From us, upon us
By Alma Begum*
Recently, I received a message from someone in Badghis: “A lady, who is our neighbor, comes to my class every day and harasses me and my students. She asks how much salary I receive and from where. She asks the students if they also get paid or not. When we don’t answer her questions, she declares, ‘I know millions of dollars are behind this course of yours. Big money!’”
This annoying woman – let’s call her Khanum Gul – and those like her have undermined their own generation of women in Afghanistan and now are picking up hatchets to strike at the roots of their own daughters. Though Khanum Gul never attended school, she wanted her daughter to study and become a teacher or a doctor. But instead, she married off her daughter, who has no opportunity to study.
Now, women like Khanum Gul are a danger for secret schools like the Daricha home school, currently active in 12 provinces of Afghanistan. These Daricha online community schools teach 20 girls each in the homes of teachers. Yet for the Taliban or women like Khanum Gul, it doesn’t matter whether the teaching of girls is a humanitarian effort or a project by foreigners.
“Dear teacher, today I narrowly escaped a major incident,” started a message from Ghor. “I had just finished my students’ exams and was teaching the subject of the Holy Quran when a Ranger stopped behind the door of our courtyard with three Taliban members and a woman. The woman entered the house and caught me and my students off guard. She asked the students what they were learning. They all answered, ‘Learning the Holy Quran.’ Every student had the Quran in their hands. She asked me to give her my mobile phone. I had a Nokia phone in my hand and I gave it to her. She said, ‘No, give me your smartphone.’ I said, ‘I don’t have a smartphone.’ She said, ‘We have heard that you are sending pictures of girls to foreigners.’ I replied, ‘This is a madrasa [religious school].’ One of my students’ mobiles was on the classroom shelf, which she took without permission and said, ‘Ask your husband to come to the police station and collect your phone.’ How can I manage, teacher? My hands and feet have been shaking ever since that moment.”
I replied to my former student in Ghor, “For now, erase everything from your mobile phone, even my number. When you get out of this trouble, then contact me.” She called me a week later and said, “When they took my student’s phone and saw there was nothing on it, they returned it. My husband also went to the police station and said to the Taliban that it was just a small madrasa, not some kind of tuition center.” I asked her about the woman who accompanied the Taliban. The teacher says, “This was the first time I saw her. I had never seen her in our neighbourhood before. She is a Taliban employee, and it’s unclear where they’ve recruited her from.”
In addition, I heard from a school in Jawzjan about a woman, who has three daughters with her, who walked into a classroom, saying she wants to enroll her daughters. After registration, her daughters begin to interrogate the teacher: “Who is supporting this course? How much salary do you receive? Is it foreign? Do you know what will happen to you if you get caught? Have you heard that a woman has been tortured by electric shock for teaching girls?” The teacher loses her patience and asks the woman to leave the class, but the woman is relentless. She continues and insists that her daughters should be properly taught. Our distraught and confused teacher calls me and says, “Teacher, what should I do now? This woman has scared me.”
In the same vein, the chain of frightening women continues to appear at schools and classrooms across Afghanistan. I heard from a teacher near Kabul about a woman wearing a black hijab and a face mask who knocked on the door of her classroom. The woman is accompanied by a man who stands behind the door while the woman entered the courtyard, where she started interrogating everyone:
“I’ve heard this is a school.”
“No, this is not a school, this is a madrasa.”
-”If it’s a madrasa, why are you teaching English and math?”
“Although we don’t teach those, I don’t think, from an Islamic point of view, learning a language or teaching math is a crime.”
“My husband is outside the door, and he has questions for you as well.”
“My husband is not home right now, and I can’t talk to your husband.”
The man starts asking questions from behind the door:
“Be honest, is this a school or a madrasa? What subjects do you teach? Do you charge fees or is it free?”
The teacher apologizes and doesn’t answer the man’s questions. The woman demands that she answer the questions so that she can bring her daughters and relatives the next day and register them at the school. The teacher apologizes again and says she has no capacity to accept new students.
After that encounter, the teacher called and asked if I had a solution. I suggest that they should only teach using religious books and the Quran for a while. The teacher says that they will hold a Quran recitation ceremony the next day, and hopes that their troubles will soon pass.
Why don’t these Khanum Guls understand that they are cutting the branch on which they are also sitting? A frightened teacher who suffered due to her harsh words will not and cannot teach her daughters well. A mother with such thoughts will not take pride in her daughter’s education. This stone-throwing will make her own path difficult.
Women should support each other, especially when so much is against them in Afghanistan. As the poet Naser Khosraw Qobadiani once wrote:
They say an eagle took flight in a city /
And with hope, spread its wings wide to soar /
Suddenly, from a corner, a harsh bowstring /
Launched a fateful arrow straight at it /
The arrow pierced the eagle’s heart /
And from the sky, it fell toward the ground /
It looked at the arrow and saw its own feathers /
And said, “From us, upon us”
*Alma Begum is the pseudonym of an educated woman in Afghanistan.
