Uppity Woman (Child) #21: A Profile in Courage

From the Muslim Times, Veronique De Viguerie / Getty Images, file

From dictionary.com- 

Uppity: rebelliously self-assertive; not inclined to be tractable or deferential.

I know of no person who better embodies the spirit of the amazing women on my list of "Uppity Women" than Malala Yousafzai. Yet Malala is a child of only 14. She is "uppity" because she dared to blog, under a pseudonym, about the atrocities committed by the Tehrik-i-Taliban in Swat Valley for the BBC, that bastion of apostasy, in 2009, at the amazing age of 11. Her blog espoused both her desire and firm belief in her right to an education, and her outrage at the destruction of schools and the violence visited on peaceful Pakistanis who wanted their daughters to be educated or those who wanted to educate all children. The Taliban in the Swat Valley are clearly very threatened by the idea of educated females, and by Malala in particular, because yesterday two of their thugs proudly got on her school bus in Mingora, Swat and after asking which girl was Malala, shot her in the head and neck, then shot two other education righteous-thinking girls for good measure. Malala has survived the shooting, although just barely. Reports still insist the bullet did not penetrate her brain.

Malala, who was nominated for the International Children's Peace Prize in 2011,  won the Pakistani National Peace Prize in December, 2011. The Government School for Girls was renamed the Malala Yousafzai School earlier this year. Her attempted assassination, for certainly she was a well-known and charismatic figure, has brought immense sorrow, anger and embarrassment in various circles in Pakistan. But among the Tehrik-i-Taliban there is only the consternation that she is the girl who lived, albeit precariously so at this point. Their leader, Ihsanullah Ihsan has said tersely, "Let this be a lesson," and promised they will try to kill her again for the obscenity of her desire for her rights and Western-tainted values. 

The Pakistani National Airline has said they are ready to fly her to any facility in the world for further medical care but she is evidently not stable enough to be moved. Meanwhile, demonstrators flooded the streets, as evidenced by the many photos on Al Jazeera and other Islamic news outlets. This morning the government of Pakistan offered a 10 Million Rupee bounty for the men that shot Malala and her friends, an extraordinary sum. Roads are barricaded, streets bear signs decrying the shooting and Pakistani PM Pervez Ashraf said of the attack, "She is our daughter." Journalist Nadeem F. Paracha said in a positively brutal tweet on Twitter, "Come on brothers, be REAL MEN. Kill a schoolgirl." Yet, the Karachi-based Paracha's column in today's Dawn lays the blame for Malala's suffering not just on the Taliban but on Pakistanis themselves, who he paints in stark contrast, due to their apathy, to brave souls like Malala.

A friend asked me this morning about whether Malala couldn't get asylum in the West. I guess the US or the UK would be able to grant her asylum. Surely there is ample cause. But imagine uprooting your entire family and struggling to rebuild their lives so far from home. Why should she, or they, have to seek asylum, is my thought. Why can't a 14 year old girl be safe on a school bus or in her government school? Why should she or her friends live in fear? Why should any of the lessons she's learning have to do with grown men shooting children? Why can't she study as long as she wants to, and whatever she wishes to? 

Malala, who was named after a Pashtun poet and warrior woman, clearly saw the risks of opposing the Taliban, based on her direct experience and as detailed in her blogging. And yet, she was a child and children never internalize risks as adults do. Perhaps her courage will galvanize her elder compatriots and make them see, yet again, that the very future of their country is being brutalized and terrorized. Demonstrators in Benghazi, Libya took matters into their own hands, striking against, and routing, the Ansar-al-Sharia who killed Ambassador Chris Stevens. Maybe the people of Swat Valley need to make their voices, and their will, clearer to the Tehrik-i-Taliban? Maybe the bravery of "their daughter" will be the catalyst for the change that Malala believes in. 

The world, excepting a pack of barbarians, wishes this child a full recovery.

Demonstrators protesting Malala's shooting in Peshawar.

