In Memory of Nadia Anjuman, forward from truevision, Doug

[Guest guest]

Nadia,

You are free

And your death breaks my words

This mute throat of silence

Is choking me,

I am heavy in my heart,

I wear your wounds

Ana Ruiz

11/22/05

truevision

DEATH OF A POET

I am caged in this corner, full of melancholy and sorrow ...My wings

are closed and I cannot fly ...I am an Afghan woman and must wail:

Nadia Anjuman / Afghan poet

The world weeps when a poet dies for poets are lifelines to our collective heart.

Nadia Anjuman was a rising poet in Afghanistan who was recently

apparently murdered by her husband in Herat. The idea of an Afghan

woman writing about love and beauty was an act of courage in a

country where the position of women has not noticeably improved since

the fall of the Taliban to American-led forces four years ago.

Christine Lamb, The Sunday Times, tells the sad story of a voice which

could not be silent in a country whose conservative mindset has not

changed.

Allen L Roland

Woman poet ‘slain for her verse’

Christina Lamb

The Sunday Times / November 13, 2005

SHE risked torture, imprisonment, perhaps even death to study

literature and write poetry in secret under the Taliban. Last week,

when she should have been celebrating the success of her first book,

Nadia Anjuman, was beaten to death in Herat, apparently murdered by

her husband.

The 25-year-old Afghan had garnered wide praise in literary circles

for the book Gule Dudi — Dark Flower — and was at work on a second

volume.

Friends say her family was furious, believing that the publication of

poetry by a woman about love and beauty had brought shame on it.

“She was a great poet and intellectual but, like so many Afghan women,

she had to follow orders from her husband,” said Nahid Baqi, her best

friend at Herat University.

Farid Ahmad Majid Mia, 29, Anjuman’s husband, is in police custody

after confessing to having slapped her during a row. But he denies

murder and claims that his wife committed suicide. The couple had a

six-month-old son.

The death of the young writer has shocked a city which prides itself

on its artistic heritage. It has also raised uncomfortable questions

about how much the position of women in Afghanistan has improved

since the fall of the Taliban to American-led forces four years ago.

“This is a tragic loss for Afghanistan,” said Adrian Edwards, a

spokesman for the United Nations. “Domestic violence is a concern.

This case illustrates how bad this problem is here and how it

manifests itself. Women face exceptional challenges.”

Herat, in particular, has seen a number of women burn themselves to

death rather than succumb to forced marriages.

Anjuman’s movements were being limited by her husband, her friends

believe. She had been invited to a ceremony celebrating the return to

Herat of Amir Jan Sabouri, an Afghan singer, but failed to attend.

Her poetry alluded to an acute sense of confinement. “I am caged in

this corner, full of melancholy and sorrow,” she wrote in one

“ghazal”, or lyrical poem, adding: “My wings are closed and I cannot

fly.” It concludes: “I am an Afghan woman and must wail.”

Afghan human rights groups condemned Anjuman’s death as evidence that

the government of President Hamid Karzai has failed to address the

issue of domestic violence. It is especially tragic because she was

one of a group of courageous women, known as the Sewing Circles of

Herat, who risked their lives to keep the city’s literary scene

active under the Taliban regime.

Women were banned from working or studying by the Taliban, whose

repressive edicts forbade women to laugh out loud or wear shoes that

clicked. Female writers belonging to Herat’s Literary Circle realised

that one of the few things that women were still allowed to do was to

sew. So three times a week groups of women in burqas would arrive at

a doorway marked Golden Needle Sewing School.

Had the authorities investigated, they would have discovered that the

sewing students never made any clothes. Once inside the school, a

brave professor of literature from Herat University would talk to

them about Shakespeare, Dostoevsky and other banned writers.

Under a regime where even teaching a daughter to read was a crime,

they might have been hanged if they had been caught.

I was taken to meet some of these women by Ahmed Said Haghighi,

president of the Literary Circle, in December 2001, only days after

the Taliban had fled. One of them, Leila, said that she stayed up

till the early hours doing calculus because she so feared that her

brain would atrophy. “Life for women under the Taliban was no more

than being cows in sheds,” she said.

Anjuman was part of this remarkable group. After the Taliban fell, she

went to Herat University to study literature. “She was becoming a

great Persian poet,” Haghighi said. Anjuman’s husband was also a

literature graduate. Speaking from prison he insisted: “I have not

killed Nadia. How could I kill someone I loved? We had a small

argument and I only slapped her on the face once.

“She went to another room and when she returned she told me she had

swallowed poison. She said she had forgiven me for slapping her and

pleaded, ‘Don’t tell anyone I have swallowed poison. Tell them I died

from a heart attack’.”

The authorities are sceptical of this account. “One of the reasons we

suspect the husband is he did not take her to the hospital until four

hours after beating her up,” said Maria Bashir, the city’s prosecutor.

 

Although Afghanistan’s new constitution guarantees equal rights for

men and women before the law, its conservative mindset has not

changed.Many women were allowed to stand in parliamentary elections

in September, the results of which were being finalised yesterday.

One of the most surprising results announced earlier in the count was

in Herat, where Fauzia Gailani, a female aerobics instructor, topped

the polls.

The 32-year-old mother of six said she was outraged by Anjuman’s death

and was compiling a list of such cases. “In Islam no one has the right

to hit their wife,” she said. “We hope the government will take action

and stop crimes like this.”

Additional reporting: Tim Albone, Kabul Christina Lamb is the author of The Sewing Circles of