My Forbidden Face

George Cattan
2010 / 1 / 9

Latifa under the oppressive rule of Taliban

By George Cattan
“My Forbidden Face” is the story of a young Afghani woman. It records the events experienced by Latifa, her family, her friends, and how all Afghan girls and women are deprived of their rights in their own country, living in darkness even after the dawn of the twenty-first century. She wrote her story under a pseudonym because she fears for her friends and family from the revenge of the Taliban.
The story begins on a terrifying day when the white flag of the Taliban was first flown over Kabul. Latifa went with her father to see the former president and his brother hanged in the town square, where she saw for the first time the Talibs carrying whips and lashing out fiercely at passersby forcing them to look at the dangling bodies.
On the same day the radio station –renamed Radio Sharia- that once played songs, music, poetry, and foreign news, now play only religious chanting and the reciting of verses of the Koran , and the new regime’s decrees.
Decrees were announced successively establishing religious authorities in accordance with Sharia as follows:
- Women and girls are not permitted to work outside the home. All women who are obliged to leave their homes must be accompanied by their father, brother, or husband. Public transportation will provide buses reserved for men and buses reserved for women.
- Women and girls are forbidden to wear brightly colored clothes beneath the Chadri, or to use nail polish, lipstick, and makeup.
- No male physician is allowed to touch the body of a woman under the pretext of a medical examination.
- A girl is not allowed to converse with a young man. Infraction of this law will lead to the immediate marriage of the offenders.
- Merchants are forbidden to sell female undergarments …
Not only women but also men were mentioned in the new decrees.
-Men must let their beards grow and trim their mustaches and wear white cap on their heads. They were forbidden to wear a suit and a tie, and forced to offer ritual prayers five times every day.
- It’s forbidden to display photographs of animals and human beings, or listen to music even during a wedding, or to keep dogs, cats, and birds.
- All non-Muslims must wear yellow clothing and mark their homes with a yellow flag so that may be recognized. And when the police punish an offender, no one is allowed to ask question or complain.
Latifa felt like they were killing her and all girls and women by arresting them in their houses, and locking them outside the society. No more medical services or schools or work for them. Women must disappear under the chadri out of the sight of men. It’s an absolute denial of their individual liberty, a real sexual racism.
Latifa describes the chadri as a shapeless cloth tent covering the entire body. The small embroidered openwork covering the eyes and nose frightened her. To turn her head, she had to hold the cloth tightly under her chin to keep it in place. To look behind, she has to turn completely around. She can feel her breath inside the tent. She felt like she was in a moving jail cell, or as if the Taliban were trying to steal the faces of all women.

Latifa felt like she was coming apart, but she didn’t give up, she started resisting in her own ways. She hid her books, colorful skirts, spring blouses, high heels, photos, music tapes, videos, posters, nail polish, and lipstick in a safe place. She let the canary go by opening his cage in a symbolic gesture. Watching him taking flight and disappear, she felt as if he carried her liberty away with him. She felt better by believing that somebody was free in the country of the Taliban.
Her father drove Bingo, her dog, to her uncle’s house to be hidden in his large garden. He painted the windows of their home, so that the Taliban won’t see the glow of the TV screen after curfew.
When Latifa dared to get out of her home, she saw Talibs flogging four women, even though they were hidden by the chadri. Nobody came to their rescue. They tried to run away pursued by Talibs, who kept whipping them savagely. The only reason for beating them was for wearing white shoes, the color of Taliban’s flag. That means in their opinion that women were trampling on the flag.
Once she saw a boy aged about fifteen, caught by the Talibs from his apartment, watching a video tape. After breaking the television, the VCR, and the cassette tape, they all battered the boy with their rifle butts. His mother tried to shield him with her body, but a Talib hurled her into some barbed wire.
The first protest demonstration of Latifa and other women was when they removed their chadri in a government department in front of Talibs, who treated them badly. Women were trying to over come their fears. Her mother, who was a doctor, set up a clandestine medical office at her house, an underground medical clinic, and started to receive patients secretly. Women, mostly widows, prevented from working, did washing in people’s homes to earn a living, or baked bread and pastries, which their sons sold in the streets.
Under the rule of the Taliban all sports were stopped. A new “sport” started at the stadium in Kabul. The Taliban used the place as a public execution ground. They hung their prisoners, cut off the hands of thieves, and put bullets in the back of the head of women accused of adultery. The coverage about this “entertainment” sports from Radio Sharia, went like this: “Two criminals have had their throats cut in the Kabul sports stadium by the father of their victims, before a large crowd ...”
Latifa and other girls of her age thought about doing something: to girls, who stopped going to schools, and to boys, who went to the mosques where they taught them only versions of the Koran. They got the idea of making a secret school from one of their former teachers who was caught by the Talibs in the middle of a class. First they beat the children, then they threw the teacher so violently down the stairs of her building, that she got a broken leg. And then they dragged her off by the hair, threw her in prison, and threatened to stone her entire family in public if she didn’t confess her “error.”
Latifa’s family supported her by obtaining basic materials such as pencils, notebooks, and books, and by organizing the entering and leaving of the children in a way that wouldn’t attract the attention of the religious police. The young teacher and children were hidden like thieves just for trying to get some education.
Also Latifa and a bunch of her friends published a “periodical” written by hand, entitled “Fagir” – which means dawn-, from a single copy of each edition. They passed it around the neighborhood from hand to hand.

Latifa heard about the Taliban destroying the Bamiyan Buddhas, an archaeological marvel so famous in the world, dating from the fifth century A.D. They represented for the Taliban heathen gods. They destroyed also the artworks of the Kabul Museum, the rich cultural heritage of Afghanistan.
Latifa’s more important step in resisting Taliban’s law, was to accept with her mother and other women an invitation from a well known women’s magazine “Elle”, to fly to Paris to talk about their plight in Afghanistan.
After a long and difficult trip via Pakistan and The Emirates, they reached Paris, and started talking to journalists, human rights organizations, and the European Parliament. In Paris Latifa wrote her story with the help of many supporters, to explain how a girl from Kabul was locked away by a monstrous power, when she was only sixteen, and what life had been like in a city of rubble and ruins.
Not a long time after Latifa left her country into exile, America was attacked on September 11, 2001. The Americans went to war against the Taliban in October 7. The Taliban abandoned Kabul in November 13, after five years of terror starting Sept. 1996










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