For My Sisters Around the World

I have three very disparate connections to Afghanistan and yet there is a common thread to be found in these.  First back in the ‘70’s on a visit to Bahrain from Saudi Arabia, a general in the Afghan army tried his version of the 21^st century hookup.  In a brief conversation-- and I don’t remember where this happened precisely-- he made it clear what he wanted.  I brushed him off playing the wide eyed innocent and retreated to my hotel room.

In 2003 I was in a beauty salon in the Middle East and struck up a conversation with an Afghan woman.  With a sudden 180˚ turn and naked candor she told me she wished she had never married her Afghan husband, that the only good that came of it was her son whom she cherished.  This was not new.  Other women in other Islamic countries had shared this view with me.

In 2005-2007 my husband was Chief of Party for the Higher Education Project for USAID.  Much of his work had to do with improving higher education for women especially in the outlying provinces.  His tenure was fraught with danger in some instances,  but also filled with great admiration for the women in higher ed who daily worked for their ‘sisters’ and their right to an education while risking their lives in doing so.

When I left Saudi Arabia in the waning days of 1981, and 2 short years since the Iranian Revolution, I really thought the next revolution in SA would be a women’s revolution.  At the time of my departure a 13 year old girl was the victim of an honor killing.  She had brought shame on the family.  An uncle had impregnated her.  How could this continue?

Almost 40 years later we see some progress, but women still suffer in many of the same ways that the women of Afghanistan suffer today.  Yes there has been progress. In my almost 5 year tenure in SA, Western women had been given the right to drive on the ARAMCO compound by the king.  And today Saudi women can finally drive despite some activists for this right residing in prison for speaking out and driving without the blessing of the king.  And while there has been progress in other areas since that time, the domination of males over females remains.  

As long as the honor of the family resides in the vagina of a woman she is at risk of an honor killing.  As long as women are not protected by law from male members of their family who interpret Islam through the narrow lens of outmoded traditions and customs, women’s lives will remain so bound up--their very existence at so much risk-- that only the rare few women, willing to die for their sisters for their daughters for the mothers will stand up to male authority.

When the human species is so hidebound by custom and by the fear of losing its place in the pecking order whether as individuals or nations, the world view will always be so blinkered, so parochial that the wheels of change will like Sisyphus labor to little avail.

So to all my sisters around the world who struggle daily to feed, clothe, shelter, keep safe and educate their children, who search within and sometimes find the courage, the anger, the frustration to speak out, to act up, to stand before father, husband, brother and shout I MATTER AND I AM YOUR EQUAL, to all of you I think of you daily.  If thoughts have wings to find you and give you hope, if my vote and my small voice in my own country can aid you in your Sisyphean  task, they are yours.   

May your strength endure my sisters…