INSIDE PERSPECTIVE - LIFE AS AN AFGHAN WOMAN

Please join me at a rare event where we'll shed light on the current state of life for Afghan women and successful programs that empowers Afghan women with the tools to share their perspectives on life and their needs.

Arrive early at the Second Act Marketplace and grab lunch at the popular Burma Bear with refreshing glass of RAW organic fruit juice and for dessert...have a soft serve ice cream at Eat Well Farm's Icebox. No worries If you don't like burmese—other great lunch choices are Anda Piroshki or Crepe La Vie.

INSIDE PERSPECTIVE — LIFE AS AN AFGHAN WOMEN 

Event Sponsors:

Women's National Book Association 

Afghan Friends Network

&

Afghan Women's Writing Project

 

 

Kate Farrell  — Women's National Book Association, San Francisco Chapter

 

 

Humaira Ghilzai — Co Founder Afghan Friends Network

Write here...

 

Lori Noack — Executive Director, Afghan Women's Writing Project

 

 

 

 

 

Kate Farrell, Women's National Book Association membership, team and goals

Humaira Ghilzai, “Afghanistan’s History, Through Afghan Women’s Eyes”

A pictorial presentation of Afghanistan's recent history and how it has affected Afghan women's lives. Humaira will also talk about her finding during her recent trip to Afghanistan and the state of Afghan women. 

Lori Noack, "Writing for Change:Afghan Women Pen a New Destiny For Afghanistan" 

Lori will discuss the programs of Afghan Women's Writing project and how it's affecting Afghan women's lives. She and audience members will read chosen selections from the newly released AWWP anthology, WASHING THE DUST FROM OUR HEARTS, a bi-lingual collection that covers such themes as marriage, family, love, forgiveness, education and human rights.  

Q&A

 

September 13, 1:00-3:00pm  

Second Act Marketplace and Events  

1727 Haight Street in San Francisco, CA

Event is open and free to the public. 

 

 

WHEN THE MOON IS LOW:ANOTHER BEST SELLER IS BORN

““More than 43 million people worldwide are now forcibly displaced as a result of conflict and persecution, the highest number since the mid-1990s.” ”

— UNITED NATIONS

By Humaira

In her second novel, WHEN THE MOON IS LOW, Nadia Hashimi gives an identity to 20,000 refugees who flee persecution for a better life but suffer great hardship on their journey to the West.

Nadia, an Afghan American, tells the riveting story of Fereiba, an Afghan widow and her three children who flee Afghanistan only to face major obstacles as illegal immigrants passing through Turkey, Greece, Italy, France, bound for England.

Nadia is one of those overachieving people we want to hate but we can’t help admiring. In the past year she has released two novels, gave birth to her third child and oh yeah, she’s also a pediatrician. Nadia's first novel THE PEARL THAT BROKE IT’S SHELL became an international bestseller and I’m confident people will love WHEN THE MOON IS LOW.

Below is Q&A with author Nadia Hashimi about her life as multi-tasking mother of three and best selling author.

HUMAIRA: How did you juggle the birth of your third child and release of your debut novel along with the release of your second book—all within a year?

NADIA: It’s true that 2014 was a very exciting and busy year for us. We were happy to see THE PEARL THAT BROKE IT’S SHELL hit bookstores and make its way to readers’ hands in May.

There’s so much that goes into writing a book and it’s a huge relief when it’s finally “out there.”  We also welcomed our third child in August. It was indeed a long, hot summer!

I attended lots of local book clubs and even went to a very passionate PEARL discussion one month after the baby was born. Since it was local, it was a great way for me to get out of the house and still be around for all those newborn needs.

Once my son was a few months old, I began traveling quite a bit for book events. I rely on the support of my husband and extended family. Everyone really came together to pitch-in when I need to travel or hop on the computer for a Skype session. As the saying goes, it takes a village to raise a child. In our home, it has definitely taken a well-coordinated village to raise our children and publish a book.

HUMAIRA: Give us an idea of what it's like in the Hashimi household on a given Wednesday?

NADIA: Our home on a Wednesday is probably like most other homes. We rise and shine just before six o’clock in the morning and get everyone dressed and fed.

Our two older children go to a Montessori preschool and our little one stays home with the nanny. My husband hits the road early in the morning to head to the operating room—he’s a busy neurosurgeon.

On any given Wednesday, I might be found in my husband’s office where I manage his practice or in the emergency room where I see pediatric patients or in a coffee shop writing, writing, writing. We all come together in the evening for dinner and playtime.

The day draws to a close when my husband tucks the kids into bed and I pull out my laptop to catch up on some book-related work. Thankfully, at night, my husband becomes the storyteller in the family and the kids love it. He manages to field some pretty interesting requests from them so if anyone ever needs a story where a unicorn, a rainbow and a ninja come together on a rocket ship, he’s your guy.

HUMAIRA: Are there some organizations that support illegal, political refugees that do great work?

NADIA: There are quite a few organizations out there that work with the displaced or refugees. I would recommend folks take a look at a few organizations and decide which model or mission appeals most. I also strongly advise using a resource such as Charity Navigator to check on to get an education on the organization before sending money.

