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Her
Story Will Remain
"Afghanistan, Where God Only Comes To Weep"(1) by Siba Shakib
Wera Reusch
"Women's shoes are the only
way of recognising them" - Siba Shakib, a German-Iranian TV-Author, wants
to write a book about the situation of Afghan women. These investigations
are quite dangerous, since Afghanistan is at that time still ruled by the
Taliban. In a United Nations refugee-camp near the Iranian border she gets
to know an Afghan woman with four children who had recently returned from
Iran. "Yes, I gave birth to them myself" the completely veiled woman tells
the official who is distributing sacks of wheat. But the official does not
believe her, because the children look as though they were born to different
mothers and fathers. Before Siba Shakib can ask the woman any questions she
and her children disappear between all the other women covered with blue
burquas. "Women's shoes are the only way of recognising them", notes Shakib,
"and I didn´t look at Shirin-Gol´s shoes".
This is the opening scene
of Siba Shakib's Bestseller "Afghanistan, Where God Only Comes To Weep",
the true story of Shirin-Gol, which has befallen numerous other Afghan women
in a similar manner. As opposed to many other women who out of fear or shame
keep quiet about their past, Shirin-Gol is prepared to speak. After the first
short meeting during the distribution of wheat, she is the one who approaches
the author and asks: "Should I tell you my story for your book?" A stroke
of luck for Siba Shakib: "No other Afghan woman I know has talked so readily,
so openly and so honestly about her life, let alone about her relationship
with her husband. Shirin-Gol talks about everything she can remember, precisely
and in detail, as though she wanted to be sure that at least her stories
would remain when she herself had passed away."
Shirin-Gol's story is a
lifelong escape. Born in a mountain village, in 1979 she experienced the
Soviet's invasion of Afghanistan. While her older brothers joined the Mujahedin,
the armed resistance and her older sisters disguised as prostitutes in order
to kill Russian soldiers, the parents escaped with the younger children to
the capital Kabul. There Shirin-Gol attended a Russian school for a short
period before she was forced at 14 to marry in order to pay her brother's
gambling debts.
When civil war broke out
after the withdrawal of the Soviets from Afghanistan, Shirin-Gol escaped
to Pakistan with the two children to whom she had in the meantime given birth.
As her husband, who was engaged as a smuggler, is unfit to work and is an
opium addict following an accident in the mountains, Shirin-Gol is solely
responsible for the livelihood of the family. She has a child from the head
of the band of smugglers, who blackmails her with her husband's debts, and
another child following a rape by three Pakistani policemen.
Out of fear for the Pakistani
Police the family flees back to Afghanistan, lives in a remote village and
flees again when the village is destroyed by an attack. The next station
is a small Afghan town, in which Shirin-Gol works for an Afghan doctor until
the Taliban take over power and forbid all women to leave the house, let
alone work. Then Shirin-Gol and her family escape to Iran, later back to
the Taliban's Afghanistan, as the Afghan refugees are being treated with
more and more hostility in Iran.
The story of suffering has
no ending, moments of happiness are rare, such as when Shirin-Gol meets people
on the way who help her selflessly, for "in bad times good people must do
more good, so that justice does not die", but particularly when she meets
other women who do not want to bow down, such as her friend Azadine, the
doctor "Wherever we live and how we live, however difficult it is, says Azadine,
we have to fight. That is resistance, says Shirin-Gol. That is resistance,
says Azadine and laughs. There aren´t many women like you in Afghanistan,
says Shirin-Gol. There are more and more of us, says Azadine."
Shirin-Gol is however at
the end of her strength. After attempting to commit suicide and another odyssey,
which leads her through Afghanistan in search of her eldest daughter who
married a Taliban, she finally ends up in the territory of the Northern Alliance
where she meets her two brothers who she last saw when she was a child. The
book ends at a point in time where Shirin-Gol cannot yet know that the USA
with the help of the Northern Alliance will end the Taliban Rule.
Even Siba Shakib, who met
Shirin-Gol for the last time in the summer of 2000, could not have known
that her book, which appeared for the first time in 2001 in German, would
become a bestseller. This is because before the US attacks the world at large
was not very interested in the situation of women in Afghanistan. There were
women's' groups in many countries who showed solidarity with the Afghan women,
however on a political level very little was done for the Afghan women. One
of the exceptions is the former EU Commissioner Emma Bonino.
It is therefore amazing
that Siba Shakib, supported by Inge von Bönnighausen, a very well known
German TV editor and feminist, did research and filmed in Afghanistan for
years when this was hardly of interest to anyone. The form of portrayal chosen
by Shakib is nevertheless not without problems. The book appears initially
to be a documentary. This impression is given in her introduction in which
she depicts the meeting with Shirin-Gol in the UNO refugee camp. As opposed
to "testimony" literature, as is usually the case in Latin America, she
nevertheless does not record Shirin-Gol's testimony as "first-person-narrator"
and does not differentiate between real "testimony" and her personal comments.
She leans more towards the perspective of the "omniscient narrator" and mixes
information from the conversations with her own interpretations and
embellishment. The greatest problem is of course that Shakib relates Shirin
Gol's story in her own words, in a language, which appears pretentious and
does not seem authentic.
The effort of the film director
to create a popular, easy reading "pageturner", is very obvious. Simple short
sentences may make sense in text for film images, but in a book of just over
300 pages long this smooth and superficial style is unbearable, and succeeds
in preventing the portrayal of any authenticity. Shirin-Gol, robbed of her
own voice, has no personal profile in this portrayal and no depth; she appears
more as an artificial figure of female suffering and struggle for survival
in Afghanistan.
In interviews Siba Shakib
explains what is not clearly presented in the book itself. It is neither
Shirin-Gol's biography nor fiction, but "faction". "I had Shirin-Gol before
my eyes, while I was writing. But in order to protect her, I changed some
events in her biography, expanded on her story and left other parts out.
It was important that no-one should recognize her on the basis of my story
because even if tomorrow democracy were to return to Afghanistan, the attitude
of men towards women will not change".
Protecting her informant
is a noble matter, but there are a lot of possibilities in this regard -
it means in no way renouncing authenticity and seriousness in the portrayal.
Siba Shakib may through her concessions to a supposed public taste have detracted
from her story - totally unintentionally. However it must be said that the
inconceivable life story of the different Shirin Gols that flow through this
book, conveys a real impression of what Afghan women have had to endure in
the last decades.
It is not at all sure that the situation for Afghan women will improve in the future. It cannot be excluded that the patriarchal powers and warlords will return again. According to the opinion of the Women's organization Rawa - Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan - (2) the war criminals in Kabul were simply exchanged, without anything having been achieved for women. The book is therefore an important appeal to the international public to now at least strongly fight so that women in Afghanistan can finally have a right to education, work, freedom and physical integrity .
(1) Siba Shakib: Afghanistan, Where God Only Comes To Weep. Century, London 2002, ISBN 0-7126-2339-6.
(2) see also: www.rawa.org
Wera Reusch is a journalist, who lives in Cologne/Germany.
Translation from German
to English by Heather Batchelor; quotes taken from the English edition
of the book.