Charlotte Erlih is a French writer and filmmaker whose work engages with contemporary Afghan history and the lives of Afghan women. Her novel Bacha Posh, documentary Une Française à Kaboul, and book Embrasser Kaboul explore Afghanistan beyond dominant narratives by focusing on lived experiences, the place of women, and lesser-known dimensions of its history.
In this interview for Zan Times conducted by writer and journalist Khaled Qaderi, she reflects on her engagement with Afghanistan, its representation in Western discourse, and the role of literature and cinema in shaping perceptions of Afghan women. She also discusses her long process of research and writing on the country.
This interview has been edited for style and length.
Zan Times: How did you first become interested in Afghanistan, and what led you to focus on the lives of Afghan women in your work?
Charlotte Erlih: I came to work inAfghanistan through the subject of the Bacha posh [girls raised boys by a family with no sons]. I had read an article in the New York Times about this phenomenon, and it immediately fascinated me. So I came to work in Afghanistan through this question of the place of women in society.
ZT: In your work on Afghan women, what sources or experiences do you draw on, and how do you build these narratives?
Erlih: For Embrasser Kaboul, I based my work on the writings of Élisabeth Naïm Khan, which were entrusted to me by her grandson Massoud. He gave me the notes she had taken over the fifty years she spent in Kabul and in the country. So I drew both on her writings and on the autobiography of her husband, which I found in the archives, and I also carried out additional research by reading history books.
ZT: Could you tell us which of your works focus on Afghanistan and what their main themes are?
Erlih: I first wrote a novel called Bacha Posh, which came out in 2013 — a young adult novel published by Actes Sud jeunesse, which was translated into German and published in Germany as general literature. It deals with the custom of the Bacha posh: these young girls disguised as boys in families that have only daughters, who are raised as boys until puberty, when they are forced to become girls again and therefore must give up the freedom they had as boys.
Then I made a documentary called Une Française à Kaboul, on the same subject as my novel Embrasser Kaboul, which follows the history of Afghanistan from the 1920s to the 1960s through the life of Élisabeth Naïm Khan, the first French woman to have married an Afghan prince at the end of the 1920s. She moved to Kabul in 1929, where she spent 50 years of her life and where she became a pioneer of women’s emancipation in her adopted country.
ZT: In your view, what images of Afghanistan are most often reproduced in Western narratives, and what is generally left aside?
Erlih: That is a good question, and it was indeed one of my aims when I wanted to write Embrasser Kaboul and tell the story of Élisabeth Naïm Khan: to offer another image of Afghanistan, one that might be brighter and more positive, as well. I present an Afghanistan that also cared about opening itself up from within, notably under King Amanullah Khan in the 1920s. It seemed interesting to me to shift things and to offer an image other than the one that is very negative — an image of Afghanistan that, in the West, is generally associated with the Taliban, wars, drugs, or terrorism.
ZT: What role do literature and cinema play in shaping public perceptions of Afghan women?
Erlih: For me, a crucial role, because it is a way of entering history from the point of view of bodies, of telling embodied stories, sensitive stories, and of managing to enter what we call “great history” through the prism of lived experience.
For me, literature and cinema do not stand in opposition to history. Quite the contrary: I find that fiction can help us approach and translate reality, sometimes just as well — of course in a different way, but just as well — and in a more intimate way than history often does.
ZT: As a Western artist engaged with these issues, how do you see the situation of Afghan women today, and how can art help bring their experiences to a wider audience?
Erlih: I find this question rather delicate. I remain very cautious and truly very modest about the contribution and the connection there may be between writing about Afghan women, trying to support their struggle — or at least to recall a struggle that really existed — and what they are going through in the country today. So I remain very humble in the face of this question.
The only thing I observe is that, by telling this story through the novel, but also through the documentary Une Française à Kaboul, it is nevertheless possible to reach the public. I can see how sensitive viewers and readers are to this cause.
Very often, at the end of meetings and debates, people ask how they could help in a concrete way. So I think the impact is not necessarily direct. But by touching people, by speaking to their sensitivity, I hope that one can sometimes spark a form of solidarity or support.
That said, this help remains external. These are perspectives and desires to act that come from the West. And that always raises the essential question of how responses can emerge, and how they must emerge from within the country if they are to be truly lasting.
ZT: What have you personally taken away from your work on Afghanistan?
Erlih: That is a very complicated question. Really, I do not find it easy to answer. A great many things. To begin with, I learned an enormous amount, because I did not know very much about the history of Afghanistan before the Soviet invasion in 1979, I think, like many people in France.
So I found it very interesting to try to go beyond the few preconceived ideas I had. I also discovered a great deal of love for this country on the part of the people who have been there. I am not talking about Afghans, with whom I perhaps spoke a little less, but about all the people I have met since the release of Une Française à Kaboul and Embrasser Kaboul. What I find very moving is the attachment these people have to the country once they have been there. There is also the sadness of seeing that the struggles led by Afghans in particular did not bear fruit, or else have been erased.
But what I have retained, no doubt — and in any case it is also what I went there looking for — is the importance of fighting and trying to resist in all circumstances.
