A new face of Afghanistan is emerging slowly but steadily. Soon you will not only see her beauty but hear her loud and clear. Beautiful, strong and resilient - having suffered war and devastation for so many years , she is somewhat nonchalant in the face of misery and death today but waiting to rise from the ashes like the phoenix...

“What’s wrong with this?”quipped Dr. Anis (single and in her forties) adjusting her khimar, the traditional Afghani scarf, which is supposed to swathe her head, neck, shoulders and chest and make her a nondescript, non identifiable, human.

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“Aren’t you, in India, also supposed to cover your head in the presence of strangers and the God?” In fact, the khimar, as an extended ensemble, looked perfectly natty on her –a lot smarter than the gunghat of the assembled women who had the most befuddled expression on their faces. Having seen only a slice of pre-Taliban life of Afghans, the ones constantly flashed on the TV screen, they were initially only too eager to empathise with Anis. But she turned out to be a surprising revelation. Anis didn’t seem to belong to the race of women who lived hidden under their Hijab, under the strict laws of the Shariat, and in complete anonymity for years.

When she stood up to address the assembly, in this small village in remote Dungarpur, Rajasthan, even the men straightened up their backs to listen to her carefully. “I believe problems of the women are the same everywhere, in the Third World”, she said in broken but perfectly understandable English. “We have to unite ourselves irrespective of our culture and religion and understand that the needs of women will always be different from that of men.”

Amidst thunderous applause Dr Anis revealed the new face of Afghani women who were perfectly at ease in their hijab but ready to bring in a new era of change and growth in their country . As a senior member of the ministry of women’s affair department, Dr. Anis was visiting India with a group of enterprising women from the Badakashan region of Afghanistan to learn how to bring about gender equity through new policies. “You are more organised at the moment and you have more rights. We will learn from your mistakes, take a small step at a time, and make Afghanistan what it used to be in a decade’s time.” The new democratic government and its national solidarity programme (NSP) has ensured that women come to the forefront of all developmental issues and take part as equals in building Afghanistan along with their men.
Incidentally, Badakashan, from where Anis managed to finish her education, is no less remote than Dungarpur. Situated at the junction of Afghanistan, Pakistan, China, India and the former USSR, even the warlords and the Talebs had not ventured into its stark and difficult mountainous terrain. Under Rabbani, this region had seen a fairly peaceful time but felt the pinch of the war all the same. Scarcity of resources and lack of adequate infrastructure has plagued their lives forever. Anis ‘s family support had made it possible for her to be the only woman in her area to be driving around fearlessly, rejecting the hijaab and encouraging open discussions on the state of affairs of the country. Even if Anis’s are rarethey represent the traditionally strong Afghan women who had her own place even in a predominantly patriarchal society.

Today, after 24 long years of war and devastation, there is a sparkle of hope in their eyes. Not just the women, who had seen subjugation in its severest form, the men too, tired of running from pillar to post for mere survival, are eagerly awaiting the new winds of change. Farid, 32, now attached with the NSP, feels there is a perceptible difference already. “During war and drought people were only asking for food. Now they demand schools, health and hygiene, and potable water.” Farid had been one of the 150 students of the medical college, who had to give up their studies in the wake of war and escape to Iran as refugees – only to be among the 3000 men who were displaced without a job or money. While most of his friends resorted to poppy trading and smuggling just to survive, Farid managed to resurface and claim his life. He calls himself a feminist and attributes his broad outlook to his father who had made sure all his children, irrespective of gender were educated and contributed to the society in a meaningful manner. All his sisters were working and so was his wife. It is not strange at all. Other than the Army Day, Women’s Day (on 8th march) is celebrated in a big way even today. Husbands and brothers and sons surprise their loved ones with little trinkets on this day. Farid was taking home expensive chanderi sarees for them this time. “Before the days of the Mujahideen, like any traditional patriarchal society, women were protected and guarded but the Afghan women had a say in all decisions. The local television was vibrant with women as regular news casters,” he recalls.

Zainaab, in her early twenties and the youngest of this group, remembers none of that for obvious reasons. When she was barely 8 years old, her old co-ed school was shut down. She still laments losing all her friends overnight to some “weird change” that she had no power to comprehend at that point in time. Teachers started using the chador to cover their faces to which she took time to get used to it. All her five sisters, however, still went to school- sometimes walking for miles and over an hour to reach the girls’ high school at the other end of the town. The gas light was their lifeline; with the limited electrification available, life was extremely difficult through the long winters. Then she heard rumours that her sisters may have to get married in a hurry. All families with grown up daughters were talking in a hush about the same thing. The news that the Talebs were coming to take over, made no sense to little Zainab. She only remembers an ominous fear surrounding her life all of a sudden. Fortunately, the Talebs didn’t get a foothold in Badakashan and so Zainab managed to study and didn’t have to get married in a hurry.

So much has changed for her since then. Up in an aircraft for the first time she felt a shudder of grief for her loved ones. “The outside world was so different. I had no idea.” Having stepped out from her remote village for the first time, even the paved road from Takhar to Kabul was a novelty. “I had no dreams at one point of time. But now I feel I can make a difference,” she says with the same sparkle of hope that shone from Anis’ eyes after long years of being anonymous, faceless and voiceless. “We have our own problems but we don’t have to fight many other things that are so rampant in India like casteism, untouchability, dowry deaths or such acute poverty”, she says in native duree.

To while their time as they cross the ravines of coastal Gujarat, moving closer towards “the sea” every minute (which many will see for the first time), they play something similar to an Atakshari. They are not used to singing in public so they recite couplet after couplet from Rumni, Saki and others, for hours on end, with amazing alacrity. It’s Hafizi’s turn to say something with “Aa” and he gives his memorable lines amidst loud applause and wah wahs, “Aaagr jaan na hota, Aalam na hota, Aadmi na hota”- Hafizi the group’s translator, in his late fifties, has seen several waves of change. Looking at the girls merrily clapping and laughing, thousands of miles away from their homeland, without a care in the world, his eyes get misty.
“We have lost out on time but not on umeed (hope). This hope will see us through to the new beginning”. Insha Allah it will this time around.