writing_womans_lives_symposium_paper_book_v2

In response to the screams of Hamida, Maryam comes rushing out from the kitchen only to find
Osman soaked in blood. At the same time, the father Zalmay comes back and quickly throws the
blame on Maryam for the incident and for leaving the children without supervision. As they rush off
for the hospital with Osman, the daughter – Hamida – has hidden under the family car out of fear
and she is run over. The elder son Sulaiman runs away in the alley.
Education, or lack thereof
All through the collection, there are texts that engage different aspects related to education,
often in a context of exile and rural settings. One such example is the short story – “Hope” – written
by Arezu Kabiri. It is the only story written in Dari and distinguishes itself by having a male
protagonist. The story describes a young man’s struggle for education while sharing the responsibility
for the breadwinning of the family with his father. After many hardships when everything seems to
be going well, the story suddenly changes into the worse. On his way to a job interview, he witnesses
an explosion leaving many people injured or dead. In the almost obligatory sad ending, the
protagonist states despondently, bordering the nihilistic:
Thinking about those mothers who screamed and fainted, about those tens of boys
who wanted to become doctors, who wanted to serve their families and their homeland,
kept me awaken all night. I did not feel like doing anything. I could not eat anything; it was
as if both hunger and thirst had disappeared. I felt hopeless. I did not want to live. Every
night I dreamt, I pictured myself covered in a shroud. 14
Salgey Dzala’s short story “Barred from studying” is generic in some sense. First, it adheres to a
common literary theme in contemporary Afghan writing, and secondly, it clearly communicates a
collective experience in speaking of a lost generation, about the conditions of growing up in exile,
being destitute of education, safety, and a concept of home.
Violence: Home and war
We have already pointed out texts that deal with different types of violence. The story “Legacy”
dealt partially with domestic violence, as did Neda Sapey’s story “Deception of the eyes”, and in the
story “Hope” the main character becomes witness to a suicide bomber. One text that stands out in
terms of literary skills is the story “The world in the hands” written by Muska Sarbaz. The story
centres on a woman who wanders about in what appears to be a warzone, injured and in chock. In a
flashback it is related that her house has been hit by a bomb whereupon the house has caught fire
and collapsed with her mother‐in‐law and baby son still inside. Her breasts are aching since she has
not been able to breastfeed her son over the last three days. The woman then falls in the hands of
some foreign soldiers who abuse and beat her:
[…] she thought that she was about to be pierced by shots.
But no. They would not let her into the embrace of death this easy and fast. And
suddenly they attacked her and began beating her so that her whole body turned red in
blood and the soldiers became exhausted. 15
The woman, together with the two soldiers and a war photographer, suddenly hear a gasping
sound from within some shrubs:
The photographer took a step back and the soldiers put their fingers on the trigger.
“Who is it?” the soldier asked in a foreign language. But no one answered. The soldier
went forward slowly. The woman also moved along slowly together with the soldier. They
saw great many dead bodies around them in the darkness of the night. The woman hid her
swollen eyes behind her hands. When she opened her eyes again she saw a woman and
under the dead body of her was a child. Perhaps this woman was the mother of the child
who had leaned over the child in order to protect her from the shelling. One of the
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