KABUL: Nouria Anwari took off her burqa on Saturday. She says she will not put it back on again. She is not alone. With a thousand other women of the women’s organization that she heads, she will no longer wear the all-encompassing veil the Taliban prescribed for all women.
The burqa has no longer been compulsory since they fled here, but women of marriageable age still wear it all the same. In the streets of the city last week it was almost impossible to see a single adult woman who had cast it off.
In private, where they feel comfortable, women will lift their veils, even in the presence of men. And they are confident enough to do so in places where there is a large female presence - in government offices like the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs, or in the offices of the women’s associations or schools. When they enter a building the burqa is hauled off with a quick flick and put into a handbag. When they leave it is slipped on again.
Last week women were still shopping for the veil, though stalls in the main market reported that sales of 55 to 60 a day under the Taliban had almost halved. Now Anwari and her women plan to challenge all this. Except for Anwari, who spent much of the Taliban era in exile in Pakistan, most of the women are embarrassed to make eye contact with the male journalists who have intruded on their meeting.
But why is it, we ask her, that the women did not take off the veil with the passing of the Taliban? It is a question that Najib, a Westernized young man, has been asking of his girlfriend, Marija. “For all of the Taliban period,” he tells us, “she complained to me about wearing the burqa. But now when I ask her if she will take it off, she tells me “No”, she does not want to be noticed as the first.”
The issue has been identified by Anwari as one of the reasons why the women here, Afghanistan’s most cosmopolitan city, have still not taken off their burqas.
“There is a problem,” she says. “Five years under the Taliban have affected people psychologically. Both men and women. People have become accustomed to the veil. If women remove it, men stare at them and the women feel somehow exotic. No one wants to be the first.”
It is the same answer that one gets from all the women that are interviewed. They would like to take off the veil, they say, but five years of the Taliban make them feel too self-conscious to do it. So now Anwari’s organization intends to force the issue.
“We have around 1,000 members and women working in the kindergarten association that I also head. As of Saturday, we are asking all our members to take off their burqas.”
“You know,” says Warasa Rezaye, one of the women at Anwari’s meeting, “it really is quite unbearable. Wearing the burqa makes you feel less than human. I haven’t removed the burqa yet because I did not want to be the first.” Rezaye says she tried to take off her burqa last week, but felt too intimidated to continue with the experiment.
“I went to a reception at the government offices and I saw women queuing to go in without their burqas. It made me feel so happy, so I took off my burqa and put it in my purse. But then after ten minutes I felt that people were looking at me and I felt too exotic, so I had to put on the burqa again.”
While speaking with Rezaye, one notices that she is one of those who finds it difficult to make eye contact. Her gaze slides to one side and she blushes when one looks at her.
When explained to her that one does not mean to be rude, but that in the western culture it is polite to make eye contact when speaking, she is also asked if it embarrasses her.
“It is part of the reason that it is difficult to take off the burqa,” she says, smiling and trying to hold eye contact. “In five years we have not had any eye contact with men in ordinary circumstances, so when they make eye contact now it makes me feel embarrassed. I am not narrow-minded. I used to work in a school with male colleagues and I got on with them fine. It is the Taliban that did this to us.”
Does what the Taliban did to women make that make her distrustful of men in general? She pauses for a moment to consider. “Yes,” she finally answers: “I do think five years of the Taliban has made us distrustful of men. And that is also the reason for not taking off the burqa.”
On Saturday, at the headquarters of the kindergarten association that Anwari also heads, hundreds of women crowded the offices, most arriving in their burqas, which they discarded when they entered the office.
Most were former kindergarten teachers - sacked by the Taliban - coming with their papers to petition for jobs under the new interim administration. There are men in the building and - en masse - the women are not embarrassed. It is only when they have to leave that they quickly slip on their veils.
In the crowded office an assistant is taking details of the women’s pre-Taliban employment. At first they come in dribs and drabs and then a crowd of women storms the office, waving their petitions.
Jamila Waziri, her burqa draped across her shoulders, shows her identity card from the pre-Taliban times when she was a teacher. The picture shows a woman with neatly coiffed hair in a smart modern outfit.
So why, does she still wear the burqa? “I can’t remove the burqa until I am working and earning money,” she says. “When I can afford to buy a uniform, then I will feel comfortable about taking the burqa off.”
As the women explain it, they feel the need to be able show a clear identity, associated with an official role, to be bold enough to reject the veil.
Outside stands Farida Wahab. As other women are pulling on their veils she walks past us in a plain black headscarf and a sober dark ensemble. It turns out to be the uniform of a kindergarten teacher. Wahab is unusual. She took off her burqa two days after the liberation of Kabul. Her family and her employer - Anwari - gave her permission to do it.
But she draws a social distinction. “It is more difficult for women who do not have access to a car to take off the burqa. If you are forced to walk about the city, you feel more exposed,” she says.—Dawn/The Observer News Service.