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© Bright Nepenthe, 2012

The Blasphemy of the Disabled

An 11 year old Christian girl, Rifta Masih, has been arrested in Mehrabadi, Pakistan for blasphemy. The child blasphemer, who has Down's Syndrome,  was reportedly severely beaten by a crowd of people, and may face the death penalty for burning pages of the Koran along with the fact that other pages she carried with her were housed in a bag of waste, which she was trying to put into a waste bin. She should, in spite of her disability, evidently known better. Or her God should have kept her safer or perhaps have given her better judgment or something. 

Yes, this is what passes for blasphemy in Pakistan, a place in which reasonable people, like Salman Taseer and Shabaz Bhatti, gave their lives trying to drum sense into the public's mind. So a disabled child may die, because with her lack of intellectual capacity and understanding, she insulted the holy book of Islam. This is justice?

I had planned to make some snarky remarks about a$$holes like Todd Akin and  their form of profanity against reason, but frankly, I'm really just too absorbed in thinking of what will happen to this poor 11 year old child, who probably just wants her mother, and who will be subject to who knows what horrors. Did she even get medical care after being beaten? It's too horrifying to contemplate. As the BBC's World Service says, few people at this point, after the deaths of Taseer and Bhatti, will stand up to the extremist mob, even if it means a child must die for doing something when she didn't have cognizance of giving offense. 

Another Bhatti, Dr. Paul Bhatti, Minister of Harmony *cough* (no idea if he's a brave relation to assassinated Minority Minister Shahbaz Bhatti) is evidently trying to get her an attorney.

Some days, I just lose all hope for reason in this world. 

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© Bright Nepenthe, 2012

Women on Fire: Afghanistan

Map of Afghanistan from mapsofworld.com

In 2010, 85 women set themselves on fire in Herat province, Afghanistan. Herat, an area where they speak Dari and have a close cultural bond with Iran, is one of the only regions tracking the shocking statistics of women so desperate to escape their lives that they set themselves on fire. Self-immolation has become almost endemic in Afghanistan. Unlike the practice of suttee, long outlawed in India, wherein a widow throws herself onto her husband's funeral pyre, women who commit self-immolation in Afghanistan are young- in their teens and early twenties. Although as Nic Robertson reported for CNN just last week that there are a myriad of reasons historically why waves of self-immolation occur, in Afghanistan, it is almost universally the act of of a woman stranded in a horrific situation. Abuse of all kinds, as readers of this blog know, is heaped upon too many Afghan women.

In a gambit to portray themselves as interested not just in human rights, but in women's rights, Iran's Press TV issued this report on self-immolation of young women in Afghanistan's nearby Herat province. Self-burning, as they call it, was up by 30% in 2010. Press TV cites in their summary article cultural and economic problems. Of course, Time magazine had its striking article in July of 2010 on this problem citing spousal and familial abuse as being the leading factors in self-immolation cases in Afghanistan.

Iran's Press TV, while certainly a political arm of the government of the Islamic Republic, at least provides us with figures about the 2010 in one Afghan province. Look at Herat on that map, people. And imagine that no other province appears to be tracking what happens to their young women. In a country of 29M (CIA World Fact Book) where men outnumber women 54% to 46% (women should be a precious resource then, right?), where the death rate in 2010 was 18 out of every thousand (third highest in the world), Herat province has a population of 1.7 million and by their own report 85 of their women attempted to commit self-immolation last year. Which if you read between the lines and look at those interviews means it just didn't kill them. When I think of living in a county of 2.5M people myself, and think of at least 85 people setting themselves on fire in a single calendar year because they are miserable, desperate and feel no hope, it is simply beyond my imagining. Although a number of aide organizations have targeted the problem of self-immolation in Herat, improvements have been "meager" according to a recent study by Help Women Heal fellow Harmonie Adams, a doctoral candidate in UCSF's Global Public Health program.

There's much I don't like about Press TV (maybe later this week I'll slap up the famous Sakineh interviews, which honestly raise as many questions as they answer) but they provide us access, in the above report, to data that we might not otherwise have.

