01 June 2010

Writing Project Helping Afghan Women Find Their Voices

Online collaboration empowers women to speak openly about their lives

By Howard Cincotta
Special Correspondent

Washington — Among the many voices speaking for and about Afghanistan — whether government officials, soldiers, tribal leaders or the Taliban — one voice has been largely absent: that of the country’s women. The Afghan Women’s Writing Project (AWWP) seeks to change that through an online partnership of American writers, teachers and journalists who serve as editorial mentors to women throughout Afghanistan who are trying to articulate their experiences in poetry, essays, and stories.

“These are women lacking a right so basic and so human as a voice, one that is not filtered by the media or anyone else,” says the project director, journalist Christina Asquith.

FINDING THEIR VOICES

The result has been an extraordinary and moving outpouring of work that combines universal human aspirations for meaning and freedom in one’s life with portrayals of the often unrelenting pressures faced by women in today’s Afghanistan. All of the Afghan writers use pseudonyms to protect them from possible retaliation, whether from the Taliban or from members of the community hostile to the idea of women expressing their views freely.

Roya, 24, was born in Kabul and lived there through the Taliban years. She writes:

Who asks about my identity? I am lost on the pages of history books. Look at my tired face. And the dried tears in my eyes. My first name is ‘Afghan woman.’ My last name is ‘Suffer.’

Their writings offer a wide-ranging and multifaceted portrayal of their individual experiences. Here is Safia, who comes from a family of eight children, remembering “Winter School Days in Kandahar”:

Sleepless from cold nights and the tup-tup of raindrops leaking from the roof ...
My burqa flying in the wind like small birds learning to fly in the sky ...
Finding raindrops on each page of my books, like the dew drops that spring brings ...

The arrival of winter giving us a lesson on how to be strong against hardship
The end of winter giving us a blossom of hope for spring.

An anonymous contributor captured the brutal reality that many young women confront in a short piece entitled “I Am for Sale. Who Will Buy Me?”:

I told my mom: “Please give me a chance. I don’t like this man. I can’t marry him. If you want to sell me, then I am ready to buy myself ...” I am like a piece of cloth. I cost little. Who will buy me?

WRITERS AND MENTORS

Novelist and journalist Masha Hamilton, who founded AWWP in 2009, says, “Through this program, silenced women are able to tell their stories over the heads of the generals and politicians — to share their fears as well as their joys and hopes for the future.”

Today, the project has 35 writers in Afghanistan who are matched with dozens of volunteer teacher/mentors in the United States who work on a rotating basis. AWWP has two supervising editors in the United States — one in California, the other in Iowa — and two staff members in Afghanistan. As the program continues to expand, largely through informal contacts and word of mouth, the Afghan women writers themselves are becoming increasingly active in running the program.

The project operates in a straightforward manner through e-mail, much as any online writing or literary class would operate. Writers submit their drafts — written only in English so far — and then revise and rework them in consultation with their American mentors. The final results appear on AWWP’s website, which serves as combination blog, online magazine and forum that is an invaluable communications link for women often working in great isolation and difficult conditions.

Along with continued expansion, Hamilton hopes to be able to add a translation capability in the near future for women with little or no English ability. She also hopes to establish a women-only Internet café in Kabul.

In many cases, the women writers have to make strenuous efforts to gain access to Internet-equipped computers and share their work. Tabasom, still living in a province with a strong Taliban presence, describes walking four hours to contact the project.

“Thanks for my computer,” she writes. “I am happy. I think I am a mother and the laptop is my child whom I love very much. I do take care of it well.”

Seeta, from the western province of Farah, says, “I have thousands of words in my heart to tell the world.”

THEATRICAL PRODUCTION

On May 24, AWWP and Theater J, a Washington theater troupe, presented a dramatic reading called “Out of Silence,” with local actors and community activists reading a selection of poems and essays by Afghan writers. The voices of “Out of Silence” reflected different moods and experiences. Many expressed the difficult struggle to assert one’s identity in a society with elements still deeply hostile to the aspirations of women — not to mention a Taliban adversary that essentially has declared war on women who are not sequestered in homes or hidden inside burqas.

A highlight of the evening was an ensemble reading of the poem “Under Burqa,” written by Seeta, a journalist who fled to Iran with her family during the Taliban period. In it, she describes her deep ambivalence toward the burqa:

Yes, I am brave under burqa,
enslaved in my generation of war ...
our burqas are jail and safety made of fabric.
We are hidden beneath blue cloth,
Confined, yet secure.

A poem by Roya recalls hiding postcards from a boy in a mud wall at age 15, a memory that she continues to treasure:

in the museum of memos
still I paint the birds
with blue wings

Shogofa, 22 and a journalist, wrote of the high cost of silence for herself and for other women: “As much we women are quiet or keep silent, we are destroying our lives and our future. Kill silence and take your rights.”

“The common thread of all these pieces was passionate concern for Afghanistan,” said an American mentor/teacher, Kathy Ellison, a prize-winning foreign correspondent. “This courageous commitment, combined with the intellectual capacity of the writers, gave me more hope for the future of the country than I’ve ever had before.”

The AWWP regularly posts all the finished writings of its participants along with background, news, and photos of the program.

(This is a product of the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://www.america.gov)