Another four weeks of compelling work from our writers. After last month’s brave piece about a forced marriage, our writers continued to document the practices that can impel Afghan women to marry against their will. A few are highlighted below, including Sana A.’s about the tradition of “baad,” which uses a woman to repay the victim of a crime. We’ve also had some stunning poetry, including Roya’s remembrances of being fifteen, and Freshta’s poem inspired by a young woman she met while visiting her grandfather in the hospital.
It has gotten ever harder to pick out the pieces to bring to your special attention each month because our Afghan writers are going deeper and ranging wider in their work. Please use the pieces mentioned here as a starting point in exploring the blog. Major thanks continue to go out to our teachers, who volunteer with such generosity of spirit to mentor these writers.
Also thanks to blogmaster and Creative Outreach Director Jeff Lyons and Australia-based web designer Ben Fogarty of FlipIt Media, who have launched a new, more interactive website for our blog, all pro-bono. Please note the URL has changed:www.awwproject.org. Visit, and send others, and let these women know when you read a piece you especially admire. As always, be in touch with any questions or comments.
Baad is a practice aimed at resolving disputes between families, clans, and tribes by giving women to the family of the perceived victim of a crime. Mahnaz was forced to marry a 35-year-old man who was very cruel and treated her like a slave. “I was usually beaten with cables and sticks. I got pregnant twice but lost my babies because of severe living conditions.”
A week later, my dad accepted 400,000 Pakistani rupees (about $4,070 USD) to marry me to Mr. Aziz-ullah on the 19th of February 2006 without asking me. … One day I decided to eat needles and nails.
She tried to claim her rights from her husband and that is why they always fought… The moment I really suffered was when my mother and my father began to eat their lunch and dinner apart. We children didn’t know where we should go. My mother always told us, “Go to your father’s side. And respect your father. Never talk back to him and do what he says because he is your father.”
Terese Svoboda is an award-winning novelist, poet, and memoirist, whose newest novel is forthcoming from Dzanc Press this Fall.
I’ve never been to Afghanistan but my friend Esther Hyneman flew there as soon as she retired and hates to return. I have lived in Sudan and know how material hardship can change one’s role as a female into pure donkey. That these women manage to steal away to a computer-always accompanied by a male-and write so beautifully is astounding. Perhaps it is an advantage to have only a very short time at the keyboard!
is a widely-published poet and a scholar of English Romantic Poetry and Virginia Woolf, as well as Education Director and writer-in-residence with InsideOut Literary Arts Project in Detroit.
To the Women of Writing 102:
It is a Sunday morning. My AWWP rotation has ended. I sit and feel bereft. I am momentarily silenced by the intrinsic power of the word. This is not the word of the poet who craves accolades and fame. It is the pure word. It is the epiphanic word. The word that saves each of you from the horrors of watching body parts float by in the street. It is the word that makes possible your refusal to suffer the atrocities of an evil regime. It is the word that slowly permeates your souls until you can write of the fragrance of pomegranates, the smell of a loved one’s skin when the burqa deprives him of the sense of sight, the comfort of sleeping with a dead father’s yellow shirt under a pillow. Yours is the word of hope and the word of inexorable power.
In a poem about the pain of growing up under the Taliban’s watch, one of you wrote: “in the museum of memos/ still I paint the birds/ with blue wings.” I marvel at the desperate longing and gritty realism that empower you to put lips upon words sweet enough to reveal your souls, capture your landscapes, and reform your world. Grasping the true word, you find your voices. Surely, because of you, the maiming, the hatred, the senseless abuse will be deprived of its power over your voice and the voices of your mothers and daughters.
My first message from you read, “Welcome to our world, a world of poems, pains and love.” Yes, I was welcomed. I was loved. I was brought into your world, as you were brought into mine. Now, there are no geographic divisions between us. We are one. Out of the chaos comes the whole. This whole springs from the power of the pure word. From this word our hopes will be realized. Thank you for your words. Your subtle, yet piercing language has transformed my heart into a more glorious space. Thank you.
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.
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 tax deductible credit card donation will be handled by The Goodrich Foundation’s secure Paypal payment.
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k later, my dad accepted 400,000 Pakistani rupees (about $4,070 USD) to marry me to Mr. Aziz-ullah on the 19th of February 2006 without asking me. … One day I decided to eat needles and nails.
