Veiled by Amy Scheer
In 1984, National Geographic photographer Steve McCurry visited a camp for refugees fleeing the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. There he captured on film a now world-renowned image: a beautiful young girl draped in red, tattered cloth, her piercing green eyes a window into the suffering of her country. The magazine’s cover of the “Afghan Girl” haunted the world’s soul.
When McCurry traveled again to Afghanistan 17 years later, he found and photographed Sharbat Gula, now a woman in her late 20s. In the new photos, she appears distrustful of the camera. Her eyes, still penetrating, tell the story of living through the Soviet conflict and Islamic fundamentalist Taliban rule. The fiery resolve remains, but her skin and heart have hardened, as severe and unrelenting as the deserts and rugged terrain that surround her.
A Woman’s Life
Afghan women have borne the brunt of their country’s past three decades spent in war. By the time the Soviets withdrew their troops in 1989 after a decade-long conflict, nearly 1.5 million Afghans were dead, leaving 98,000 Afghan women widowed and unprepared to support their children.
In 1994, a group of religious leaders, or mullahs, formed the Taliban to bring order and religious orthodoxy to their society. Their strict edicts, often enforced with violence, targeted women most harshly.
The Taliban enforced purdah, or the seclusion of women, particularly from men. Keep a woman indoors—no school, no job, no interaction with society—and she’ll be sure to obey religious law, they deemed. If she must go outside, cloak her in a chadri or burqa, cloth garments covering her from head to toe.
Devastating and sometimes fatal consequences followed such rules.
Women needing health care could be treated by a male doctor only if accompanied by a male chaperone; even then, the doctor had to examine them through their clothing, making surgery impossible.
Two to a hospital bed, women delivered babies on the floor. Last year, according to United Nations statistics, Afghanistan had the second-highest maternal mortality rate in the world, and the average life expectancy of an Afghan woman was 44 years.
There is no mention of purdah or chadris in the Koran or Hadith, a supplemental record of the words and works of the prophet Muhammad; in fact, Islam grants equal rights to men and women in religion, education and society. The widespread human rights violations against women in Afghanistan cannot be blamed on Islam, then, despite the Taliban’s alleged orthodoxy or Western perception otherwise.
Rather, a strict societal code, in place long before Islam spread into Afghanistan in the mid-seventh century, governs women’s daily lives, even beyond the fall of the Taliban in 2001.
When a woman experiences domestic abuse—a phenomenon rampant in Afghanistan—she has no recourse, as authorities are reluctant to betray cultural norms and displace a man as head of his household. In despair, many women resort to self-abuse: setting themselves on fire.
“We have no permission to leave the home so no one [to turn to],” one Afghan woman told Amnesty International. “We can’t even tell our mothers and fathers, community or mullahs. If we do, they will take our children and our husbands will leave us.”
Poor Options
That the woman considers the absence of her abusive husband a disadvantage points to the equally troubling alternative to violence: poverty. Without a provider for her family, she’ll be poor but prohibited from working, left to beg in a burqa. Some impoverished families sell female children as young as nine, as a child bride brings a good price.
Lori*, director of a non-government organization (NGO) with a presence in Afghanistan who spoke to Northwestern writing students last fall, saw firsthand how poverty compels Afghan women to fend for themselves at the expense of others.
While living in Afghanistan from 2003 to 2005, Lori and a co-worker facilitated classes in reading, tailoring and computer skills for Afghan women. The tailoring students met with boys from a local orphanage, measuring their dusty limbs and making new clothes to replace their rags. The boys were thrilled to their toes, which were covered in new shoes sent by Lori’s home church.
Smiling proudly in their new outfits, the boys didn’t know they were missing items intended for them. Their teachers, women who worked long hours in the orphanage for little pay, saw the injustice of leaving behind their own six or eight children to care for these orphans inundated with gifts. The women took what they felt was rightfully theirs and their children’s: donations designated for the boys.
This mentality, while shaped by war and poverty, must also be viewed through the eyes of Middle Eastern culture. For example, it’s difficult for Westerners to comprehend that some women prefer to wear a burqa, yet one survey reported that 75 percent would do so even if given free choice. (Gula, photographed by National Geographic, calls the burqa “a beautiful thing to wear, not a curse.”)
And it’s especially problematic to follow the reasoning of a fairly liberal Afghan man who mentioned to Lori that he couldn’t swim. When she asked what he’d do if his wife were drowning and another man could save her, he said, “I would not let anyone touch her. I would jump in and drown with her.”
Responding Despite Risks
In light of these attitudes, offering aid to the people of Afghanistan seems naïve at best; dangerous, too, for all involved, as attested by recent artistic efforts to expose the plight of Afghan people.
As a precaution against potential repercussions for enacting a homosexual rape scene, the young Afghan boys in the film The Kite Runner were removed from their country. The nonfiction book Kabul Beauty School reportedly put its female subjects in danger once copies of the book began circulating in Afghanistan.
Yet help must be offered, says Lori, whether it be finances and prayers from afar or aid face to face. “These are women who will someday hold key positions in education and religion,” she says. “It’s important to invest in their country, to instill in these women value and significance.”
Key to effective work is integrity, says Heather, a Northwestern alumna who worked with an aid organization in Afghanistan and other predominantly Muslim countries.
“People tend to respond to you better if they see your character in action,” she says. “It is so important that our help is empowering, not domineering. It needs to be driven by the people who live in the country so that it is culturally relevant and sustainable.”
Heather uses her love of sports—“a language in itself”—to forge relationships with foreign women; she’s helping create a women’s fitness center in Afghanistan this spring. Northwestern English professor Deborah Menning’s classes, which created a writing project for the adjoining women’s center, are raising funds to furnish it with equipment.
Relationships between organizations make a difference, too. Short-term relief trips are often too brief to accomplish much, but when groups or individuals connect with a long-term presence in a country, the benefits add up. “We’re in it for the long haul,” Lori says of her NGO.
When she sees a woman of 60 write her name for the first time, she knows it’s worth it.
Since the Taliban’s fall, “women have not witnessed a significant improvement in their abilities to enjoy their human rights,” according to Amnesty International. Organizations such as the Ministry of Women’s Affairs are active again, yet the Taliban—out of power but still in existence—continues to wreak havoc for women.
Ninety of the 224 schools created since 2001 have closed due to safety concerns, according to a National Public Radio report. Reemerging Taliban have threatened, kidnapped and killed teachers of female students.
Yet day after day, the girls and the teachers weigh the risks and keep coming to school.
Bridges of Hope
This generation of young people just might push past the burdens their mothers bore. The orphan boys whose teachers stole from them? They’re learning gratitude. To thank Lori and her co-workers, they presented them with naan, a round flatbread, and a single onion, the only gifts they had to give.
“I think so often we are on the threshold of the Kingdom of God, and all that stands between things staying the way they are and the Kingdom being ushered onto the earth is someone building a bridge to get there,” says Heather. “This perhaps is the role of every believer—to stand on the earth, but to see something beyond the earth and live for that.”
To see beyond the earth, and past the veil. 
To help Afghan women, write to
*Names of people and places have been abridged to protect those who work in volatile areas of the world.
Sources for this article include Afghanistan by Jeffrey A. Gritzner, Afghanistan Online (www.afghan-web.com), Amnesty International, National Geographic, National Public Radio, The New York Times, andUnited Nations Development Fund for Women.
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