Afghan Fashionistas

Afghanistan hasn't always been an Islamic Republic, hasn't always been the enclave of the buqua-clad ( neither was it Taliban who initiated this.) In the 1970's women in Kabul wore mini-skirts and bouffant hairdos similar to their western counterparts. The King ordered women to remove the veil.

Most Afghan smaller airports have a section reserved for women so when the guys from American Voices and I traveled from Herat back to Kabul, I knew we we're in for the long haul (average wait time can be 5 hrs). So as not to draw attention to myself, I go sit with the women. Plus it's more fun. At first I draw as much attention from the women (western women still a curiosity in most places outside Kabul). I can usually get a conversation going if I pull out my knitting. By the time the plane finally arrived we'd all shared chicken lunch brought by three older women.

I've long appreciated Afghan women's fashion efforts in spite of the burka. From knitting I progress to requesting photos of footwear which they find curious, slightly charming and are happy to oblige. Forget unpaved muddy roads. Most women wear spike heels. If they're not in high heels , they still have some kind of flashy footwear and it doesn't stop with the shoes. The long white hand made lace fringed pants above the high heels are their version of underpants and are required (no bare legs!). Underneath the burqua there is almost always at least a sequined skirt.

My first visit to Herat I didn't notice that ALL women on the street wear hijab (the long black cloak worn by Iranians (this is only true of Herat where Iran maintains a heavy hand) though Heratis do have their own unique patterned version. Herat is way more conservative than Kabul where women are almost modern in comparison, where many only wear a scarf to cover their hair. (In other ways Herat allows more freedom, at least for western women, where Embassy women drive their own cars alone!)

Eyebrows. Khaled our main translator told me my translator, Fatemah is married when I knew for certain she is not. If you've plucked your brows it means your married! Turns out she intentionally plucked her brows so men would not harass her.

Afghan Voices 2011, Willow Springs, North San Juan, CA March 30, 7:30 PM

One of the highlights of my work with the Simorgh Theater Company in Herat was Dancing! It began with my playing some songs from my Itunes to accompany warm-ups and it progressed to asking the boys to leave so the girls would feel free to Rock Out! I'm not sure they have access to YouTube (their electricity is off for weeks at a time) but these girls in the photo who form the core of the company asked to show me something they themselves choreographed to a popular hip hop song. They never had a class with Michael but he saw them and was surprised to find he thought they were better than the boys

Michael's class, Mazar

YES Academy Thailand 2010 Hip Hop 2

This is Michael's hip hop class in Thailand. I'm the only woman in the one in Mazar.

Simorgh Theater Co (me and Monireh center)

Grama, sheep and wolf (some things never change)

Al Ansari orphanage girls and their puppets

Dance/NO (continued)

I fell asleep writing the last post.

At that point the dominoes began falling. The consulate person in charge was saying the last (and best) play couldn't go on and I should cut the piece that was at that moment on stage (Women in Black) and Monira, Simorgh's fabulous director rightly threatened to take the whole company and leave. The orphanage girls with their puppet play were totally nixed-because by then it was getting dark and girls need to be home by dark.

Michael's hiphop guys and the 4 year-old stick dancers had already been shut down earlier by the Council of Mullahs who wrote to the Minister of Culture declaring that if there were any dancing onstage all cultural events would be banned for a year. They said it was because the time coincided with the departure of the Soviets and it would be wrong to dance on this occasion. ( and also, Iran runs the ship in this town).

Ironically, there was plenty of dancing onstage by all of the ensembles that managed to perform: The boys showed off whatever hiphop skills they had learned in their school play; Women in Black is kind of a tone poem with women in black veils swirling around and Grandmother's Memory has girls showing off their dancing skills.

I managed to get the last play on before they shut us down. Grandmother's Memory is a brilliant little tour de force created by its teenage cast about an old woman recalling her youth to her grandaughter and going back in time to intervene to insure she was the prettiest, smartest, best dancer, flute player, rubab player and got the cutest guy.

The event seemed to be more than a little about what good works the US is doing; culture for the Afghans but the US better approve by their own standards. It was all in Dari (except for brief descriptions from me) and so the Americans missed some of the jokes, all of which the Afghans seemed to love. The disappointment of the orphanage girls was heartbreaking but it may yet be pulled from the ruins.

Back at the hotel the hip hop boys performed for us and two people from the consulate including Monique, the Political Affairs Officer – she's great and gets what I was trying to do. She and I topped off the evening by doing the stick dance with 2 hip hop boys (their idea)! And I've hooked her up with my translators Susan and Fatimah (so taken with the orphanage kids and our time there that they have planned to go there regularly) to bring the orphanage girls to the consulate for a private performance.

