Welcome!It’s been a busy few weeks, with the start-up of a third workshop, author
and journalist Ann Blackman signing on as project director, Tahmina Popal in Kabul becoming our Afghanistan Liaison, and the recruitment of four interns, Lilliane Atlihan, Bianca Dobrikovic, Maria Hakimi and Kristen Hewitt, to work on public outreach and fundraising/grant-writing efforts.
It’s been an even busier few weeks for our Afghan women writers. A national election kept many of them at home and away from computers for up to a week as the Taliban stepped up violence in an effort to intimidate voters. But when they got to the computer, they wrote strong and compelling material.
One of our writers, Seeta, will be working with author and journalist Barbara Fischkin during the fall and early winter and will be included, as the only online student in Barbara’s Feature Writing class at Hofstra University, where the Journalism Department has shown great enthusiasm for this endeavor. It is hoped that along with advisement from Barbara, Seeta will team up with an Honors College student so the two can edit each other’s work. Seeta will also be able to participate in online discussions with other students. According to Barbara, Seeta, who has taught herself English, has already shown skill as a storyteller and her next offering will be about a] provincial tailor who works despite a debilitating physical disability.
We’ve also expanded our fundraising goals. In addition to working to supply each of our women writers with laptops and jump drives, we are also creating a proposal to create Afghanistan’s first women’s-only Internet café as part of our ongoing effort to, as intern Lilliane Atlihan put it, create a safe and nurturing space for intellectual and creative exchange. Ted Achilles, founder of SOLA, is our partner and guiding light on the project.
But the most important news we have is the work of the women themselves. There have been more strong essays than I have room to highlight. Below are a few to get you going.
Be in touch with any questions. Thank you. Masha Hamilton
Moment of Patience
On those black days, when I had to tolerate life like a broken hand, I can’t forget the kindness of my father. At the beginning of every school year, he would buy supplies for my brothers, and he bought for me too. After five years of Taliban government, my room was like a bookstore… It was like visiting an apple garden and the gardener forbids you to eat an apple.
It requires a lot of guts to fall in love in Afghanistan. This was particularly true during the Taliban era, when the separation of male and female societies was taken very seriously and often enforced with violence. My mother’s 25-year-old cousin, a dentist, certainly had guts. He proved it by falling in love with S, one of his patients
My father offered to let us live with his second wife. My mom accepted and wanted to start a new life, but my stepmother … wanted my mother and us children to be her servants. We were locked in the house and treated very badly.
Ballal, a six-year-old boy, gives his mother flowers at a provincial ceremony this Mother’s Day. But on the same day, a young midwife is fatally shot on her way to work, and the government blames the Taliban.
My sister-in-law got sick at 3 a.m. My brother called one of our neighbors who happens to be Pashtun and woke him up. Although he could have easily refused … he got up immediately.
Stacy Parker Aab chronicles stories for The Katrina Experience: an Oral History Project, and is the author of the upcoming memoir Government Girl: Young and Female in the White House (Ecco/HarperCollins).Visit her min-site at HarperCollins.
Magical. How else to describe sitting at my computer in Harlem, USA, and connecting with young women in Afghanistan, women who want to better themselves as communicators so that they can be heard at home and all over the world? I cannot thank Masha Hamilton and her partners enough for creating this cyberspace classroom. At times, it feels like we’re meeting in our dreams.
When I taught creative writing in inner-city Detroit, I knew as writers-in-residence we could not expect to solve our students’ problems at home and in the city. However, we could listen. We could witness. And most importantly, we could share with them the tools to help them better their own lives and circumstances.
Students make their dreams real when they share them on the page. Students grow their burgeoning ideas in this way, too. This is true for all writers. What starts off as a spark in the mind becomes a full fire the more we write it down. Our visions come to life. The better we articulate these visions, the more likely we are to see them come to fruition. Because of AWWP, I am witnessing talented, inspiring young women hone their God-given gifts. With these gifts, they will make change.