Also, coming soon, Thelma Lee will be talking about GMOs, those pesky genetically modified organisms. Friend? Foe? Solution to world hunger? Destruction of naturally occurring species? What do you know about GMOs?

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Readers interested in assisting women in Afghanistan can check out Help Women Heal or Women for Afghan Women.

© Bright Nepenthe, 2011

A Good Life

Linda Norgrove

attribution unknown

I've been thinking about writing about Linda Norgrove since last week. Her courage and her good work resonated so deeply in my thoughts. With a happier outcome of her kidnapping, she would surely have been counted an Uppity Woman on this blog. She did amazing things, all over the world in her brief 36 years. Sadly though, so many media accounts, instead of focusing on her amazing good works, have focused on the tragic mistakes that led to her death.

I can't even being to process just how brave Linda Norgrove was. 2010 has been a very bad year in Afghanistan. Deaths in the military have certainly risen. But, in recent months, it's especially been bad for humanitarian workers. In July, Shaun Sexton, a 29 year old security guard working with her at Development Alternatives, Inc., was killed along two Afghans and a German, in DAI's offices in Kunduz. In August, Dr. Karen Woo, who had been providing ophthalmological care to local villagers was killed along with nine other aid workers when gunmen attacked a village. Against this backdrop, Norgrove persevered until her kidnapping by Taliban militants in late September.

Linda Norgrove was a dedicated and very experienced humanitarian aid worker. She appeared to have a great love of learning. After earning a doctorate in ecology, she was completing an MBA with the University of Warwick, through "distance" learning, while she worked in Afghanistan. Norgrove knew Afghanistan very well, having worked with the UN there from 2005-2008 before returning to become the Jalalabad-based Regional Director of Development Alternatives, Inc. in 2010. After earning her doctorate she had first worked with the World Wildlife Fund before joining UN projects. She had worked in Peru, Mexico, Laos and Uganda, in addition to Afghanistan. She was fluent in Dari and Spanish and was learning Pashto. At the time of her death, Norgrove was directing DAI's implementation of the USAID project for rebuilding businesses and infrastructure in Afghanistan.

The best piece I've seen on Linda Norgrove was by Trudy Rubin, for the Philadelphia Inquirer. Rubin met Norgrove this past spring, while traveling in Afghanistan. She describes a photo she took of Ruben:

"I have a photo of her dressed in a long, black skirt and loose tunic, her hair under an enveloping shawl, as she stood beside several Afghan elders. I recall the respect those grizzled men showed her as she discussed their new crops, which had replaced opium poppy fields."

~ Trudy Rubin, Philadelphia Inquirer 

As Rubin points out, Norgrove's projects were successful while those of many others failed. One of the reasons for her her successful work with the Afghani people was that she  really lived among the Afghan people. She lived in a simple villa, not a razor-wired UN compound. Instead of driving around in Humvees with a string of guards, she went with a driver and a guard. She wanted to be able to freely communicate with the local people and while she realized they couldn't offer guarantees, the tribal elders in her area evidently really did try to safeguard her.

At the time of her tragic death, those same tribal elders were evidently bartering desperately for her release. They wanted her back, safe, because she had done so much good. However, intelligence reports had suggested that the Taliban militants holding her might either execute her or take her into Northern Waziristan (Pakistan), where there would be little chance of rescuing her. Reportedly, both locals and the US forces in the area were simply astonished that the Taliban had kidnapped "such a good person". I am still not quite sure that I comprehend their astonishment, since if you're going to kidnap someone to barter with or make a big display with, clearly taking someone who is a prize makes the biggest statement. The Taliban may be a group of barbarians but they're not stupid barbarians.

It really doesn't matter much how she ultimately died, whether because of a Taliban suicide vest or a misguidedly tossed US grenade. She's dead and the people who loved her, both at home in Scotland, and in the villages she helped, are much the poorer for her loss.

Days after Norgrove's death, there were a lot of announcements (see one example) that the Afghan government and the Taliban are in negotiations, that the Taliban are trying to reconcile with the Kabul authorities.

