, where men were increasingly segregated from women and had no families of their own. Taliban policies toward women were so harsh that even an Iranian ayatollah protested and said they were defaming Islam. And once again, the role and treatment of women became a critical conflict, both in a monetary sense and in an ideological one, as Afghanistan’s leadership became increasingly isolated from the rest of the world. To them, when Western powers criticized the Taliban view of women, itconfirmed that it was correct to segregate the sexes, since any Western idea, invention, or opinion was decidedly un-Islamic. That designation, of course, excluded advanced weaponry and other modern perks exclusive to the male leadership.
To quell the boredom in what was virtually a form of house arrest in Badghis, Azita took it upon herself to carry on the education of her younger sisters. With time, other girls from the neighborhood discreetly joined them. Officially, they were just gathering to read and reread the Koran many times over, but Azita offered lessons in math, geography, and language. Books posed a risk—both to carry around and to keep at the house—so teachings mostly consisted of Azita’s own recollections from her Kabul school.
Around the same time, Azita began to quiet herself in the presence of her father, Mourtaza. She had always been his confidant and vice versa. They would sit together and talk about politics, history, and literature. But as the war raged on and the Taliban gradually began to dominate Badghis, Mourtaza changed. He became irritable. At night, he was restless and did not sleep much. The children tried to steer clear of him during the day, but it was difficult in the small house when the girls could not venture outside. It confused Azita that her father seemed to have lost interest in their conversations, and she was sad that he did not give her the attention he used to.
Two years into the family’s stay in Badghis, Mourtaza received an
But the eighteen-year-old’s prospects gradually turned darker.Badghis is dominated by Tajik tribes and has a Pashtun minority, and the Taliban was closing in, ferociously fighting to take full control ofthe province. At the house, where Azita spent most of her time, the windows had to be covered, so no passersby could see her shadow. When she left the house, always with a male escort, she viewed the outside world through the thick grid of a burka that made quick turns of the head disorienting and breathing more difficult. It had taken a week of burka training at the house before she mastered pulling the fabric tight over her face so that she could navigate past what little she saw while walking. She learned to move more slowly, making sure she did not flash her ankles.
While local rulers in Badghis in peacetime had not taken a very liberal view of women, nor did the warlords who followed, the Taliban who eventually came to control most of Afghanistan had a particular hatred for half the population.
In his book
Taliban
, Pakistani authorAhmed Rashid describes those who fought for the Taliban: Many were orphaned young men, mostly between fourteen and twenty-four, educated in an extremist version of Islam by illiterate mullahs in Pakistan, and having no sense of their own history. They were Afghan refugees who had grown up in camps and knew very little about a regular society and how to run it, having been taught that women were an unnecessary and, at most, tempting distraction. For that reason, there was no need to include them in decision making and other important matters. The Taliban leadership also argued for sexual abstinence and maintained that contact between men and women in society should be avoided, as it would only serve to weaken warriors.
Controlling and diminishing women became a twisted symbol of manhood in the Taliban’s culture of war, where men were increasingly segregated from women and had no families of their own. Taliban policies toward women were so harsh that even an Iranian ayatollah protested and said they were defaming Islam. And once again, the role and treatment of women became a critical conflict, both in a monetary sense and in an ideological one, as Afghanistan’s leadership became increasingly isolated from the rest of the world. To them, when Western powers criticized the Taliban view of women, itconfirmed that it was correct to segregate the sexes, since any Western idea, invention, or opinion was decidedly un-Islamic. That designation, of course, excluded advanced weaponry and other modern perks exclusive to the male leadership.
To quell the boredom in what was virtually a form of house arrest in Badghis, Azita took it upon herself to carry on the education of her younger sisters. With time, other girls from the neighborhood discreetly joined them. Officially, they were just gathering to read and reread the Koran many times over, but Azita offered lessons in math, geography, and language. Books posed a risk—both to carry around and to keep at the house—so teachings mostly consisted of Azita’s own recollections from her Kabul school.
Around the same time, Azita began to quiet herself in the presence of her father, Mourtaza. She had always been his confidant and vice versa. They would sit together and talk about politics, history, and literature. But as the war raged on and the Taliban gradually began to dominate Badghis, Mourtaza changed. He became irritable. At night, he was restless and did not sleep much. The children tried to steer clear of him during the day, but it was difficult in the small house when the girls could not venture outside. It confused Azita that her father seemed to have lost interest in their conversations, and she was sad that he did not give her the attention he used to.
Two years into the family’s stay in Badghis, Mourtaza received an
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