A woman with a burqa in a refugee camp in Kabul, last Sunday.HEDAYATULLAH AMID / EFE
1. At the beginning of this century, when American soldiers began probing the mountains to try to locate in which cave Osama Bin Laden was hiding, and the world had access to images of the trails on which donkeys laden with poppies walked, I got my hands on the translation of an Afghan song.
If the measure and rhythm of the verses have been respected, it is undoubtedly a beautiful ballad.
I can't know what the music sounds like, but the lyrics go like this: “
The sky will fall on us / and I'll still be here to scare you. / Our beards will stop being graying / and our bones will return to the land where they were born / but I will still be here to hinder you. / This sacred land has long ceased to be fertile. / And our women are ugly: / What do you want this territory for then?
"
2. Nor do I know in what year this song appeared, but what can be inferred is that it speaks of invasions, and by not invoking any in particular, they flutter in it from the incursions of Alexander the Great to the occupation of the British, Soviet and American empires .
So the question is pertinent: What do you want this barren land for?
The answer is very simple: because it occupies a strategic position, like a hilly crossroads where the Silk Road used to pass.
To all the invaders, however, the song launches a promise: here we are, vigilant, even after death, to hinder you.
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3. It is a song of resistance, an expression of the stoicism of a people, made up of many ethnic groups at war with each other, but with a common denominator: the union against those who come from outside. However, the romantic lyrics of the song present a crack through which the cat sneaks. That
our women are ugly
. The eyes cannot help but linger on that unusual statement. The Afghan horses and sighthounds may be beautiful, as are the mountains, the sunsets, and the poppy fields, but women are called ugly and that statement enters the song. Surprise and illustrate. Clarifies and teaches. I remember seeing a report by a British journalist who asked an old man why they hid their women under the burqa. The man took two bills from his doublet pouch, one for five thousand Afghanis, the other for ten thousand, and said that his women were not like Westerners, the value of a small bill, those from there were worth much more, that's why they hid them. It is possible that the lyrics of the song mean exactly that, and by stating that his women are ugly,the poet who wrote it wants to hide the beautiful Afghan women at the bottom of his pouch. But it is doubtful. It is an ingrained cultural notion. The common language itself denounces the opposite. A young Afghan, in the face of a bomb attack that blew up dozens of people, outraged at the perpetrators of the crime, shouted:
Cowards, cowards! Women, you are like women!
He didn't look like a Taliban, but someone from the opposite side.
4. Now the Taliban are back in power. Since August 15, when they entered Kabul, driven by the withdrawal of the Americans and their allies. The world does not come out of its amazement. In 1998, the Taliban burned a precious library of 55,000 books with grenade launchers. In March 2001, they destroyed the Buddhas of Bamiyan with dynamite and tank fire. Now, with cell phones and image consultants, they have promised peace, which will allow girls to get an education and women to work. Women do well not to believe them. In certain circumstances, the songs of the past speak louder than the speeches of the future. Between 1996 and 2001, his Sharia forced Afghan women to cover themselves from head to toe, even by force of blows, and to suffer all kinds of abuse like never before. Any desire for emancipation,education, independence, affirmation, identity were reduced to ashes. They were forbidden to laugh in public. So-called honor killings, virginity tests and many other things that make us cry have escalated.
5. That is why Varoufakis's call on the Afghan sisters to resist will prove futile and even perverse if human rights organizations do not demonstrate strength and unity that goes beyond words. The UN must be able to promote concrete actions to save Afghan women and men who, for their part, believed that the West would help them emerge from barbarism. In the coming days, the world, which observes this situation out of control, instead of spending all its ammunition in paying off accounts for the clamorous loss of a cause, must strive to transform this moral catastrophe of the West into a teaching of future actions and in the effective reception of those who want to save themselves from the quagmire that is prepared there. The Earth, now, is one. The distant has never been so close.If the sky falls on them and on them, it will also fall on us.
Lídia Jorge
is a Portuguese writer, winner of the FIL award from Guadalajara (Mexico).
Translation by
Carlos Gumpert.