I really want to believe that the Taliban will be done mutilating women, stoning people to death, and kidnapping brave and goodhearted souls who wanted nothing other than to do good for the Afghan people.

I really want to.

Once again, I look at the past decade in Afghanistan, and even the role the US has played in the country for the past thirty years and I'm just so saddened. For the Afghani people, and for Dr. Norgrove's family and for all the aid workers who will look at recent months in Afghanistan and think no matter how much they want to help, or how much good they could do, that it is just not worth the risk.

There are a lot of things that I don't like in the Qur'an or in hadith. But one thing that I'm pretty certain of is that if we were to ask What Would Muhammed Do? it wouldn't be kidnapping female humanitarian workers, dragging them all over Afghanistan, doing who knows what to them in the process, and ending up, no matter who detonated what, responsible for the death of someone who had only done good for this planet.

I hope that the Taliban are as God-fearing as they say they are.

Because if they are right and there is a God, they should be.

© Bright Nepenthe, 2010

Miracles: A New Life and Face for Disfigured Afghan Woman

NW Pakistan Surrenders to Taliban Justice? Let's Hope Not...

honor |ˈänər| ( Brit. honour)noun1 high respect; esteem : his portrait hangs in the place of honor.• [in sing. ] a person or thing that brings credit : you are an honor to our profession.• adherence to what is right or to a conventional standard of conduct : I must as a matter of honor avoid any taint of dishonesty.2 a privilege : the great poet of whom it is my honor to speak tonight.• an exalted position : the honor of being horse of the year.• a thing conferred as a distinction, esp. an official award for bravery or achievement : the highest military honors.• ( honors) a special distinction for proficiency in an examination : she passed with honors.• ( honors) a class or course of degree studies more specialized than that of the ordinary level : [as adj. ] an honors degree in mathematics.• ( His, Your, etc., Honor) a title of respect given to or used in addressing a judge or a mayor.• Golf the right of teeing off first, having won the previous hole.3 dated a woman's chastity or her reputation for this : she died defending her honor.

Over the past few hours, film footage of the Taliban stoning a woman to death has been circulating the wires. The woman, thought to have been seen out and about with a non-relative male, was hooded, tied to the ground and then stoned to death by a crowd of Taliban gathered around her in Orakzai, in the Northwest area of Pakistan. It is claimed that the video was shot about two months ago, smuggled out and given to the Dubai television outlet Al Aan. Reportedly, the man involved may have been merely shot to death.

Don't worry: This is NOT the actual video...

Carriers of honor? What honor is there in the lives of women who are forced to endure the miserable circumstances of life under the Taliban?

Let's think about the honorable minds that think a woman even being in the presence of a man not of her family must have sexually degraded herself and her family's 'honor'. 

All I can say is that I look forward to the time when the Taliban are either abolished or get their minds out of the gutter. The day when they stop persecuting women for their evidently immense corrupting power over men. Because as we know, men are so very, very weak.

Unless they are flinging stones.

© Bright Nepenthe, 2010 

Maybe I Should Rename This Blog Taliban Ranting

... because really, I feel like a broken record.

Two things.

The Taliban definitely don't believe love = marriage.

The Taliban are way jealous of all the press the Iranians are getting about stoning. WAY.

A few more things for women to note:

The Taliban want to use shock and awe. They want to inspire you with righteous fear. They want you to see the error of your ways. They want you to know they too, can throw rocks at people, just like some Iranians want to. And hey, even guys may not be immune to this wonderful piece of Sharia justice.

In a charming little article published in the NY Times yesterday, it was reported that the Taliban stoned Khayyam, age 25, and Siddiqa, age 19, for eloping from their village in Kunduz Province. Khayyam and Siddiqa had naively declared that they didn't care what people thought, that they loved each other. Well the Taliban certainly showed them, didn't they.

They were stoned to death on Sunday. The stoning was carried out by hundreds of villagers and by their own families, who had tricked them into thinking all was forgiven and it was safe to come back. Boy, were they wrong, right?

