Small in stature, mammoth in bravery: women like Zahra and her Afghan sisters.

Tuesday, 07. 28. 2009  –  by Holly

Safia Amajan

As the number of people who have seen The Stoning of Soraya M. continues to grow (including people who live in countries that might ban the film), I can't help but think of the women I met while living and working in southern Afghanistan.  I wonder what the chances are that they will get to learn about Soraya and Zahra…and what they would say, or feel compelled to do, if they knew their story.

Zahra's clarity of purpose and bravery remind me of one woman, in particular.  In a few months, I will mark three years since I said goodbye to Fowzia Oleumi, one of the most morally courageous women I have ever known. Fowzia is the head of women’s affairs for Helmand province (the land of a profoundly conservative Pashtun culture and source of much of the world’s opium poppy production).

If history offers a clue, the moment I note the anniversary will land in the pit of my stomach, heavy before it lightens and floats up to my chest where it sits, tentatively and indefinitely, clocking time, as if idling in a parking lot of hope. I will refuse to entertain fears of the worst and instead try to imagine that something – luck, Grace, Allah, whatever – has protected her and the others I knew from the forces that seek to keep women invisible and silent.

This October (the same week, in fact) will also see the release of a new book by one of Fowzia’s compatriots, Malalai Joya, titled A Woman Among Warlords: The Extraordinary Story of an Afghan Who Dared to Raise Her Voice. Stephen de Tarczynski’s description of Malalai in this excerpted interview also brings Fowzia to mind — small in stature, yet mammoth in bravery.

Slight as they are, both are living larger lives than many of us because they are compelled to expand beyond the norms that run counter to their soul and to their country’s best interests.

One of my favorite memories of Fowzia was the story she told, with great conviction and a slight smile, on a morning she surprised me with a visit and gifts.

The day before, she had attended a meeting (she was the only women in a room full of mullahs) where the men were attempting to reconcile opium poppy production (which is against Islam, or “haram”), with the dictates of the Koran. As relayed by Fowzia, she stood up, and without mincing words, told the men that they were distorting the words of the Book to justify their own destructive purposes. (The mullah’s rationale involved equating the poor economic conditions in Helmand with dying of starvation, a situation that apparently leaves one some room to kill one’s donkey, an act that is otherwise haram.)

Fowzia’s bold statement to the mullahs was just one of many examples of her truth telling. And she was willing to die for it.

Safia Amajan was Fowzia’s counterpart for Kandahar Province. Just like Fowzia, she had apparently asked for, and been refused, a protective vehicle, or bodyguards, despite repeated death threats. I don’t think I will ever forget the way Fowzia looked and sounded when she came to see me that September afternoon. Though she didn’t need to, she said she wasn’t well … her face was ashen. It seemed her strength was waning along with her faith that real, substantive progress for women would ever truly materialize (and be sustained) in southern Afghanistan.

Safia had been gunned down in front of her own home, and Fowzia was expecting to be similarly killed within days. After a year of spending time with her, it was the first and only time she seemed without hope.

Like Fowzia, Malalai often gets death threats…but I suspect and hope they draw strength from each other's courage. The latter is a virulent activist, some even might say Marxist, but one doesn’t need to completely agree with what she says to honor her conviction.

The conversations inspired by Soraya M. are not easy to have, but there is no place for wallflowers or for fear if we want to be a part changing things for the better. Until women like Soraya, Safia, Malalai and Fowzia are safe to boldly speak and live, there is much work to do.

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