Editor’s note: This summer, Afghanistan’s national female boxing team is sending an athlete to the Olympics in London. Seventeen-year-old Sadaf Rahimi trained secretly with our writer and other women for years until finally they went public and created the Afghan Women’s Boxing Team.

It’s very difficult to change old ideas in Afghanistan about women, but after years of effort we have done it—by becoming athletes. I have been a member of the Afghan Women’s Boxing Team for three and a half years and it has been one of the biggest challenges of my life. We couldn’t tell anyone that we boxed, not even our families, because it would have been too dangerous.

This summer, one of my National team members will compete at the Olympics. She is Sadaf Rahimi. She is my friend and we are on the same team, and last Saturday she went to Germany to train.

Ten years ago, few women were interested in sports due to cultural differences, and if they were interested, they would learn self-defense. Today we have many more opportunities and women are practicing not only karate, but football, hockey, boxing, and other sports—with the exception of swimming. There are no swimming pools in Afghanistan, not even for men. Nevertheless, women athletes have changed the country’s view about sports.

But when I started boxing, it was not accepted. Even before the Taliban regime ruled, seeing women boxing would have been culturally unfathomable.

There was no place for girls to practice and there was no team. Our religion requires a woman athlete to wear clothing covering all of her body. Also the trainers can only be females. No men should see either the players or the trainers. This was part of what made the situation dangerous for us, because our trainers were two men—Nesar Ahmade Qarizada and Saber Rahimy—and we practiced in a boy’s gym since there weren’t any facilities for women.

Even though we had many problems, I really enjoyed being in the ring. When I started to fight, I felt the pain of my country’s women—like Sahar Gul—and I imagined her with me in ring and that I was fighting her attackers.  Wearing sweats and a T-shirt, I could feel free and like I could do anything, as long as I followed the rules and didn’t hit someone in the face. I am there to win and to show others: You cannot beat me anymore.

Although we did not talk about boxing publicly, it did not mean we were silent. After one year of practicing we started to tell our brothers and then our other relatives.  We knew that if we were strong, in time we could change our culture to accept women as boxers. There were some groups who sent us letters using the Taliban name and told us that if you continue we will kill all of you. But we didn’t care and we continued.

Other people were different; they encouraged us and were happy for us. Our coaches were very kind and open-minded people and when they saw we really wanted to learn boxing they helped us to practice. We had a team of five girls. Finally we sent a request to the Olympic Committee to form a National team. Step by step, our team grew to 35 female boxers and became a National team. We showed how we could make a big difference by speaking the unspoken truth.

Now that the secret is out, my people and family are proud of the boxing team. We show that Afghan women can be full, complete women. Afghan women athletes refuse to give up and they will continue to achieve their goals and help lead the way in creating new opportunities for women in our culture.

By Masooma

Sadaf Rahimi practices at a boxing club in Kabul, Afghanistan. Photo by Sharp Shooter.

Everybody wants to be respected while alive and to have people remember their good name once they are gone. Unfortunately, in Afghanistan women don’t have the right to have a name in society. From the moment an Afghan girl is born up until she closes her eyes forever and dies, no one other than her family ever knows her by her name.

I live in a society where the men are very zealous about holding on to their power. If they hear someone refer to their mother, wife, or daughter by name their blood boils. For this reason there have been lots of fights, especially in the villages of the Herat region. Families have fought with each other just because someone referred to a woman by her name.

This practice has unfortunately spread to the city and the more literate families, too. Even urban families don’t call their own mothers by their names, but rather refer to them by the name of their eldest son. If his name is, say, Ahmed, then his mother is known only as “mother of Ahmed.”

Family members may refer to a daughter by her given name, but never an outsider. And the practice goes on even after the woman dies. Death notices are never issued for women, nor is anyone ever invited to a woman’s funeral. Her name will never appear on her tombstone. Yet men in Afghanistan have many details about them etched onto their own graves.

In fact, this practice of rendering women as nameless is nothing short of outright prejudice for which there is no logical or rational reason.

Two months ago a favorite aunt of mine died. She was 40 years old, and she had been a beloved teacher at the high school in Herat for about twelve years. She was so dedicated that she gave lessons to young women at her own home during the period of the Taliban regime when girls were barred from attending school. Despite how popular my aunt was, her family didn’t write her name on her grave. This seems very wrong to me because she was a good woman who ought to be remembered.

By Zahra M.

