Revolution in the Making
Does her covering honor? Protect? Isolate? One of the first tactics of the invading Soviets was to insist on the education of girls, a move vehemently resisted by conservative village dwellers, whom the U.S. supported as they battled our superpower nemesis. We would do well now to reverse that allegiance. The UN is begging–unsuccessfully–for funds to educate girls in the refugee camps. Nothing fancy. I visit a two-room home: the kitchen four by five feet, and a larger sleeping room. Three families share the space. This hour it’s converted into a clandestine school. I sit in the corner saying little, drinking in the brilliance of fabrics lit by a shaft of window light, mentally sketching profiles of the women's faces. I smile at their smiles, letting their innocence penetrate straight to a core that is pre-literate--pre-verbal, even. Watching their lessons, I consider telling them I teach at a famous university. Then I realize they well may not know what a university is. Such liberation--the irrelevance of my life.
Twenty-five Afghani girls and women sitting on
the mud floor are surreptitiously learning to read, starting with identifying
their names on squares of paper spread out in the center. I venture a
conversation. An adolescent says she’s there "to send a letter
to my father, who's a laborer in Germany." Then I ask a wizened
woman, middle-aged like me, her motivation. She smiles slyly. "To
find out if our local mullah is telling the truth about what the Koran
requires of women."
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