[ALBSA-Info] NYTimes.com Article: Behind the Burka: Women Subtly Fought Taliban

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Behind the Burka: Women Subtly Fought Taliban

November 19, 2001 

By AMY WALDMAN


 

HERAT, Afghanistan, Nov. 18 - In the walled garden of her
house, Soheila Helal waged a quiet rebellion against the
Taliban. On a patio softened by rugs and book-ended by two
small blackboards, she ran a school for 120 students,
mostly girls. It was a transgression on two counts: as a
woman Mrs. Helal was not supposed to work, and her female
students were not supposed to learn. 

So her students' lessons included what to tell any Taliban
forces who stopped them - that they were just going to
visit her. The after-school activities included learning
how to leave discreetly in small groups, so as not to
attract attention. 

Mrs. Helal, a teacher for 17 years, saw no other choice.
Her husband died as the Taliban came to power, leaving her
with three small children to support. She says that
continuing to teach also kept her sane. 

"I thought of killing myself many times," she said of life
under the Taliban. As a woman she was not supposed to leave
home without a male relative; as a widow she had no choice.
Buying groceries could bring a beating from the religious
police. "Only my love for my students saved me." 

That love no longer needs to be hidden behind an adobe
wall. The school where Mrs. Helal worked before the Taliban
came to power is reopening now that they are gone from
Herat and much of Afghanistan. In areas now controlled by
the Northern Alliance, the petty brutality that women
endured for nearly a half decade has ended. When Ismail
Khan, the commander now in control here, arrived last week,
he made clear that he believed that women should be in
school and at work. 

The freedom is still too new to completely trust, and the
wounds too fresh to be healed, but for the first time in
years, women here say they have hope - that they will be
treated like human beings, not wayward cattle; that they
will be free to leave their homes and work; that their
daughters will be able to learn. 

"The good days are ahead," said Rana Entezari, a neighbor
who stopped by Mrs. Helal's house today. A doctor, she was
fired from a laboratory for being a woman after the Taliban
came to power. 

Herat is still full of women in burkas, the full-length
shroud that covers even the face, rendering a woman more
column than human, and making it impossible for close
friends to recognize each other on the street. But now many
of the burka-clad women are on their own or with other
women. A week ago, that would have brought a lashing. 

Today women showed off bruises and scars earned for going
it alone or daring to speak in a government office. They
described the cruel illogic of the Taliban: male doctors
were not allowed to treat women but female doctors were not
permitted to be trained; many widows here who were the sole
support of their family were barred from going to work.
Many of them resorted to shelling nuts or washing clothes
at home, barely earning enough to fill their children's
stomachs. 

Women also showed resilience, even crafty defiance, for
those who were expected to be neither seen nor heard.
Knowing they would be lashed, they went out alone anyway.
Confined to their homes, many taught their daughters to
read. They started secret schools or secured small
concessions - permission to open a nursing school, for
example - from the Taliban bureaucracy. 

Nouri, who uses only one name, described going to a
courtroom on behalf of a relative who had been wrongly
arrested. The Taliban beat her so hard for appearing there
that her hands were swollen for days. 

"Why are you doing this?" she said she shouted. "Aren't you
Muslim? Aren't you afraid of God?" They told her they would
do it as long as she was out of the house. Today she was
out looking for work at the office of Habitat, the United
Nations Centre for Human Settlement. Many other women were
there as well. 

Sima Rezahi, 22, said she needed to support her elderly
parents but had been allowed to work only in a relief
distribution center since her family returned from Iran two
years ago. She has been well educated, she said, and being
restricted to such a lowly job smarted. 

Her younger sister, Zahra, went out of the house today for
the first time in two years. No one knew it was her since
she wore a burka. But within the confines of the maternity
clinic where Habitat's office is situated, the 17-year-old
removed the veil, let the sun hit her face and allowed
herself to think about a life outside four walls and after
the Taliban. All she did for two years was cook. 

"It was like being in jail," said another woman, Delband.


Today, the prisoners were free. Fatimeh Sadeghi brought her
16- year-old daughter to the office, hoping she could get a
job sewing. Mrs. Sadeghi has seven children, one at her
breast, and no foreseeable way out of poverty. Her only
education had come from a childhood friend, Kobra Zeithi,
who runs the Habitat office. Mrs. Zeithi, who had an
education, shared what she had learned with her friend. 

Mrs. Zeithi is a pharmacologist who became an activist. She
was briefly imprisoned by the Taliban for traveling to
Pakistan to pick up educational materials. She saw the
Taliban threaten to beat her daughter, then 13, for not
covering her face. She saw the opportunities for
Afghanistan's women narrow unbearably. 