Photograph of tombstones in Herat Province by Robert Lankenau.

I am sure that when some of my countrymen read my writings they punch the ground, the nearest table or window, and send me insults. No matter, I am sitting here and smiling. I am going to tell you about one of my dearest experiences, something that happened once in my life.

During my childhood there was an expression commonly heard around Kabul. It was bachi kocha, which means street boy. It’s someone who is free to do anything, a child who never obeys his or her parents, who shows no respect for anything. It’s a boy who always does the wrong thing.

Bachi kocha was an alarm in my heart’s ears—something I had to be careful not to become. I didn’t like hearing the word and once I asked my mom what exactly do bachi kocha do?

She told me these boys never study, they do things like skip school to go to the movies, and they’ll never have a future. I told myself to thank God that I am no bachi kocha and nor could I become one because I will never go to the cinema in my life.

Later I saw some street boys with dirty pants and dusty faces with their pens and notebooks in their pants pockets waiting in line to get tickets to the cinema. They really were naughty street boys.

I had no idea what a cinema was like. I saw posters advertising movies on trees or burger shops. Sometimes they showed the stars kissing each other or a picture of an angry father or a car on fire. That was as much information I ever had in Afghanistan about cinema when I was growing up.

Later, on a trip to Europe, one of my friends asked me if I liked movies. I replied yes. She smiled and handed me two free tickets to the movies. My face reddened and all I could think was, Oh, Norwan, you going to be a bachi kocha?

I laughed and told myself, Yes, I was going to experience this. That evening, I went with my husband to the cinema. People were standing in line and we stood behind them until a girl checked our tickets and we walked into a darkened room, with chairs arranged in rows. We chose two seats and soon all the seats were occupied, the lights went off and on the wall in front of us, a picture from the movie appeared. The movie was “Gone with the Wind,” an old American movie.

As the film started, I was enjoying it very much, but I also was thinking about how women or girls were not allowed to go to the cinema and about the boys who blackened their names by going. I was watching the movie and the people sitting with me in the cinema. Everyone was honorable and looked respectable and polite, but my eyes kept searching for someone naughty among them but no, there was none.

The movie was wonderful. The people watching laughed when there was comedy and some were crying. I cried during the scenes of war and fighting when I remembered conflicts in my own country. Everyone was enjoying the movie, but my husband fell asleep because it lasted for hours and he didn’t understand it all in English. I tried to wake him up, in case someone noticed.

Finally it was over and I woke my husband and told him, “Let’s go home.” As we left, I felt that I loved the experience very much, and that at that moment I would be nothing other than proud if anybody were to call me bachi kocha.

By Norwan

WHEN: Thursday, March 8 to Sunday, March 11, 2012

TIME: March 8, 9 & 10 at 8 pm; March 11 at 3 pm

When I was a child my mom told my siblings and me a story about the war in Afghanistan, and how people were fighting with each other.  “Why Mom, why, why?” I asked.

“Because they do not know they are brothers and sisters,” my mother said.  “Killing and stealing are haram. They are forbidden,” she told me.

I felt so sad. I asked more questions and my mom told us everything about our country.

That night in bed I thought about why there was fighting. But I didn’t get my answer. I fell asleep and dreamed that I was standing in a dark place full of smoke. After a while, I heard voices saying, “Help please. Help please.”

I woke up. It was five o’clock in the morning and when I looked to my side, I saw my mom praying. She was saying, “Allah, please bring peace to our country and between our people.” Tears came down her beautiful cheeks. When she finished, she looked around, but I pretended to sleep.

I hid under my blanket and told myself that after breakfast I would ask Allah to give me an answer. My mom used to say, “If you have a question, Allah will give you the answer.”

I washed my face and hands, ate breakfast, and after that I closed my eyes and asked God: “Please tell me why fighting is going on in our country.” After a second I heard somebody knocking on our door. My oldest brother had come from Afghanistan to tell us we should get ready to go to our beautiful country,

“But in our country, there is war,” I said. “I do not like Afghanistan.”

My brother came next to me. I saw a smile on his face and he said, “No dear. Our country is so beautiful, but our people are blinded. They cannot see the beauty of our country and they do not know they are brothers and sisters.”

I had a smile on my face as I said, “I would love to go to my Afghanistan.” My brother laughed.

“No dear, not just your country, Afghanistan is for everyone.”

The day came, and my family and I were in the car on the way to our beloved country.

