“A woman is like a tea bag; you never know how strong it is until it's in hot water.”
- Eleanor Roosevelt
For almost all her adult life, my dear friend Fariha Easer has worked tirelessly not only to be the voice of embattled Afghan women but to be their vessel as well. She has roamed the volatile country and taken the podium wherever possible to bring the stories of Afghan women to light. Fariha takes it one step further and be a potent force for legal accountability and change.
But the world in which she knew – the world that had fought for two decades to compel from the dark ages and bring a woman’s face back into the light after years of Taliban rule – broke into a million pieces last weekend as Kabul fell. Or as Fariha told me, it all happened in the blink of an eye.
“My friends on the outside are begging me to leave my country,” Fariha continues. “But how can I when my sisters are suffering?”
(Fariha and myself in April, 2017)
Yet, a life of pain and invisibility is not all this incredibly brave activist fears. She told me that the Taliban have been going house to house, looking for women over fifteen for marriage. A month ago, insurgent members arrived on the doorstep of her friend’s home in Badakhshan – which fell to the group several months ago – looking for young brides.
“They were saying that they are the saviors, the guards of Islam, the liberators of the West,” Fariha recalls in a tiny but firm voice. “They asked one father to give over his daughter’s as wives. They said one of the Taliban is a Mullah, and they must make an engagement for him.”
Only the request was a rhetorical one – there was no choice. The unmarried 21-year-old was dragged away in the dead of night. If these regular Afghan people had not survived enough with the intensity of war and a takeover, the figurative bombs kept on pounding. The nightmare was only beginning.
“After the marriage, they took the young woman away. But the father found out after three days that it was not only the Taliban (Mullah) who married her and had sex with her, she was being raped by four others every night,” Fariha continues. “The father went to the district governor and was told there was nothing he could do. Whatever could be done, he must do himself.”
In a slim silver lining to a drastically sad tragedy, the father fled with all his daughters far north and into hiding.
“She (the victim) is not good because now she has lost her honor,” Fariha says sadly. “They are all hiding in shame, and the father is hurting too because he could not protect his daughter.”
In the Muslim world, one’s lifeblood and dignity are tied to one’s virginity. To take that away is to take a life without direct killing.
The prospect of being forcibly married off to the Taliban now afflicts millions of Afghan girls and women; the security blanket once provided to them by the NATO presence has now been torn away.
“Nothing has changed. They are trying to say that they have changed their behavior, but they have not,” Fariha continues, a quiver in her soft voice. “They have not changed, and they will not change. They are defined by violence, killing, by a constant violating of human rights.”
But Fariha will not be relegated to a basement. She will not allow everything she has worked for crumple without resistance. She tells me that she will never wear and a burqa – something she calls a “symbol of oppression” – and a few days ago even took to the chaotic Kabul streets to show her exposed face to the Taliban and protest their sudden storm into power.
In my own experience of being inside the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif as it fell last Saturday, I saw the bustling city brimming with women immediately become a ghost town. The few women that did eventually step out into the sunshine were sheathed in blue burkas to neither be seen nor heard.
“They will enforce their rules and ideology upon us. There will be no elections,” Fariha cautions. “All the years of work, and now we are back to zero.”
In her fight for women’s rights, Fariha has become somewhat immune to threats and intimidation. She promises me that she will not leave, she will not give up, she will not be silent.
However, this incredibly courageous soul, who I first met many years ago as she took on cases of women set on fire and dismembered in barbaric acts of domestic violence, pushing for the perpetrators to be prosecuted, is not without fear.
“Everybody is afraid. Everybody is scared. Families who have daughters are afraid of these forced marriages,” she says. “We are all uncertain about our future.”
As we speak, I stare out at the vanishing light of the day. None of us know what tomorrow will bring.
“I will fight until I die,” Fariha adds. “At least if I am dead, I can no longer suffer.”
I wish I could tell my friend that it will all get better. That the world will not leave Afghan women to the slaughter. Only she knows – and I know – that would be a lie.
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