Like many, my heart has been breaking watching Afghanistan. I’ve been thinking a lot the past weeks about what it must feel like for women to be at work and told, at gunpoint, to go home and not return. To suddenly find yourself, like so many sisters, scrambling to find a burka, or perhaps to try and find safe routes to a plane that will take them away from their home, to where-they-don’t-even-know, as they wait for the reassuring sound of wheels folding up as the plane climbs safely towards altitude.
I’ve also been struggling with the outrage and sudden care for the oppression of Afghan women and girls—I’m horrified and fearful for Afghan women and girls and hate to think of what is happening with the return of the Taliban. But there’s such similar oppression that governs many places—Pakistan, Yemen, and Saudi Arabia—where my friend once lived and taught school to girls who were inspired by the women writers she shared with them. I also remember my friend telling me of what it felt like to always need her husband close when she ventured out of their home. I’m also concerned for the women and girls in Iran and places—similar to Afghanistan—have swung from a time that saw women gain a more equitable footing, to only return to laws that forbid women to leave their homes unaccompanied, denied education and work.
The frustration I find myself having with the overwhelming concern for women and girls and refugees that the media is giving us is that it isn’t universal—women and girls and refugees are in huge danger in Afghanistan and we should most assuredly be outraged. But I can’t help but feel that there should be similar concern and outrage that women and girls and refugees around the world are being oppressed, including within our own communities.
When I was in graduate school in Scotland, I was on a long trip south from Glasgow to London—a bus ride, rather than a train, because I was a poor grad student at the end of a semester. I read The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Ann Brontë to wile away the long ride. I was reading it for pleasure, loving the nineteenth-century novel and of course, the Brontës are always high on my list of favorites. But I hadn’t read Anne Brontë’s work up to that time, and I was convinced that she was now the sister whose work I could most identify with at the time—not quite so violent as Wuthering Heights, not quite so virtuous as Jane Eyre—but almost a combination of the two. Wildfell Hall is about Helen Graham, who arrives with her young son at Wildfell Hall, the home she was born in but separated from as she grew up, which is now owned by her brother. Having fled her abusive, aristocratic husband, she stays as a tenant at the hall, rarely speaking to anyone to avoid gossip, while she paints works to sell as a means to support herself and her son. Nonetheless, she still becomes a social outcast and a focus of scrutiny in the village.
I remember vividly finishing the book and not wanting it to end. And I remember feeling naively grateful to live in the soon-to-be-twenty-first-century, thankful that women no longer have to face such oppressive social dictates, sympathizing with Helen, admiring her strength to leave with her son—an act that meant she would have to hide herself, her identity, and her story, lest she be discovered and forced to return to her husband, or worse and more likely—have her young son taken from her.
The semester after I read Wildfell Hall, my flatmates and I welcomed a new roommate from Pakistan, Rubina. It was her first time living in the U.K. on her own, though I believe she had traveled to the UK previously with her family and had a brother who lived in London. One of my favorite memories of Rubina is her laughing face and determined manner as she came home one evening and told us how she decided, on the way home from classes, that she would stop at a bar. She could never do such a thing at home and was curious, so she stepped up to the bar and asked the bartender what’s good, patting the bar insistently with her hand. He thought that she’d like something sweet, so he served her a long island ice tea. My flatmates and I groaned—of all drinks, of course—one of the strongest cocktails. But Rubina just laughed, tipsy and warm, laughing at herself, and proud she had finished the whole thing.
I remember one evening, she had come to talk to me about something and saw I was reading Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie. She loved the book and loved that I was reading it—and also marveled at how freely we were able to have the book in our flat (this was not long after the death warrant for Rushdie was issued for writing Satanic Verses). The conversation led to talk of other restrictions in Pakistan. She shared how her older sister, a doctor, whose husband died unexpectedly, could no longer live alone and practice medicine publicly. Rubina’s sister was essentially forced to move back to her parent’s home—if she did not, there was no way that she could maintain the respect of the community and continue to practice medicine. Rubina also prepared me for her brother and cousin’s visit once, by explaining they will not shake my hand. At their visit when she introduced me, I extended my hand in greeting a bit defiantly, as Rubina and I reasoned it was Scotland, not Pakistan—and the customs are different—but of course they refused it—women are not acknowledged unless they are family. I had never felt the sting of misogyny so bluntly.
I thought immediately of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall—of how little of the public world was left to Helen when she protected herself and her child by leaving her husband. Of how she was looked down upon as a woman artist working to support herself and her son. Of how she had to flee her home and live with her brother, the owner of Wildfell Hall—and of how she had to pretend to be a widow in order to be in some way socially acceptable as a single woman with a child.
All of this is to say I long ago thought I had understood misogyny, having my own experiences of it and seeing examples of it everywhere. But the narrative of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, squared with the story of Rubina’s sister, brought a striking, stark clarity—like two lenses of different colors that once overlain, bring the surprise of the screen reaching out at you: the past isn’t past.