Charity Navigator rates nonprofits and provides breakdowns of how much of their assets are allocated towards administrative costs vs programs, for example. The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees is a great starting point as their scope is quite broad (Sudan, Syria, Nepal, Columbia and beyond).

Besides donating money, there are a few other ways to help out. Some folks volunteer to teach basic English or provide driving lessons to the newly immigrated in their local communities. If we look at the problem with a broader lens, there are also ways to help individuals in their native countries. Organizations like SOLA in Afghanistan has opportunities for mentorship of Afghan girls via Skype sessions. By empowering young women in Afghanistan with education and leadership skills, these volunteers might just be putting productive individuals into society and stabilizing the country. A strong local economy with engaged citizens and a government representative of all will be much less likely to create a wave of political refugees.

ALMOND GARDEN-A BOOK OF SILENT TRUTH

““Her body was a prison, her mind was a prison. Her memories were a prison. The people she loved. She couldn’t get away from the hurt of them...The sky felt like a prison.”
― Ann Brashares, Sisterhood Everlasting”

By Humaira

I recently had the honor of meeting Gabriela Maj, a gutsy photojournalist who travelled throughout Afghanistan and gained access to numerous women's prison facilities where she interviewed and photographed over a hundred prisoners for her book ALMOND GARDEN, Portraits from the Women's Prisons in Afghanistan. The project aims to raise awareness about gender in-equality and women's rights issues as well as the human rights violations in the Afghan justice system in which many women continue to be unjustly incarcerated. 

The following is an excerpt from ALMOND GARDEN by Gabriela Maj

SHARI’A, RELIGIOUS LAW INTERPRETED AND APPLIED IN AFGHANISTAN, strictly prohibits zina, or sex between two people who are not married. “Moral crime” is an umbrella term used in Afghanistan to describe all of the possible ways by which a person may be accused of zina. It can apply to victims of rape, individuals accused of adultery, or those who have run away from the home of their father or husband or who have helped someone else to do so.

Running away, not listed explicitly in the penal code, is often interpreted by judges as the beginning of an attempt to commit zina and is therefore also penalized with incarceration. The female prison population in Afghanistan overwhelmingly consists of individuals who are serving 5-15 year sentences for moral crimes. Although the privileges and power bestowed on men in Afghan society are significantly greater than those permitted to women, men can also be incarcerated for zina, as can anyone viewed to have aided in the crime; in this way, entire communities are affected.

Instead of expending the limited resources available to the justice system on tracking and incarcerating victims of abuse, focus should be redirected to responding to the calls of those in danger, to arresting and bringing to justice perpetrators whose violence reverberates throughout Afghan society and affects everyone, and to establishing transparency within the justice system’s own ranks.

As the international community withdraws from the country, it leaves in its wake a population of women and girls who are ostensibly free, at least for the moment, from the brutality of the Taliban. And yet they lack a robust infrastructure within which their basic human rights will be protected. International support for the continued battle for gender equality is vital not only to maintaining the progress that has been made but to the safety and survival of many.

FARESHTE’S MORAL CRIME

Fareshte was alone in the large cell where she slept with seven other women when I knocked on the heavy door at the end of the dim hallway. We sat together on the carpeted floor while her infant son played between us, exchanging a few basic questions through a female translator. I asked which province she was from, what her son’s name was; she asked me which country I had come from. We talked about the summer heat, we noted the fact that we were the same age, and then I asked her, “Tell me why you are here.”

“I was raped by a man in my village,” she responded. “After it happened, there was a jurga [a meeting of elders], and they made the decision to kill me, to stone me to death. My father said, ‘No. If my daughter is going to die, the man who did this should also be killed.’ A letter was written to the police, and I was arrested.”

Fareshte gave birth to her son while in prison. She was later offered a reduced sentence if she would agree to marry her rapist. I asked her what she would do. She looked at me and said, without changing her tired expression or quiet tone,

“If he agrees, I will marry him. What else can I do?”

That first day in Badam Bagh [prison], I met several young women whose lives were completely devoid of the self-determination I had always enjoyed and mostly taken for granted. Stories of unimaginable abuse and powerlessness intermingled with talk of everyday things such as education, lipstick, teething babies and mobile phones. Somewhere in between these jarringly dissimilar threads of narrative, many of which were familiar to me, I found myself stunned in the face of the disparity between us, not on account of the contrast between our lives—there were many differences, and they were significant—but ultimately because of how arbitrarily we had each been dealt our respective hands in life.

Two years after my first visit to Badam Bagh, I was once again in the prison and inquired about Fareshte. During the course of this project there were several women I had the opportunity to meet with more than once, which, beyond being a way that I could gain a deeper understanding of the challenges faced by incarcerated women, was also something I very much looked forward to. I wanted to see Fareshte but was informed that she had been released. I asked if she had married her assailant, as per the offer that had been presented to her by the court the last time I met with her. “No,” the guard responded between loud sips of hot tea without looking at me, “she’s in a women’s shelter somewhere; he did not agree to marry her.” A cellmate of hers recently reported that she had heard Fareshte had been killed by her family, another said that she had fled the country with her son.

“Almond Garden is available for sale at www.almondgarden.net with a portion of the proceeds going to Women for Afghan Women (WAW), an organization that runs shelters, provides pro bono legal support and education to incarcerated women and their children in Afghanistan.”