Dancing/NO

Me and my two exceptional translators, Susan and Fatimah, taught these four year olds to do the traditonal Afghan stick dance (I wrote about the inspiration for this a few days ago-one of the many serendipitous occasions of my time here). The girls worked very hard for the Friday performance that was to be attended by all the other orphanage girls ( also scheduled to perform), Simorgh students and their families, and the US consulate members with big hair (our funders)-about two or three hundred people.

Not much went according to plan. Susan and Fatimah went early to the market on Friday morning to buy dresses and costumes for the older girls who were going to perform an original puppet play they had created. The program was set to begin at 3Pm with the bands Gene tutored -they were about an hour late. Next up was the Simorgh Theater Company, the group of young actors I worked with primarily for the ten days we were in Herat. The core group is brilliant, about 5 twelve and fourteen year olds and a few older girls. The whole group numbers about 30 with ten boys. The boys created their own play, a slapstick scene in a classroom in which they got to try out the hip hop they had learned from Michael. The scene created entirely by the boys opens with two of the younger ones, Jafar voicing a moose marionette and Mustafa, the voice for the brown bear hand puppet arguiing who is the better dancer the Moose or the Bear. They were suddenly up first because the music for the first play hit a snafu Jafar got his moose (thank you, Alaska) marionette tangled up
(to be continued)


(Note: for good photos of Herat, check my blog post March, 2009)

Al Ansari orphanage girls, Herat

Diana, filmmaker and Shia Law protest organizer

Mazar

March 15
After spending two days in Afghan airports, we arrive in Mazar on Sunday on the second try. Baggage claim vies with Herat for most primitive-all rock and sand and one must walk at least a mile to reach the taxis though there is a sidewalk for part of the way! (imagine a sidewalk in the middle of a moonscape)

Mazar is like an armed camp. I haven't left the hotel since I arrived (most of you know this isn't like me). This week is the Afghan New Year and here is where all Afghans like to spend it: the city of 300,000 becomes one million.

Yesterday was the first day of my women's writing workshop. Diana and Malik accompany one of the writers, Sada, a famous Afghan poet. They are making a film about remarkable women in Afghanistan. I am teaching the students to write a monologue and as an example, I read one written by my American University student, T, about the protest of the Shia Law signed by Karzai (see blog entry for March 2009). Diana, the filmmaker, is the one who organized the protest.

Eight more women come to today's workshop but only to tell me they cannot continue; people will speak disapprovingly of women entering a hotel. They ask me to come to them. But I had decided I wouldn't leave the hotel for above reason. I tell them yes.

They are mostly poets and ask me to read one of mine. Only one coincidentally comes to mind that I have memorized. (If Afghanistan has a national fruit , it is pomegranates):

Maria Elena Cruz Varela (a Cuban poet jailed by Castro)

Boxes of fruit hoarded away.
How can fruit be hoarded?
It will rot.

I have never eaten pomegranates.
I don’t know if I like their taste but
Yes I like their ripe red color ,
their seeds enfolded in slippery purple.

How do I know this Maria Elena Cruz Varela?
Your name is like pomegranates
Ruby ripe red
Your words are seeds of life
hoarded away, allowed to rot
My tears are purple envelopes
holding the seeds of dreams slipping away.

When my grandma was alive,
we didn't hoard fruit.
We gave it away.

Mazar i Sharif -children's theater

Recurring Themes

Since returning to the land of my imagination to teach theater to young women and boys I've noticed that no matter the improv, exercize or game, the little and larger heads turn up turbaned. These four very little girls live at a girl's orphanage in Herat on the Iranian border of Afghanistan. We were playing a game where you create a scene using a scarf; it can be a magic carpet or superwoman's cape or dog leash. It became all those and about 15 four year olds in the audience began wrapping their heads with their head scarves turban style. One of their 14 year old sister orphans: "All women in Afghanistan want to be men." So much for International Women's Day. I'm teaching a professional theater group in the morning and at the orphanage in the afternoon and many many of the scenes and skits they've created since I've been here have included at least one turbaned character and often a whole cast to of them.

My first especially thrilling day here was with the morning theater group. I turned on some rock and roll and reggae, etc. I had to send the boys out (there are about ten boys and 25 girls) and then these young Afghan girls really got down and rocked out ((recalling one of my own greatest experiences as a teen - discovering R&B). Years ago I studied Hula and remembered we used bamboo sticks to provide rhythm so I went to the bazaar (market) to buy some. Turns out there is a traditional wedding dance by women using sticks and it was more than easy to find them. Days earlier I had bought a drum in the bazaar. Between the drum and the sticks both the girls in my morning theater group and the orphanage girls went wild and provided my second thrilling day. Only problem of course:. Herati Islamic tradition doesn't approve. The neighborhood, even the Government (it's a small town of a million or so ) came down hard on the Director of the orphanage and she was forced to disallow the drum and sticks. Says she: "Afghanistan, it's like a prison sentence for life."

Imagistan Redux