Various comments from the article are just chilling:

“We see it as a sign of a new confidence on the part of the Taliban in the application of their rules, like they did in the ’90s,” said Nader Nadery, a senior commissioner on the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission. “We do see it as a trend. They’re showing more strength in recent months, not just in attacks, but including their own way of implementing laws, arbitrary and extrajudicial killings.”

Reports indicate that the Taliban hold is strengthening all over Afghanistan, even in regions where it previously held no power.

“We’ve seen a big increase in intimidation of women and more strict rules on women,” Nader Nadery said.

And furthermore:

Perhaps most worrisome were signs of support for the action from mainstream religious authorities in Afghanistan. The head of the Ulema Council in Kunduz Province, Mawlawi Abdul Yaqub, interviewed by telephone, said Monday that stoning to death was the appropriate punishment for an illegal sexual relationship, although he declined to give his view on this particular case. An Ulema Council is a body of Islamic clerics with religious authority in a region.

And less than a week earlier, the national Ulema Council brought together 350 religious scholars in a meeting with government religious officials, who issued a joint statement on Aug. 10 calling for more punishment under Shariah law, apparently referring to stoning, amputations and lashings.

Failure to carry out such “Islamic provisions,” the council statement said, was hindering the peace process and encouraging crime.

- from the New York Times

From my self-centered American viewpoint, I just want to know what the past ten years was about? And how we are any different from the Soviets who tramped through the country, conceded defeat, and made a ruin of it, leaving it vulnerable to the Taliban taking over and imposing Stone Age justice?


What have we done that changed things for the better in Afghanistan?

And in what universe does stoning people count as justice?


Certainly not mine...

© Bright Nepenthe, 2010

What a World, What a World Redux, Taliban Edition (Part Infinitum?)

Pakistani Demonstrators Last Year Protest Taliban Flogging of 17 Year Old "Seen" With Married Man (Image Credit: Associated Press)

Between Bibi Aisha and the honor attacks/beatings/killings it's hard to imagine there's more Taliban horror out there. But there really is, isn't there?

Sanam Gul (aka Sanam Bibi, or Bibi Sanubar) was reportedly either a 35 year old or 47 year old pregnant widow murdered in Badghis, Afghanistan, according to reports by CNN and The Ethiopian Review, because she committed adultery. In what I can only sadly say is a believable (at this point) series of events, she was reportedly flogged 200 times first and then shot in the head. There are various reports that the man who impregnated her may have also received 200 lashes, though of course he has not as yet been killed because, like dude, he's a dude and you don't do that to a dude unless they do something important like steal shit or something. The CNN blog report says that he wanted to marry her but, of course, the Taliban wasn't cool with that. They liked the idea of making an example of her instead. Because there is no finer example than fear and Taliban justice all in one bloody, flogged and shot package.

Segue: Consider this portion of the post pure opinion, okay? Unsubstantiated by my usual plethora of fact and research. Fueled by suspicion and supposition:

Leaving aside the simply horrific facts of being widowed in a poor country, pregnant outside of marriage in an Islamic nation, accused of adultery, flogged 200 times, shot in the head three times,  I am totally confused at this point. So, she was widowed, pregnant by him, and he wanted to marry her but what... it didn't work out? Okay... forgive me, oh quantum field, for wondering if this is yet another rape scenario. Because really, folks, in that part of the world, I really have a very hard time envisioning a scenario in which a widow who willingly sleeps with a man and gets pregnant by him does NOT want to marry him. Other than... you know, rape by him. Yeah. Not many women want to marry their rapists. Just... funny that way, you know? Of course, men in that area of the world never go around raping without impunity...

Back on task.

I am totally confused about these two people, Sanam Gul and her unnamed paramour having had sex in front of four men? Wow, that was really flagrant of them. Because, of course, as you will recall, the Qu'ran states that in order to convict someone of adultery you have to have four witnesses ("Those who commit adultery among your women, you must have four witnesses against them, from among you. If they do bear witness, then you shall keep such women in their homes until they die, or until GOD creates an exit for them."  See here). Of course, women only count as half a witness. So maybe they had sex in front of eight women who then all snitched?

