SHARMEEN OBAID-CHINOY

December 28, 2007

by Benjamin Law

Edited version published: Frankie #21 (Jan/Feb 2008)

We’re told that after 9/11 and the ousting of the Taliban, women in Afghanistan are better off. They’re now in parliament, they can drive, they can divorce, and they’re no longer forced to wear the burqa. But after documentary-maker Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy visited the region last year, she told Benjamin Law that for Afghan women, the reality is far more complicated.

Towards the end of 2006, Pakistani film-maker Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy’s documentary Beneath the Veil was broadcast around the world. It had a provocative thesis: that despite Western intervention, and the downfall of the Taliban, Afghani women were still subject to the same social, economic and physical degradation of the old regime. “Yes, women were in parliament,” Sharmeen says, “but they weren’t allowed to speak or make laws. And in the four and a half weeks that I was there, I didn’t see a single woman behind the wheel of a car.”

For the most part, Beneath the Veil was horrific viewing. It showed how decades of civil and international conflict had reduced an estimated two million war widows to begging on the streets in burqas. Girls continued to be forced into marriage—some as young as seven—while infant mortality rates continued to soar because of poor, or non-existent, health services.

However, the most disturbing images in the film were courtesy of Sharmeen’s visits to hospitals, which were packed with seriously burned women. Having been forced into marriages with no possible means of escape, Afghan women were protesting with their most basic of resources: their bodies. All over the country, women were pouring kerosene on themselves and lighting themselves on fire as protest.

“Afghan women are some of the bravest women in the world,” Sharmeen says. “To pour kerosene on yourself, then light yourself? It’s an act of defiance. It is a cry to the rest of the world: ‘I am suffering, and I refuse to die quietly.’” One particular girl Sharmeen interviewed had been sold into marriage five years earlier to fund her father’s addition to opiates. She was severely burned from the waist down after a self-immolation suicide attempt. All this, and she was only 12-years-old.

The first time she entered one of the hospital wards, Sharmeen says she was close to just bursting out in tears. “Every bed had a young woman who was disfigured—badly—and moaning in pain. There wasn’t enough morphine—the irony, being that Afghanistan is the largest opium producer in the world. These women had burns on 50 to 60 percent of their bodies, and no skin grafting because it’s not done in Afghanistan. It’s extremely expensive.”

A young Muslim woman herself, Sharmeen noted a massive disjoint between her personal understanding of Islam, and how the religion manifests in Afghan culture. For her, the problem isn’t with Islam, but how Afghan culture had appropriated it to undermine the entitlements of women. “Afghan culture has been perverted. A lot of people have said it’s the religion, but actually it’s Afghan culture,” she says.

“As a Muslim woman in Pakistan, my parents always told me I was on par with any man, anywhere in the world. Even as a child, I always thought I was equal to a man. In an environment like Afghanistan, men feel superior to women, and treat women as inferior. As a result, women feel that they’re inferior, and that this is all sanctioned by Islam.”

In one sequence of the documentary, Sharmeen talks to a war widow reduced to begging on the streets. When Sharmeen is crouching down, face to face with her, it’s as though viewers are presented with the two extreme opposites of what Muslim women can be in the contemporary world. One is a disempowered, poor, uneducated woman, deprived of resources, support, and personal agency; the other is Sharmeen.

“This is true,” Sharmeen says. “In some ways, it’s testament to the fact you can be ‘the other’. Often in the Western world, there’s a perception that Muslim women have been held back by their religion. But there are many women like me who are practising Muslims, but also lawyers and journalists and artists—and often doing better than most men in the country.

“In Afghanistan, I’ve almost been in screaming matches with men. I know: as a journalist, you’re supposed to step away from your subject. But I need to let them know that I am a practising Muslim, yet I can turn around and tell him he doesn’t make any sense at all. That it’s okay to allow your women to get an education, it is okay to allow your women to work. And in no way would that threaten you as a man.”