She would not give up fighting, she said. "If we stayed
home these five years, we would lose what little culture we
have." 

She managed to get permission from the Taliban to start a
sewing program for women, although the permission took a
month to get. She got permission to teach the Koran to
women at a new cultural center, although the permission was
then revoked. Her organization was one of the only places
in Herat that women could get jobs. For 80 jobs at the
cultural center she received 1,500 applications, mostly
from educated women. Her activities were financed by
international organizations. She and other employees had to
swear to the Taliban that they would continue to uphold the
Islamic values. 

Now jobs, not to mention dreams and plans, do not have to
be scrimped and hoarded. Mrs. Zeithi had forced her
16-year-old daughter to go to a nursing school started here
three years ago because it was the only schooling available
to women. Her daughter cried because she wanted to be
anything but a nurse. Now she is free to choose. 

The nursing school was a hard-won victory. It has 230
students, including Jamileh Ramani, 18, who said she
enrolled because the country desperately needed medical
practitioners - and because it was the only avenue out of
the house. 

The school's director, Sadaat Satahi, said she expected
that applications would drop now that women have other
options. But the problem that took root during Taliban rule
remains: Doctors here say the lack of female surgeons and
specialists working over the last few years has led to a
higher mortality rate among women. 

Afghanistan's illiteracy rate is high but education is
valued, particularly in this wealthy western city. Woman
after woman lamented that she had been educated only to be
reduced by the Taliban to menial labor or no labor at all. 

"I was educated but it was worth nothing," Mrs. Helal, the
teacher, said. "The Taliban did not care." 

Her daughter Ghazal, 13, would ask her why boys could go to
school when she could not. Mrs. Helal could only tell her
to thank God she was not in a society that buried women
alive. Mrs. Helal also said she was so desperate
financially that she had considered marrying Ghazal off as
many desperate families here have done with young girls.
Now she feels optimistic enough to let Ghazal wait for
marriage. 

For Mrs. Helal, one thing will not change - she will
continue to wear her burka in public. Her husband's family
would be very upset if she did not, she said. Showing her
face in public would suggest she was looking for a new
husband. 

To the outside world, the burka was the most obvious and
chilling symbol of the Taliban rule. Its meaning here is
more complicated, which helps explain why women have not
thrown it off en masse. Many women here said they would
like to return to wearing a chador, which leaves the face
exposed, but are frightened that the Taliban may return. 

"If other women take off their veils, I'll take mine off,"
said Tayebeh Amini, 48, a mother of three out shopping
alone today. 

Many other women, usually poor or less-educated, said that
they would continue to wear the burka as they had done
before the Taliban came to power. "I wore it then and I'll
wear it now," said Maryam Nazhamat, 55. "I'm a Muslim."
Nonetheless she said she was thankful the Taliban were
gone: she wanted her 11-year-old, whom she had taught to
read at home, in school. 

Many men who say women should be able to work or go to
school still say they should wear the burka. "It is a
tradition in Afghanistan," said Gholom Mohammed, 55. The
dusty street around him was filled with women in light blue
burkas. 

Ismail Khan, the local commander, said he would not enforce
the wearing of the burka but would not ban it either. He
said he supports full rights for women, but that progress
might be slow - in appointing women to government posts,
for example. 

"The Taliban created very bad notions about women," he
said. "If we go to the other extreme some people might
confront us in hostile ways." He said that after he
announced that television broadcasting would resume here,
some men had approached him to argue that women should not
be on television. "Afghanistan is a backward country," he
said. "There's a kind of patriarchy in most families,
especially in the villages, in which men tell women what to
do and what to wear." 

But for most women here what they wear is the least of
their worries. That is certainly true for Parigol
Abdulrasoul. She is 50, with no schooling, eight children
and a dead husband. Unable to leave the house under Taliban
rule, she shelled nuts in the dark at home, her eyes
weakening from the strain of working with no electricity.
Even now, she wonders how she will be able to earn enough
to feed her family. "It doesn't make any difference who
rules here," she said. "We are hungry." 

On Saturday, though, she came on her own to Herat's main
hotel to look for a person powerful enough to help her get
food for her family from relief shipments entering the
country. She assertively corralled journalists and
buttonholed government officials - male officials. It was a
mission she could never have undertaken under the Taliban. 

Now, at least, she is free to
beg.

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/19/international/asia/19WOME.html?ex=1007150691&ei=1&en=a37d6ff522a00d7f



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