And on top of that, if indeed Sanam Gul and her paramour have committed zina (adultery) (was he like already married or something? Are you still married in the eyes of the Taliban if you're a widow?) and there were the requisite number of witnesses, then weren't they supposed to get like 80-100 lashes and be done? Because that's what it prescribes in the Qu'ran. Even that stoning stuff is just hadith and there wasn't any mention of close range firearms in hadith. Nope, just blunt, rounded, heavy objects. (That stoning part in hadith has been taken way seriously in Iran and Nigeria...) Maybe the Taliban can't count? Because if they can't count lashes then I'm wondering about their count of any number between four and eight witnesses, as well. And if there are no witnesses and it was all just because Sanam was pregnant then I want them to peruse a little book called The New Testament because there's a lot of historical precedent for being mighty tolerant of mysteriously pregnant women in it, even the thinking you should cut them major slack, like just in case that fetus will be a walking miracle or something. Like cutting them slack even if you're married to them, for gosh sakes. Why, since that whole pro-Life sector is going to be offended by Sanam's murder (the Taliban killed a fetus!?!?!), I'm thinking that it's got this whole twisted Virgin Mary element that could be spun by the Catholics, don't you think? I really think that anyone that wants to protest Sanam's murder (I am so not referring to it as an execution, which suggests some element of questionable justice was at play here....) is a good thing. Bring on the outrage. PREGNANT WOMAN murdered. Let the headlines scream. Can you hear us yet Hamid Karzai? How about Washington DC? Do we really want to negotiate with these people? Can someone in the Obama administration have a sitdown with Bibi Aisha and get her thoughts on the matter?

Anyway, snide aside, I really think that I am with Nadwa on the Islam practiced by the Taliban. And I stand with the ladies pictured above. That isn't faith. It's murder and blasphemy. Or just plain murder in the eyes of this little disbelieving scientist.

You know, for years I was haunted by this image from National Geographic, published back in 1985, of an Afghan girl:

Afghan Girl

(Image credit: Steve McCurry for National Geographic)

I thought her eyes were wild and wonderful.

Now I just wonder if they were wild and filled with fear of everything that awaited her.

© Bright Nepenthe, 2010

Honor Attacks: What Rights Should Women Have? **Strong Graphic Content Advisory**

"However, some things must be said, and there are times when silence becomes an accomplice to injustice."
— Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Today I had an interesting exchange with a reader who found the blog through a Google search for Aisha. She asked me whether I would condemn Islam. When I countered that I wasn't sure, especially considering I have several friends who are Muslim, that I could condemn an entire group of people based on their religious practice, she said I was wrong and that I didn't understand Ayaan Hirsi Ali's book which I so admire, and that I didn't get the real picture. I asked her why and she told me about honor attacks on women, both rapes and acid attacks. I asked her to tell me more. She said that I already had access to more right here in the US and that I ought to pay better attention. She offered to send me some links to prove her point. What she sent me were truly heart-wrenching reminders, an article by Nick Kristof (whose book, Half the Sky, ironically enough, I was rereading while I traveled to BlogHer this past weekend) and a link to a series of photos. 

It is very hard to argue with my correspondent when she sends me to these images. And I bet that there are very few people on the planet who think that any woman deserves what has happened to the women who can be seen in the moving photos here and at All Eyes. But sadly, her point is that there are clearly some people who do, or we wouldn't have human beings who have suffered such horrifying crimes. And those people would likely be, in this case, Muslim Pashtuns who believe they have the right to treat women this way because of some misguided (in my mind) idea about what honor is.

Saira Liaqat, who rejected living with her husband at age 15.

The photo at the bottom, in her hands, is what Saira looked like before her marriage. Saira has had numerous surgeries to look as she does in the current photograph.

Kanwal Kayum, who was burned with acid after she rejected a proposal of marriage.