We can make change, too. Because we fight a war in their country, it is imperative that all of us stay informed, and speak out and act up when it is clear that we are creating more suffering than hope. Let us keep everyone on the ground in our thoughts and prayers. And let us seek out the best ways to bring more justice, and more peace, into their lives and ours.
Ann Blackman(www.wildrosebook.com) has spent three decades reporting from Washington for TIME magazine and The Associated Press, and is the author of three biographies, most recently Wild Rose, Civil War Spy.
It is a privilege to work with these young, courageous Afghan women, who are willing to circumvent Taliban rebels, often at great risk to themselves and their families, to give voice to their hopes and dreams and disappointments. Just finding safe access to a computer is an act of bravery. Their essays and poetry offer a rare glimpse into the hearts and minds (and secrets) of women whose determination to get an education reflects a deep passion for life and uncommon resilience. I get up each morning eager to help them learn because these young women are working to create a new Afghanistan.
Nancy Antle
(www.nancyantle.com) is the author of many notable and award-winning works for young adults and children and a teacher for Gotham Writers’ Workshop.
Whenever I teach I assume I’ll learn something from my students – about writing in new and unique ways, about topics I’ve never considered – about life. I thought this would be especially true of the Afghan Women’s Writing Project so I readily agreed to participate. I was not disappointed.
These young women wrote heartfelt essays, articles and poems that taught me more than I could have imagined. I learned about life for women under the Taliban – the secret schools, the attacks on girls. I learned about the growing threat of kidnapping for ransom and about children feeling the obligations of adults – to work to support themselves and their families.
What I did not expect to feel from reading their words was hope. These strong, brave women are the face and future of change in Afghanistan. They give me hope because they have not given up. When a dream is lost they create another one – like Freshta deciding that she could find power in being a writer when she couldn’t become a doctor. Or Seeta who has become a journalist even though she encountered resistance and distrust at first. Or Meena who dared to openly protest a law allowing marital rape. I was expecting to encourage these women but instead they did that for me.
And they have taught me to pay attention. For me, Afghanistan is no longer some vaguely distant place where US soldiers are fighting and dying. I know these young women and something about their families now. My hope is that more and more people in the US can read their words and know them too.
Contact AWWP:
For more information on the Afghan Women’s Writing Project please contact:
The Afghan Women’s Writing Project Masha Hamilton, Project Founder
686 Sterling Place Brooklyn, New York 11216
Phone: 917.821.6119 / Email: masha@mashahamilton.com
The Afghan Women’s Writing Project was begun as a way to allow the voices of Afghan women – too often silenced – to enter the world directly, without any mediation. This project is possible only because of the outstanding American women authors and teachers who generously donate their time and energy. Additionally, the tireless contributions of webmaster extraordinaire Jeff Lyons, web designer Rose Daniels and our technical director Terry Dougherty have been crucial. Photography thanks and credit goes to Kathleen Rafiq and Heidi Levine. Our inspiring partners are SOLA and the Peter M. Goodrich Memorial Foundation; please visit their websites.
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Donations:
Online Donations for Afghan Women Writers:
Many of our students and women writers, especially outside of Kabul, cannot get to an Internet cafe due to security considerations. A laptop at home and a jump drive would allow them to write their pieces, and then ask a male relative to send the work at an Internet cafe. A $20 donation will buy a flash drive and $500 in donations will buy a laptop for our women writers. No contribution is too small. Thank you for considering it.
Your credit card donation will be handled by Friends of Afghanistan’s secure Paypal payment. Or you can mail a check made out to Friends of Afghanistan:
Terry Dougherty , 15021 Prairie Park Cv, Hoagland, IN 46745. Write SOLA or Afghan Women Writers on the check.
We will send your tax deductible donation to the Peter M. Goodrich Foundation for the purpose you indicate.
To stay informed about the latest news, events, and other developments with the Afghan Women’s Writing Project, please CLICK below and join our mailing list. We appreciate your support.
My father offered to let us live with his second wife. My mom accepted and wanted to start a new life, but my stepmother … wanted my mother and us children to be her servants. We were locked in the house and treated very badly.