I am going to Afghanistan
The place I have never seen in my whole life
I am going to see the mountains
Because our country is full of mountains
I will have lots of friends
But are they allowed to have friends?
I am going to see the beautiful places
But I am scared the Taliban will be there

Tears came as I started to say, Taliban, Taliban, Taliban.

My mom held me in her arms. “They will not harm us,” she said.

We went to live in Kabul. I met lots of people there from different tribes. I felt sad they would not help each other and they did not want to work with each other. Why, why? I thought to myself.

We found a house for rent. In our yard we had a small garden with lots of flowers. I used to love that garden so much. It was a day in summer when I came home from school and I sat in our garden and with some bread wrapped in paper and started to eat like someone who had not done so for a year. As I looked at the beautiful flowers, my mom came and sat with me.

“How was your day?” she asked.

“It was great, Mom.”

I looked around and saw a plant that did not have any flowers.

“Mom, why does a plant look weird without any flowers on it?” I asked.

“Everything has its own beauty. When a plant has flowers on it, everybody wants it. People like to have them in their yards, because a life with flowers is beautiful and amazing. I have flowers in my life,” she said. Then my mom told me that her children are her flowers.

People do not care about a plant without flowers and they harm them so they won’t grow again in their garden.

After that conversation with my mom, I felt that Afghanistan was like a big plant and all the different tribes—Pashtun, Hazara, Tajik—are flowers.

Right now we have a plant, but we do not have flowers, I thought. The tribes are all separate from one another. If our people would come together like plants in a garden, then no one would be able to harm us and there could be peace inside our country.

I am sure that was Allah’s answer to my question. Our people are the beautiful flowers of our beloved land, Afghanistan.

Please pray for Afghanistan
The flowers that I am looking for
I think I will find soon.
The peace that I am waiting for with tears and dreams
will come soon.
I speak from the bottom of my heart
I love you, Afghanistan.
You will be beautiful again, like the past—forever. 

By Sana S.

Editor’s note: Part one argued that a heavy dose of feminist thinking would improve the Afghanistan economy. Failing to educate girls and confining their contribution to home labor hinders the economy by locking talented people out of the workforce. Part 2 discusses how politics and the judiciary also lock out women’s views.

Today, Afghan women hold few powerful positions in government. Politics is a male-dominated environment where women are not made welcome and women’s political input is usually ignored or dismissed as emotional. 

Although there are 249 seats in the Afghan parliament, women are eligible to occupy only 64, and in recent years few women have dared to run for parliament. Those who do run receive many threats from insurgents. 

Many female candidates who put up their posters for election are considered immoral for allowing their faces to be shown with simple make-up. And although Afghan women have a legal right to vote, many men do not allow their wives to do so. The situation is worse in the areas outside Kabul. 

According to the voter registration roles, women began voting in bigger numbers in 2005, and by 2010 women made up 39 percent of the voters. But there is much evidence of voter card fraud so the official figures have to be viewed with a great deal of skepticism.  

An institutionalized lack of justice for women in the judicial system discourages Afghan women from entering any realm of politics.

For example, one young woman in Kabul who wanted to get divorced from her abusive husband took her request to court. The judge took her aside and told her that he would help her get a divorce under one condition: that she sleep with him.  

That happened in 2010 and that woman told me, “After I saw the judge’s action, I went to live with my abusive husband since the world outside seemed worse.”  

There can’t be any trust when you have a corrupt system of justice where a judge dares to break the law, and humiliates and devalues a woman like that. And with no judicial support, Afghan women are discouraged from pursuing their feminist ideas. They give up. 

The Afghan social system routinely gives male citizens privilege over women.  

Take the case of 19-year-old Gulnaz, reported last year by the New York Times, and you can understand how Afghanistan’s system works against feminist thinking and in favor of men. The Times recounted how Gulnaz was imprisoned for adultery after reporting to police that she had been raped. She gave birth to the child in jail. Although she was at first sentenced to three years in prison, at a second trial her term was increased to twelve years. The judge, however, offered her a way out: to marry her rapist. This was in Kabul. 

This report upset human rights activists around the world.  

In December 2011, President Hamid Karzai pardoned Gulnaz and asked for her to be freed. It is no wonder because it was a big shame for the government. But what is the future for many other women like Gulnaz who remain in prison? Gulnaz was fortunate that her case received media attention, including a documentary film, but many rape victims have been either shot and killed by their family, or imprisoned where they are likely to be sexually assaulted by prison officials. And what will Gulnaz’s future hold? She may end up living in a shelter, or she may end up with her attacker.  