With Afghanistan’s women and girls and refugees so much on our screens, and in honor of those women who have been bold and strong in fighting against a life of submission to oppressive laws, I thought of the Afghan warrior poet who I had read about over the last year—Nāzo Tokhī (نازو توخۍ), also known as Nāzo Anā (Pashto: نازو انا). Tokhī was a poet who wrote in Pashto, the daughter of an influential family in Kandahar. Born in the 17th century, she is considered a warrior poet, remembered in Afghan history as the “Mother of the Afghan Nation.”
Tohkī’s father was the head of the Tokhī Pashtun Tribe and governor of the Ghazni region of southeast Afghanistan, who encouraged her education, and sought to bring learned people into her orbit. She became a well-known intellectual, and gained respect for her knowledge and generosity—one story I found was of her offering food, clothing, and shelter to hundreds of lodgers in winter.
Tokhī was known for her advocation of Pashtunwali—the moral code by which Pashtuns have survived for thousands of years, which predates Islam and continues today. Because of her adherence and promotion of Pashtunwali, Tokhī gained the respect of many, helping her poetry to become well known in the region.
Pashtunwali has been in the news as a counterpoint to the laws of the Taliban, and is struggling to continue. It’s an honor code, more than a framework of laws, and it gives insight into the Pashtun culture that Tokhī was writing in. A primary tenet of Pashtunwali is Melmastia, or hospitality. As Yasmeen Aftab Ali wrote in The Nation:
“Melma” means a guest. However, hospitality is not to be interpreted in the manner a Westerner would interpret it. It means offering hospitality to a guest; transcending race, religion and economic status. It also means once under the roof of the host, a guest should neither be harmed nor surrendered to an enemy. This will be regardless of the relationship between the guest and the host enjoyed previously. In this regard, melmasthia takes precedence over badal (yet another principle of Pashtunwali); so even the enemy who comes seeking refuge, must be granted it and defended against his pursuers.
The list of Pashtunwali tenets is long, but other primary codes include: Badal, vengeance of justice for wrongs—essentially an eye for an eye; Nanawatai (sanctuary), which allows another person to seek refuge in the house of another; Tureh (bravery) means that a Pashtun should always be expected to defend one’s land, family, property; Sabat (loyalty) towards friends, family, and the tribe; Imandari (righteousness)—striving for good with honorable speech and actions; Ghairat (courage/honor) to be displayed at all times; Nang (honor)—to protect the honor of those around you. Respect for elders is also paramount—elders comprise the governing council, and are always to be respected.
Nāzo Tokhī became known for her warmth and care towards all—part of why she became known as “Mother of the Afghan People.” She arbitrated conflicts between different tribes and encouraged Pashtunwali as a means to create a broader alliance against invaders.
When Tokhī’s father was killed in battle, her brother left to seek vengeance for his death, leaving Tokhī in charge of their fortress. When invaders drew near, Tokhī took up a sword and defended the fortress, dressing as a warrior to fight against invading raiders alongside her men. She also reportedly led troops into battle to assist with avenging her father.
She also is known for a collection of 2000-pairs of couplet verse, famous among Pashtuns, particularly:
Dew drops from an early dawn narcissus
as a tear drops from a melancholy eye;
O beauty, I asked, what makes you cry?
Life is too short for me, it answered,
My beauty blooms and withers in a moment,
as a smile which comes and forever fades away.
Nāzo Tokhi had four sons—the eldest Mirwais Khan, better know as Mirwais Neekah, became the founder of an important ruling dynasty. Tokhi died in 1717, at 66 years of age. After her death, her cause was taken up by another woman, Zarghuna Ana, the mother of the Afghan Emir.
A heroine among the Afghan people, several schools for girls, and other organizations have been named after her.
Part of the reason I’ve been researching and thinking about these women writer ancestors is because of the women I find, like Nāzo Tokhi—someone little known in the west, yet her story and her work helps to tell the facets of a nuanced history that is too often presented as one-sided and monocultured.
As we watch the images of the evacuation of thousands of refugees, of women who gave birth on cargo planes as they rose out of Kabul—risking their lives at an extraordinary personal moment so that they and their child can have a chance to escape oppression—and of the women and girls who are fighting for equality and for the rights of women and girls in Afghanistan, I am reminded of Nāzo Tokhi—the warrior woman poet, the mother of the Afghan Nation.
We need more sentences in the world and in history that link those words: Warrior. Woman. Poet. Mother.
Links:
https://www.economist.com/special-report/2006/12/19/honour-among-them
https://nation.com.pk/06-Aug-2013/understanding-pashtunwali
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazo_Tokhi
https://web.archive.org/web/20110915031006/http://afghanland.com/culture/pashtunwali.html
Sankey Margaret D., Women and War in the 21st Century: A Country-by-Country Guide
And for an excellent take on why citing the withdrawal from Afghanistan as the problem, the always insightful Ezra Klein in the NY Times this morning.