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NEWS & LETTERS, September-October 2010
Women and Afghan culture in 5 books
The Taliban's recent public execution by stoning of a young couple–with the apparent willing participation of their families and neighbors--shocks and depresses those who support freedom. As Ann Jones writes, "In Afghan society, the individual counts for little, and woman amounts to less than that. It's the collective society that matters… If the women…were punished…it was merely a secondary effect of bringing society back into proper balance…investigators and prosecutors and judges…decide cases…on the basis of patriarchal attitudes…" (Kabul in Winter, Picador, 2006, pp. 105-106).
Jones' book and four others recently published challenge 30 years of external and internal politics that have left Afghanistan in ruins. Each argues for listening to and understanding Afghan peoples. Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace...One School at a Time (Penguin Books, 2006) and Stones into Schools: Promoting Peace With Books, Not Bombs, in Afghanistan and Pakistan (Viking, 2009) describe the work of Greg Mortenson, a U.S. mountain climber, who kept his promise to Pakistani mountain villagers to build the school they had asked for. By 2009, his organization had built 131 schools in Afghanistan, northwestern Pakistan, and Kashmir.
Mortenson, however, sees no contradiction between listening "with humility to what others have to say" and working with the U.S. military: his books influenced the U.S. military counterinsurgency strategy which gives schools with one hand and bombs civilians with the other. Nonetheless, Mortenson projects genuine understanding of and affection for the Afghan people.
THE HORRIBLE SETBACK OF WAR
The Wasted Vigil (Vintage International, 2008), a magnificent novel by Pakistan-born English writer Nadeem Aslam, and A Thousand Splendid Suns (Riverhead Books, 2007), by Afghan writer Khaled Husseini, both portray the past 30 years of unremitting war which destroyed the centuries-old magnificent sculpture, painting, music and poetry as well as the social structure of Afghanistan itself.
A Thousand Splendid Suns describes how people first welcomed the Taliban. After living at the mercy of feudal warlords and endless murderous power struggles, people hoped the Taliban would restore rationality to their lives, an illusion soon contradicted by the reality of their ruthless bloodshed. Both novels reveal how the Cold War exacerbated multi-layered ethnic and religious strife. Both interweave sensuous beauty persisting in ruins and rubble, and resilient characters struggling for freedom and dignity.
"Afghanistan had collapsed and everyone's life now lies broken at different levels within the rubble. Some are trapped near the surface while others find themselves entombed deeper down…from where their cries cannot be heard by anyone on the surface, only--and inconsequentially--by those around them" (The Wasted Vigil, p. 29).
WHEN AID WORSENS LIVES Jones' Kabul in Winter is a journal of her work in Kabul from 2002-2006, aiding women in prison and training teachers. Jones learned how the "industry" of humanitarian aid primarily enriches a long "cascading" chain of U.S. corporate contractors, and actually worsens the life of Afghan people. Although Jones finds many Afghan women succumb to the male domination they suffer from cradle to grave, she questions the idea that Islamic women's status will improve only if women adopt "advanced" European cultural traditions.
"Western feminists in equally misogynist Judeo-Christian societies were not scrapping their heritage for a foreign model but were fighting for their rights on their own ground. Why couldn't Muslim women, too, challenge their own culture?" (p. 145) Jones' widely researched account allows us to grasp the historical and social complexities of this diverse, multi-ethnic country.
These books, which clarify many social and cultural realities of Afghanistan, can help connect us to those Afghans building a revolutionary human society.
--Susan Van Gelder
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