Sharmeen didn’t even have to open her mouth for her presence to be felt in Afghanistan. By simply donning a red head covering instead of a full-body burqa, entire groups of men would immediately turn their gaze towards her. “Afghan men are not used to seeing women like me, walking with my face uncovered,” she says. “Especially in a place that’s so grey and brown. All the women look the same under the blue head coverings.”

But why would a foreign journalist purposefully go out of her way to invite hostility from Afghan men? “In my travels in the Muslim world, I’ve found if you look a man in the eye—because Afghan women seldom do—he will look away and continue walking. I’ve found that to be a weapon. You let people know you’re not afraid; they will back off.”

Presumably, that is not something you can do in a burqa. “Well exactly,” Sharmeen says laughing. “That’s why I didn’t wear one. Look: covering the head is sanctioned by Islam. So any woman who chooses to cover her head is doing so because her religion dictates she does so. But that’s it. A woman who covers her face or entire body in a burqa or niqab is not sanctioned by Islam, in any way. It’s a controlling mechanism.”

Right now, Sharmeen is 28-years-old. Had she been born an Afghan, life at this age would obviously have been different, but to what extent? “Life in Afghanistan would mean marriage, and at least four kids,” she says. “Maybe five. Maybe even grandchildren. If you get married when you’re 14, and you have a child, then you’re a grandmother by the age of 28.”

At one stage in Beneath the Veil, Sharmeen asks the 12-year-old forced bride and burns victim what she would have done had she not been forced into marriage. (The girl’s bewildered response: “I was too young to wonder.”) Of course, there is a reverse question implied in that: “What would you do, if you were sold into marriage?”

“What could I do?” Sharmeen asks. “I logically thought about it: ‘Oh, can’t go back to the parents’ house, because the father would kill you. Can’t run to a friend’s house, because of her husband.’ Do you go the police? They’ll come and contact your father or your husband. How do you find a shelter in a city, considering there are only two across Afghanistan? How do you travel alone to get to the shelter? You are essentially, like the poet Nadia Anjuman said: caged, in a corner.”

Nadia Anjuman provided an interesting case study for the documentary. Here was an educated Afghan woman, a published poet and a journalist, but still trapped in the confines of Afghan convention. One extract of Anjuman’s poetry roughly translates to: “I am caged in this corner / full of melancholy and sorrow / my wings are closed and I cannot fly / I am an Afghan woman and I must wail.”

“You hear her poetry, you hear her story, and you say, ‘Wow, who is this woman? I’d like to meet her,’” Sharmeen says. “Then you find out, of course, she was killed.” In the film, Sharmeen talked to Anjuman’s family—who claimed Nadia’s husband was responsible—then fearlessly tracked down Anjuman’s husband for an interview. It makes for riveting but uncomfortable viewing. “I really wanted him to feel Nadia was not forgotten,” Sharmeen says. “That the fact she was murdered was important, and I believe he killed Nadia.”

When Sharmeen first visited Afghanistan in 2002, what struck her most was the people’s optimism. “They’d finally gotten rid of the Taliban, and things were going to get so much better,” she says. In 2007, that look was replaced by a tired look of resignation. “That really got me down,” Sharmeen says. “Because when people don’t have the will to bring about change, something in them dies.”

While there continues to be active fighting in the South, in Afghanistan’s north, some young girls are being educated. However, there’s no infrastructure or local economy to support jobs after finishing school, so they’re still panned off into marriage. Allied troops fight and secure towns, but move on immediately afterwards. “Are they really there to bring about change in Afghanistan, to bring about sustainable development?” Sharmeen asks. “What is the plan to make sure their lives are better, so they can move beyond their circumstances?”

In Sharmeen’s mind, the key is establishing a local, independent economy. “In Afghanistan, every single thing is imported. From milk to eggs to wheat. There’s nothing happening to show there might be prosperity in the coming years. You have to show them a better path. How do you do that? Make sure they have jobs, so they’re not obsessing about the women. You have skill centres where women can go in the morning and learn how to sew, to make bread, and sell that,” she says. “You have to give them something to hold on to.”