A woman who has been sexually assaulted in Afghanistan is not considered a victim by Afghan society, relatives, and even her closest family members. In fact everybody blames the girl for it. As a result, there is no support system that encourages women to engage in politics, to stand up for feminist ideals, or to work toward justice. 

By Mahnaz 

Coming next: The ideological dimension.

Photo from NBC News: Gulnaz, an Afghan rape victim who was jailed for adultery, has now been pardoned – on the condition she marries her rapist. She is seen in her jail cell at a women’s prison in Kabul with her daughter on Dec. 3, 2011.

When I was a student, I used to buy a book every month. I loved to learn and I studied all kinds of books. After I got a job, I kept buying books, but I didn’t have as much time and some of the books remained unread.  

Once, I learned a lesson that helped me to understand how it is that we read and search and research and study with educated people in order to learn—yet, sometimes a story or even a sentence from a very ordinary person can change our life. It can teach us something that we would not have known—even if we studied all the books in the library. 

And so it was for me, too.  

I used to buy books from a very old man in Pole Bagheomomi in Kabul. The man came to know me, and one day he asked me, “Do you study all the books you buy from me?” 

I looked at him and told him, “No, I am so busy these days, but I try to read them when I have free time.” The old man paused, and looked in my eyes, and told me a story I will not forget. 

He told me there was once a scholar who wanted knowledge so much, he would travel from one country to another. At that time it was not easy to travel. Journeys were much more difficult as people went by camel caravan and it took months to go from one country to another. The scholar decided he would go to Baghdad, which, hundreds of years ago, was famous for intellectual learning. 

He didn’t take anything with him from his house: no clothes, no money. He took only his books. He put his books in a bag and went to join a camel caravan. In the caravan there were famous businessmen carrying coins of gold and silver and on the way burglars stopped the caravan and took everything they had, including the bag of books. Everyone was worried about their gold and coins. The scholar worried only about his books. 

He decided he should go to the head of the thieves and ask for his books. So he went to the thief and told him who he was and that they had taken his bag of books, which he was sure they did not need.  

He said, “You can use the money and gold of the other people, but please give me back my books.”

The thief listened to him. He then commanded the burglars to return everything: the money and gold and anything else taken from the caravan, but not the bag of the books.

This worried and surprised the scholar and he asked, “Why?” 

The thief looked in the eyes of the scholar and told him: “Don’t carry the books everywhere. Study and read them and put the knowledge in your head. You can easily carry your head and your body everywhere.” 

The scholar understood and it was a lesson for him. The bookseller told me the story and it was a good lesson for me too. 

By Norwan

During my days at school, I have had a lot of different kinds of experiences: funny, sad, happy and embarrassing. Sometimes I think I love school because of all these memories. One of my experiences this year was very shameful, but it was also funny and sweet.

I have many stories of  the school principal, Hafiz. I always disagree with him. I think he is more like a guard than a principal. He always says: “Do this, do that.”

But I am our class representative and I collect the class problems and inform the principal about them. We have a meeting with all the class representatives. For example, not having a yard is a very big problem at our school, especially for kids who have nowhere to play. Solving these types of problems was the job of the group.

At our first meeting, we needed to select a head for this group of class representatives, and I was chosen. After that, I did many shameful things. I went to the roof, which is forbidden, but there was no sign and nobody told me it was forbidden. I went to the roof with my friend. We were feeling depressed because our girl’s school doesn’t have a yard or any other open space.

When Hafiz found out we’d gone up there, he thought I went up to the roof to look at boys. I told him that he didn’t know anything and I gave him this letter:

Sir,

Maybe I am a bad girl. Maybe I am naughty, but I know that you don’t have the right to judge me and my actions. I can’t make you feel good about me, but I won’t let you think anything you want about me. I did a bad thing, but I won’t apologize because I didn’t know that it was forbidden to go to the roof. Please make a yard for the girls so they can avoid looking at the boys!

After that, Hafiz and I ignored each other when we met. With some people, avoiding them is best because you can never change them. They have high positions, but they don’t try to understand you. Their beliefs are unchangeable; they don’t listen to you and always put you down. Why? Because they were put down by others. I never talked to Hafiz after that incident. Not dealing with him gives me a good feeling.

By Fatima H.

Photo: GIZ/Radar Akbar