Tag: Afghanistan

Good news doesn’t come easy in this land of ours: Tali Girls – A Novel of Afghanistan by Siamak Herawi

The girls of Tali are beautiful. They have long hair, large almond shaped eyes, and skin the colour of wheat. They grow up learning to cook and sew. At seven, some are taught to embroider as well. They stitch and seam and sing together. And when they reach puberty, they fall in love with the sunburned boys who wear their skullcaps cocked to the side and play their reed flute as they scale the mountains shepherding goats and sheep and stealing young girl’s hearts.

Siamak Herawi’s Tali Girls opens with a disturbingly vivid account by his central character,  Kowsar, of one of her earliest memories. She offers it as an illustration of the condition that has plagued her for as long as she can remember. She is walking with her mother when a grizzled old man from her community comes up and kneels before her. He whispers, “Kowsar, I could eat you.” Before she can resist, the foul man has devoured her, leaving nothing but a pile of bones. When she comes to, in her mother’s arms, we realize she’s had a fainting spell complete with hallucination. Her family has been advised it’s epilepsy, but doctors are expensive and her family, like everyone else in her village, is poor. Once the harvest is complete, her father takes her into see a mullah in the nearby town. His appearance and manner is frightening to the child and, as he pronounces his call for the demon to leave her, waving his dagger in the air, she is lifted out of her body and watches as he slices her to pieces. Episodes marked by fever, convulsions and loss of consciousness will continue to strike Kowsar in moments of extreme distress, but the graphic visions that accompany these first two incidents stand as something else—a foreshadowing of the very real violence that lies ahead, especially for women, in a world where extremist fundamentalism is on the rise.

Set in Badghis Province in northwestern Afghanistan, Tali Girls is based on true stories and revolves around Kowsar and her friends Geesu and Simin, three young girls growing up in the village of Tali in the impoverished Jawad District. Although it is well into the first decade of the twenty-first century, the community is without electricity, plumbing or paved roads. The residents are farmers and shepherds. Conditions do not improve much over the course of this novel; in many ways they deteriorate greatly. But for three short years, the children of Tali will at least have the opportunity to go to school—if their families can spare their labour at home, that is. For Kowsar who demonstrates exceptional academic aptitude and a prodigious memory early on, her gifts could be her ticket out of a society in which women are married off young and typically spend their lives bound to the demands of home and husband. Unfortunately, her teacher’s effort to advocate for her in the provincial capital, does not succeed. Rather it turns the attentions of a powerful and hideously evil mullah to Kowsar and her little village, the first step in a series of events that will, over the years to come, have a devastating impact on the lives of the girls, their families and the peace of their little valley.

In clear, crisp prose with a tone that is almost folkloric, Herawi weaves a tale of rural life in contemporary Afghanistan that honours both the beauty of the landscape and the stark realities—internal and external—that have impacted the population over the years. For the poor farmers, conditions are harsh but it has long been a society designed by and for men, so often the only control they can exercise is over their wives and children. Women are restricted in their movement outside their homes and, in some communities, even inside their houses where they are not to be seen by any males who are not part of their immediate family. Without power or running water, traditional customs continue. Food and tea is prepared over fires, bread is baked in kilns and, when company is present, refreshments are left outside the doors of the rooms or guesthouses where men gather. Young, often prepubescent girls can be bartered for or purchased as brides for powerful mullahs and Talib leaders while the aging wives they have at home are pushed into increasingly subservient roles. And, if a woman’s fate was difficult before the Taliban’s presence expands, as they become a permanent fixture in Tali, taking over the schoolhouse and filling the fields with poppies, it becomes even more circumscribed. Excessive religious prohibitions are strictly enforced. But within this world, Herawi grants his female characters a strength and resilience that is not easily defeated, even in the face of unspeakable evil.

Kowsar, who is gifted, prone to fainting spells and a bit of a risk taker, is the primary first person voice in this multiple narrative in which, alternating with chapters told from a third person perspective, various characters pick up their own accounts as the action focuses on their particular experiences. Throughout, Kowsar is the voice of hope, however faint at times, in a story that is punctuated by moments of terrifying violence. The prose style is light, poetic and almost folkloric in tone, carrying a story that is at once a coming of age tale, a horror story, a love story and an adventure with action that moves across a mountainous landscape, from lush valleys to harsh deserts and back again. A decade and 380 pages pass swiftly, and it is best to say little in advance about what happens.

