Sylvia's Journal

Razia jan manages to get the widest variety of nationalities within the smallest number of people together. There was Salima from Reunion, France and Canada; Malalai from France and Afghanistan; Hamida from Afghanistan and the US, like Razia; there was Nilufer from Afghanistan and Russia, Ashnur from Tanzania, Santwana from India and the US, Marzia from Iran and Afghanistan, myself from Holland and the US, a Syrian-American and then three guys, each with only one nationality (US, US and Scotland). All the men were of a certain age while Razia and I were outnumbered by 20 and 30 somethings.

The first question we ask each other at such a gathering, and we’ve had a few by now at Razia’s, is where are you from and what brings you (back) here. All the stories are fascinating and all the women’s stories even more fascinating. And if you didn’t believe that women, and especially young women are an asset rather than a threat, you’d be cured instantly. Meeting these women that Razia collects around herself makes me proud to be a woman. Such energy, such power.

I take advantage of these rare moments in my life here where I am surrounded by women who are not hiding themselves behind cloth to ask them what their experience is like in this society. I am particularly interested in the perspective of the young Afghan women who have lived and studied abroad. I ask about their fathers because they are the ones that have set them free. I want to know what was it about these men that made them go against the grain of the expectations of their society. Or is it maybe the combination of enlightened fathers and regretful mothers?

When I come home from an evening like this I think change is possible and doesn’t need to take 1000 years. But then when I hear the stories that are written up by the Afghan Women’s Writers Project, I think that maybe 1000 years is more likely.