These women are Pakistani. It gives one pause for thought to think that these women live in a country far more powerful and modern than Afghanistan. You can see the fates of some Afghan women in Women for Afghan Women's video below. Those are the women, like Bibi Aisha, who have managed to survive. It is frightening to think how many may not have.

Even if I cannot condemn an entire group based on a belief system (as opposed to specific beliefs advocated, such as honor attacks or punitive actions for women's crimes which in the West would bear no consequence beyond disdain), I won't forget these women, Nadwa. I won't forget you, and that you live this world every day. Neither I hope, will you, my readers.

While I still think I understand Ayaan Hirsi Ali's message, her books, her passion to show the West the realities of Islam, I don't think the problem of inhumane treatment of women is just an Islamic problem. Floggings, stonings, acid burnings, self-immolations may be tied to Islamic nations, but what about the horrifying and mutilating rapes as war crimes in Congo, sex-trafficking in Brazil and Cambodia and bride-burnings even in Hindu areas of India?

What do we consign women to, in the far corners of the world, when we look away? Can we, as a race, ever move forward if fifty percent of the population is consigned to such horrific treatment as we see for these Afghan and Pakistani women? What about the women of Congo, Cambodia, India, Brazil and so many other places? We all need to safeguard each other. 

I run down the list of the items in WfAW's video and count myself blessed many times over. And I never want to be silent while any women endures any less than what I myself am lucky to have had on that list...

Related to this issue, I direct my readers yet again to Cynical Nymph's post on the French Niqab ban.

Women need to be seen to be equals. And they need not to live in continual fear of being victimized and abused as have all the women in this post and its links for being seen as people with the rights to make choices about their lives as if they are equals.


Note added: I know that several of my readers have voiced their feelings that in the past week, what with the Time cover of Aisha and now the photos of acid attack victims, my posts are getting really hard to look at. Yes, it's true that I'm with the editorial staff at Time, that it's time to rip the veil off the ugliness of what's going on in other places of the world to women who otherwise might be just like you and me. The whole idea of the veil, the niqab, the burka, is an apt analogy. It hides bruises, burns, and so much more.

So on the one hand, I have someone urging me to show more and condemn more, and on the other hand I have several people telling me they can't bear looking at this page lately. (And sorry if I sound snarky when I replied that if you don't like looking at it, imagine living it...)

All I know is that people need to see these images. They need to know. Because it's the only chance of stopping it we, as women, have.

© Bright Nepenthe, 2010

Bibi Aisha

Note added October 15, 2010: Web surfers, you can see the images of Aisha as she looks today here.


I'm sure few readers of my blog will ever forget the haunting face of Bibi Aisha. The August 9th issue of Time magazine ponders the fate of women living under Taliban rule if the US pulls out of Afghanistan. The Afghan government is in negotiation with the Taliban. And who can blame them. Bibi Aisha is reportedly horrified at the prospect.

"How can we reconcile with them?" she asks, touching her face.

As my readers will recall, Aisha's Talib husband cut off her ears and nose because she ran away from his house. Where his family had tried to beat her to death. Her punishment, to be disfigured and left to die, was adjudicated by a local Taliban justice.

How, indeed, can the Karzai government reconcile with a group that condones treatment of any human being in such a fashion?

Time's courageous use of Aisha on its cover brings the plight of women like Aisha to the forefront.

You can read an abridged version of the Time article through the link above. But I encourage you to watch Jodi Bieber's moving short video on photographing Aisha for the cover:

In addition you can see a photo gallery by Jodi Bieber featuring some of the bravest women on the planet- Afghan legislators, dissidents, survivors, here.

Aisha is in the US at present, finally having the reconstructive surgery for which Women for Afghan Women has fought so hard. CNN journalist Atia Abawi will continue to update us on Aisha's progress.

Atia Abawi and Bibi Aisha, CNN

I cannot help thinking of my own daughter, only slightly older than Aisha, and wondering how anyone could harm another human being as Aisha has been harmed. It simply beggars description in my mind.


Safe travels and swift healing to this brave survivor.


© Bright Nepenthe, 2010