Through the dialogue and shifting narrative voice, Herawi has created an exhilarating novel with a relatively large cast of characters that we quickly come to care deeply about—or despise as the case may be. Some readers may feel that this is at the cost of depth and historical context, but much rests in the conversations between characters, as they share their hopes, dreams and fears. Mothers speak to their daughters and sons, with resignation, about the cards life has dealt them by virtue of their gender; Kowsar, who has had a wider access to books, expresses to Geesu how, the more she learns about the outside world, the more their own frightens her; a young man from a tribal community demonstrates an astute understanding of the current state of lawlessness in Badghis that has left the people caught between corrupt government officials and Taliban rebels:

“Back when the Taliban were first defeated and left, and a new government came into power, we though Afghanistan was finally safe and ready for progress. We though the Westerners who came with their money had freed us from living in limbo. But that sweet nectar soon turned into bitter poison. . . . It was all lies. Ignorant thieves left, cunning pillagers replaced them. And life here remains what it was. Every day, we have less security than the day before.”

Characters, scenes, and scenery propel this story forward. The result is a novel that is a vital portrait of simple people trapped by a shifting set of circumstances beyond their control.

Siamak Herawi is an Afghani writer born in Herat province who studied in Kabul and Moscow. After completing his masters in Russian language he returned to Afghanistan and started to work as a journalist. He then moved into politics, eventually taking on a diplomatic role at the Afghanistan Embassy in London. He resigned when Ashraf Ghani was elected in 2014 and presently lives in the UK. Tali Girls which was originally published in 2018, is his first work to become available in English.

Tali Girls: A Novel of Afghanistan by Siamak Herawi is translated from the Fasri by Sara Khalili and published by Archipelago Books.

Listening to the voices of Afghan women: I am the Beggar of the World

“In my dream, I am the president,
When I awake, I am the beggar of the world.”

With a long history, passed down through generations, landays are traditional two line poems recited or sung by the mostly illiterate Pashtun people who live along the border region between Pakistan and Afghanistan. They are composed of twenty-two syllables – nine in the first line and thirteen in the second. For the women in this area who face social and cultural restraints that define and restrict their lives, these anonymous couplets have become an important medium for self expression. Sometimes they gather to share or perform the landays they have learned, updated or re-invented; but radio and the ubiquitous social media and cell phones have also been worked into a new modern network for sharing.

beggarI Am the Beggar of the World: Landays from Contemporary Afghanistan, a collaboration between translator and poet Eliza Griswold and photographer Seamus Murphy, is a sensitive and moving collection of landays, brief essays, and photographs. Upon hearing of the death of a teenaged poet who had been forbidden by her family to write poems and burned herself in protest, Griswold was inspired to journey to Afghanistan to explore the role of landays in the lives of Pashtun women. She returned to collect some of these poems, assisted by native speakers and a Pashta translator, Asma Safi, who sadly died of a heart condition before the project was complete. Arranging meetings as an American was not always easy – being under occupation is a difficult, deadly environment – but along the way she collected the words and stories of some very strong, fascinating women.

Divided into three sections, the first is dedicated to Love. Many of the couplets are brazenly racy, teasing and modern. Yet because landays are by their nature anonymous, no woman can be held responsible for sharing them or for the contemporary imagery has been worked into the more traditional versions:

“Embrace me in your suicide vest
but don’t say I won’t give you a kiss.”

“Your eyes aren’t eyes. They’re bees.
I can find no cure for their sting.”

“”How much simpler can love be?
Let’s get engaged. Text me.”

The second section is dedictated to the themes of Grief and Separation. Suffering and servitude are enduring features of the lives of Pashtun women. Marriage implies both. Curiously love also features throughout the poems in this section because romantic love is forbidden. If a young woman is discovered to be in love with a man she can be killed or driven to take her own life to preserve her family’s honour.

“Our secret love has been discovered.
You run one way and I’ll flee the other.”

Once married, having one’s husband take another wife is emotionally painful, but being passed over altogether or married off to an old man can be worse.

“Listen, friends, and share my despair
My cruel father is selling me to an old goat.”

The final section explores War and Homeland. Complex, mixed emotions, anger and sorrow rise up here in poems that are moving and, again, shockingly modern. A long legacy of occupation under British, Russian, and American forces has placed the women of Afghanistan in a difficult position, torn between the brutality of American protection and the combined threat and promise of the Taliban. The landays and the images in this section are especially powerful and represent sentiments that women would not be able to express so readily in any other forum:

“Be black with gunpowder or bloodred
but don’t come home whole and disgrace my bed.”

“Beneath her scarf, her honor was pure.
Now she flees Kabul bareheaded and poor.”

“May God destroy your tank and your drone,
you who’ve destroyed my village, my home.”

This slim volume is a testament to the resilience of the Pashtun women in the face of the violence, threats and restraints they live with every day. These traditional two-line poems provide a framework for illiterate women to express themselves and share their sorrows, joys and wisdom with their sisters. In Afghanistan they still face risks in committing their own poetry to paper when they are able, so this oral tradition remains important, even if modern devices like cell phones have expanded their network. This beautiful book which pairs the simple landays with muted black and white photographs documenting the people of Afghanistan, the sparse landscape and the violence of war, provides a rare opportunity to hear the intimate voices of women that might otherwise be silenced.