By B&TF

On March 8, several Hollywood actresses participated in the “Out Of Silence”: readings from the Afghan Women’s Writing Project to celebrate the International Women’s Day. The event was held at the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles and since I was in L.A. already for the weekend, I decided to attend this program. Several reasons prompted me to change my plane ticket and stay longer for the event, the appearance of Jennifer Beals is only one of many.

Writing has become my passion in the past several years because it’s a perfect outlet for my thoughts, emotions and experiences. When I began writing for www.l-word.com as an amateur reporter, I also discovered my passion for traveling and sharing my experiences with others.

Being Russian was another reason for me to attend this event because of the history between our two countries. I grew up during the Communist regime and I know all too well the pressure of the dominant male society and the restrictions on freedom.

Jennifer Beals canceled at the last moment and I was told by one of the organizers that it was due to a family emergency. It was a disappointment, of course, because Jennifer would have fit perfectly in the group of the participating actors. Nancy Travis replaced her and the stories she read were emotional and poignant and I could see Jennifer reading them in her amazing voice and getting really emotional herself.

When Jennifer was still scheduled to participate, she explained why it was so important to her in the interview to Access Hollywood, “I hope [the audience will be] made more aware of the suffering and the strength of these women from Afghanistan … to be aware that we are incredibly privileged to live in a country that is not as restrictive as Afghanistan. We certainly are more free than women in Afghanistan, but there are certainly restrictions here that if men don’t directly put on women that women will put on themselves. It’s also a reminder that it is incumbent upon us to live as authentically as we possibly can.”

Jennifer herself said so many times in different interviews how important is to be authentic in everything, whether it’s your work or your life and that’s why her participation it this project had been so perfect. But as disappointing as it was that Jennifer had to cancel, the event was absolutely amazing and I don’t regret attending it.

A little about the project: The Afghan Women’s Writing Project (The AWWP) developed as an idea during novelist Masha Hamilton’s last trip to Afghanistan in November 2008 but her interest in Afghanistan and its history began a decade earlier during the Taliban period. Masha saw a video of an Afghan woman in burqa being executed by some men and it was such a horrific experience that compelled Masha to start the project to let the world know about fate of being a woman in Afghanistan.

Masha visited Afghanistan in 2004 and was inspired by the courage and determination of the women she met there. Their country is one of the worst places in the world to be a woman but they all have their own goals and dreams and this project could be one of the steps for the Afghan women to achieve these goals.

The Afghan Women’s Writing Project aims to mentor and provide a platform for the voices of Afghan women, to allow them to speak directly to the world without the filter of their male relatives or members of the media. Many of these Afghan women have to make extreme efforts to gain computer access in order to submit their writings to the project. It takes a tremendous courage for them to do this because of fear of being silenced or bring the violence against them if they will be discovered.

The women submit their writings through the Internet. The project is supported by American women poets, novelists, screenwriters, essayists, memoirists and journalists from around the country who mentor and work in collaboration with the Afghan women in secure on-line classes. The developed work is published at http://awwproject.org. The Afghan women use only their first names or put their authorship as ‘anonymous’ to protect their privacy and keep them safe.

The evening began with the readings from several stories and poems written by eleven courageous young women, each of them sharing their personal, sometimes unique, sometimes similar, experiences. The actors were reading each excerpt individually or in groups while the screen behind them would show some images that in a way correlated with the writings.

The stories themselves were so different and at the same time so similar in their description of the horror and the suffering that is the life of a woman in Afghanistan. There were several stories that made more impression on me than others. One story was about a disabled girl who wanted to go to school but her family wanted her to marry and they lied to her by saying that a young, rich and a handsome young man wanted to marry her. When she finally agreed because she wanted to support her family, she found out that she was married to an old relative of her father who beat and abused her until he had enough and she was returned back to her family. She went to school but she was too depressed to think that it was worth it until she met another disabled girl there who showed her that she can do anything.

Another heartbreaking story was written by a young woman who used a boy named Ahmed as the narrator. The story is about a very close family with two daughters and a few brothers. When Taliban came to power the girls were forbidden to go to school so their father cut the girls hair and sent them to school as boys. One of the girls got hurt and when they took her to the doctor, the Taliban found out that she was a girl and stopped her treatment, even though she was bleeding. The father was warned but he didn’t give up and quit his job to teach all the neighborhood girls at home. When the Taliban found out again what he was doing, they took the father away and the family had never heard from him or about him again. The story was really sad but it still ended on a happy note that because of their father sacrifice, one of the daughters went to the university.

Though I love all the stories, my favorite ones were written by Roya. In her biography it said that Roya is 24 years old. She “was born in Kabul and remained in Afghanistan during the Taliban period. She hopes to continue her education and eventually gain a masters degree. She wants to be a poet.”

I could hear poetry in all of her writings and here’s one of the examples of Roya’s poem.

“Who asks about my identity? I am lost on the pages of history books. Look at my tired face, and the dried tears in my eyes. My first name is ‘Afghan woman.’  My last name is ‘Suffer.’”

It was really amazing to see that in spite of the suffering and abuse the girls were writing about, they still managed to insert humor and hope in their stories. We all definitely take a lot of things for granted and don’t understand sometimes what it means to have freedom.
The program ended with a few comments from Masha Hamilton and Katherine Spillar, Vice President of Feminist Majority, who also held a short Q&A session. I didn’t stay for that last part because a friend was waiting outside already to pick us up.

The AWWP is raising funds to provide all the participants with laptops, and to build Afghanistan first women-only Internet café run locally by SOLA (School of Leadership, Afghanistan). You can all help by donating on-line at http://computers.sola-afghanistan.org so that women writers in The AWWP and beyond can continue to have a voice heard all over the world.