The burqa is back

It is easy enough to find similar images on the web, watching tv or reading a newspaper. Often comments are: “ poor thing, anyhow it must be ok for them otherwise they would react. They are just used at this.”

The question that inevitably goes to my mind is: have you ever seen in front of you a person, a woman wearing a burqa? Probably in that moment you would feel something like what I felt: shock, sorrow, sense of injustice. Under that lycra thing a person is struggling to survive, trying to breathe, move and relate to the world around her. The horrible smell of dirty plastic together with the moral and physical weight of it especially when it’s 40/50 degrees Celsius makes the burqa a symbol of inhumanity, a gas chamber.

A small net, a barrier that put them apart of a world where they probably feel as external watchers even when they try to see their children faces or they try crossing the street.

I took this picture back in August 2002 at the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan where thousands of Afghans were looking for an opportunity, for a place where they could finally live their lives.

Not belonging to anyplace, owning nothing, disoriented between never ending conflicts between clans different for language, ethnic group, culture, religion and sharing only the reciprocal hatred.

The Pashtun, of Indo-European origins; the Hazara, maybe descendants of Genghis Khan; the Tajik, in the valley Panjshir and then the Uzbek, the Turkmen, the Baloch, the Brahui, the Qizilbash, the Wakhi, the Farsiwan.

Women are not persons, they are things. Dangerous “things” apparently as the talibans forced them to live under a blanket of heavy blue lycra: a little net separating them from the world. No way you can see the color of their eyes and honestly not even the eyes. Under the burqa a woman like me, with passions, feelings, love, emotions, ambitions.

One burqa, a hundred, a thousand cannot annihilate everything.

They will not destroy the vitality and the courage of Afghan women that will continue their fight, day after day, time after time until the moment when, as it has always been in the history of women at all latitudes, they will free themselves. They will still hide them not to see them or hear them but women will finally win their  battle against oppression.

Twentyfive years ago an email chain was going around speaking of the Afghan women conditions and of this tool of oppression, the burqa. Many wars, many presidents, many disasters, many steps back and forth have been made since then and now finally and unfortunately the burqa is back.

For a little while we thought we could keep just the memory of the it and maybe we could have done without that as well; it had been put aside in Naftalin and maybe somebody had already understood that its elimination was too good to be true, a temporary illusion. Now it is back from mummy’s old trunk et voilà ready for daughters and nephews.

When I arrived in Kabul and then in Kandahar back in 2002 you could not see a woman without a burqa. My first impact was devastating: it was like seeing animated puppets running fast in a dirty cloud of smoke and dust while dragging their children between car and trucks. I was not only outraged, I was horrified. Horrified realizing that thing was covering human beings that were surviving oppression, insults, menaces and injustice. To protect them from luxurious glances, some say.

When I first started to recruit female personnel for the IDP’s camp in Kandahar I was so excited and impatient as I was about to have a personal contact with the Afghan women, the women hidden under a burqa; I could finally hear their voices and see their faces.

I wanted to speak with them, listen to them, understand them; I was worried for the language barrier but many of them were speaking fluent English. Some of them courageously decided to take their burqa off inside the room where we were staying.

The room was poorly illuminated as we drawed all curtains to gain more privacy, doors were all closed and the light coming from the lamps was very soft but we were doing good there, we were exchanging humanity in our haven of peace.

Those were unforgettable moments: it was like assisting to a liberation. I was so emotionally involved, happy and curious. In that specific moment in that space they were free to be themselves, to propose themselves for a job, to talk, to express themselves and show their deep eyes and their lucent hair, well dressed, well-educated and well-mannered.

In that specific moment I was making the difference.

A drop in the ocean yes, but still a starting point.

Alone nobody will ever save the world but each one can do his part.

 I was not ready for the immense power of that unexpected moment, so full of meaning and energy: ‘click’ I captured it in my memory as a movie scene and after so many years I believe that all sacrifices made for the Afghanistan liberation from the ignorant and vulgar taliban regime were not vain.

The seed of the right to happiness was planted: it is a powerful seed that will offer new perspectives to many people’s lives.

c

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