Jamila Afghani, one of Afghanistan’s top women’s-rights activists, credits her success to having had polio as a child. Born in 1976 with a crooked leg that her family blamed on evil spirits, she was written off as a langak, or cripple, whom no man would ever want to marry. That made her focus on seeking an education instead, and with no chance of his getting a “bride price”, her father didn’t stand in her way. “She loved the freedom her disability had afforded her,” writes Norwegian journalist Åsne Seierstad in her new book, The Afghans. “She was spared both a husband and the stress of being married.”
Best known for The Bookseller of Kabul, written just after the Taliban’s fall in 2001, Seierstad’s latest work recounts the two ensuing decades through the contrasting fortunes of three Afghan witnesses and their families. The first is Afghani, who becomes a government minister during the years of US-backed rule, before fleeing to Norway after Washington’s chaotic pull-out in 2021. The second is a 37-year-old Taliban commander identified only as “Bashir”, who spends years fighting the coalition forces.
The third is 23-year-old Ariana, a pseudonymised female law student whose hopes of graduating – and pretty much everything else – are dashed by the Taliban’s return to power. Gone are the days when she could freely watch Netflix, listen to Justin Bieber and learn female empowerment slogans from Western NGOs; back come curbs on women’s education, and orders to cover up if going out in public. The Taliban’s Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue suggests that the “best burka” of all, in truth, is to stay at home like a dutiful housewife.
As this book makes clear, though, the Taliban aren’t the only chauvinists in Kabul. Traditional Afghan society can be equally conservative, with the rules enforced not by Taliban gunmen, but by zealous brothers and uncles who fear that family honour will be at stake if a woman seeks her own path in life. As a youngster in scripture class, Afghani even detects a whiff of sexism in Paradise, where men who’ve done holy deeds are rewarded with the “good company” of grateful virgins. When she asks her teacher what women who have done holy deeds will get, Afghani is told simply that “they’ll get their husband back”. This strikes her as somewhat unfair.
As a Talib who has kidnapped, killed and served jail time for the cause, Bashir doesn’t have to wait for the afterlife to get his rewards. He lives in a plush Kabul villa taken from a politician, and gets a £4,000-a-month Taliban stipend – roughly 50 times what many Afghans earn. He also has a sideline as a Mafia godfather from whom others seek favours, be it dodging debts or jumping hospital queues. He draws the line, though, at helping career-minded females. “Sorry,” he tells Seierstad, “but there’s no place for educated women in Afghanistan.”
