I hold my bag close to my chest. Inside are two small notebooks—one for class notes, the other for the personal reflections I write each day—along with my box of pens, comfortably settled in my backpack. Pens through whose tips life begins to flow for me. And sometimes, the chador… the chador that, just a few minutes ago, I pulled over myself and put on. A chador that I—and many of us—have been required to wear. I must have it with me whenever I leave the house, otherwise taxi drivers will not let me get in; and even if they do, they will drop me off before reaching the intersections and squares. The drivers do not care if only a few minutes remain before your class begins. Even if the place is not well known, even if these days studying seems to bring little benefit—everyone says studying will bring you nothing!—still, it is a lesson, and seeking knowledge is a duty for both women and men. They will still make you get off, even if half of your one-hour class will already be gone.
My sister sits beside me, withdrawn into herself. After her early burst of tears, she now looks outside silently with eyes still somewhat red. She has grown up—more than before. She no longer cries for hours over something that has hurt her. At most now she cries for five minutes, perhaps less. Maybe she continues crying inside herself; after all, that is one of the side effects of growing up.
I take my gaze away from her and turn it to the chaos outside the taxi window. Before my thoughts return to the woman who made my sister cry, they wander to another woman—the one the driver forced to get out halfway because she was not wearing a chador. The poor woman had just returned from Iran. The driver said he could no longer bear to see his son go without water. When he said this, he had shouted at the woman. His son was the assistant driver, helping passengers get in.
And that woman had been dropped off exactly four intersections before where she needed to go. She did not even know the place well. Now, as we move farther away from where she was left, I silently pray that the man who stopped his car and let her get in will take her safely to her destination—even without a chador.
A few minutes earlier, when we got into the taxi, we pulled our chadors over our heads.
An elderly woman—who spoke as if by doing so we had insulted the grandmothers of some distant past—said with regret:
“If only you feared God as much as you fear His servants!”
For a few moments I was stunned by what she said, and so was my sister. Out of respect for her age we kept quiet, but it was unfortunate that she continued speaking. Because as she went on, my sister and I—fully covered—felt as if we were standing there in the most uncovered state imaginable.
I was so ashamed. It was so difficult for me to understand that someone of my own gender could attack and judge us so harshly.
At that moment, silence would have been a form of self-harm. I said:
“Look, dear aunt, there is nothing wrong with my sister’s and my hijab. We read the Qur’an, we study Islamic culture in class, and we understand our religion and our hijab.”
But she did not soften her words. She said again:
“You call this hijab? This chador belonged to our grandmothers. This is the real hijab.”
At that moment all I could say was:
“But aunt…”—I called her aunt partly out of frustration and partly out of anger—
“our grandmothers didn’t ride in cars either, because cars didn’t exist!”
My words startled her for a moment, then angered her.
“The devil has done a good job climbing onto you girls,” she said, and then continued with other words until suddenly my sister burst into tears and said:
“Please, aunt, please forgive me for saying this, but please be quiet—please stop. You are one of us. How can you do this?”
Her crying filled the taxi. Another woman sitting near me tightened her chador around her throat and said softly:
“Modesty and shame are good things too.”
At that moment I felt a terrible feeling toward that taxi, its walls, even the streets of the city. I felt alone. As if I had no existence, as if I were nothing. My sister cried for a few minutes and now sits silently, waiting for our destination.
Before getting off, that elderly woman apologized to my sister for making her cry and kissed her on the head. But some words, as they say, remain forever on a person’s heart.
Her hands, like her face, were full of the wrinkles of passing time. It was not really her fault. She was not entirely to blame for what she said. We came from different worlds. She had grown up with the idea of the chador—deeply etched into her life—and with beliefs that belonged to her own time.
We were people from different worlds under the same Afghan sky. Across the borders, such differences in ideas might not show themselves so openly. But in our homeland they appeared in the clearest possible way. Ideas, opinions, judgments—there were so many. Eyes that looked outward only from within their own world.
The taxi stopped and cut through my tangled thoughts.
That woman left us with a deep lesson for later years: that it is not only patriarchal men who keep us away from society—sometimes it is women… sometimes patriarchal women.
I step out. My chador slips from my shoulders down to my waist. I cross the street quickly—what people in my city call “running like a stray bullet”—and on the sidewalk, in front of men and women, I gather the chador around me, hold it in one hand, and head toward the pedestrian bridge at Cinema Square.
I am late again. We run up the stairs. Yes, the place where I study is not a government institution, but it is still a place of learning. And now, standing on the bridge with a chador in my hand, I walk toward class so I will not fall further behind than I already am.
These days even learning first aid is a great blessing.
My hijab, my scarf, and the chador in my hand are caught by the wind. People’s eyes slide toward the chador I carry. And together we all tell a quiet lie—saying that wearing the chador is simply obedience to religious enforcement.
Bahar Karimi is a student in Afghanistan’s Herat province who was left behind after universities were closed to women.
The writings published in this section do not necessarily reflect the views of Amu TV.
