As companies Poetry give women in Afghanistan during a voice Crown Lockdown

On a freezing February morning in Kabul, Lima Aafshid face glowing in the pale blue light of their smartphones. You say the words of the Afghan poet Jalaluddin Rumi, the 13th century. Speaking in Dari, his soft but clear voice. , We put out all the wise people, the words in his mouth. Lets just say that our hearts were Aafshid member Sher-e-Daneshgah begehrt.’In the past six years, the University of Kabul Poetry Association. The group is composed mainly of students in their twenties who are part of the city’s rapidly growing middle class. Your meeting is a trendy, lively bar in Pole-e-Surkh, Kabul vibrant 3rd District. The turbine cigarette smoke around the dimly lit room, as young men and women huddle together and discuss their seal around a small wood stove. “You have poetry in you,” says Aafshid. “It’s not that you can learn only by experience. I have to write since I was a kid, and when I study journalism at Kabul University I started joined Shar-e-Daneshgah of other criticisms of my poetry to arrive.” , says Aafshid that meetings they close team introduced like-minded young people. And while the 19-COVID global technology Pandemic helped make proceed. Afghanistan has 33.908 confirmed cases of COVID-19, and 957 deaths from 10 July or the actual number of cases is probably much higher because of the lack of testing kits. Since March 28, when the Afghan government in the capital blocking measures in an attempt to spread the virus led to Prevent, Sher-e-Daneshgah started virtual poetry meetings hosting and allows its members a sense of community, despite health receive crisis. Aafshid says that virtual groups have proved very popular. “We have a group telegram which now has more than 200 members. In this group we share our poems one day a week, as we have in our face-to-face meetings.” Another informal group of Saped-dar holds a virtual poetry poetry night called on the telegram, in which members to discuss in video combining poetry with different themes per week, of love and war for everyday life. “The group socializing because it created as a place for young and poetry to learn,” says Aafshid. Since the fall of the Taliban in 2001, mobile technology and Internet access in Afghanistan has grown at breakneck speed. A report in 2018 found that the use of more than 10% of applications for social media population is about 0.1% in 2004. A 2019 study found in their household that over 90% of Afghans at least one member, It owns a mobile and 46.3% have an Internet connection. Even before the pandemic, which has been helpful for young women like Aafshid who want to share their perspectives without fear for their safety. Aafshid share their poems on social media with an online pseudonym faced threats on Facebook in the past. “When people started to bother me, I made a cable channel, and now I have my poems not published. I can choose who I can follow and my poems and can see the comments of the telegram people do not leave,” says Aafshid. “Now I’m in control.” Afghanistan remains one of the most dangerous countries in the world for women and ranks 168 of 189 countries in the United Nations Gender Development Index. According to the Women and Children Legal Research Foundation, a Kabul-based group of research interest, nine out of ten women in urban communities, with respect to at least some form of physical or verbal harassment. Despite a peace agreement signed in February between the United States and the Taliban persists violence against women. On May 12, the militants attacked a maternity ward in Kabul, leave 24 dead, including 16 young mothers and two infants. Amid the violence and the blocking insulation, Aafshid says that online poetry groups provide an important means of maintaining mental health. “All men have seen in the war in Afghanistan,” he says. “The poem provides a means for us to reduce stress.” Long before the pandemic, poetry society that led by women, created in underground rooms. Mirman Baheer literary society of women at the national level was formed in 2010 by Sahira Sharif, an Afghan politician, author and defender of women’s rights. Sharif acknowledged that the anonymous community have been one of the few safe routes for Afghan women to share firsthand accounts of their lives. Mirman Baheer meets every week in another secret place for the exchange of experience so that women who would otherwise remain hidden. In rural areas, many women still write in secret, using pseudonyms. Mirman Baheer provides a space for rural women their deepest thoughts through a sort of code of poetry oral Landay called to participate. , originating thousands of years ago, landays are anonymous usually consists of two lines of 22 syllables. A notable example is the poet war Malalai, ‘if you do not fall young love in the battle of Maiwand; When God is someone who has fought as a sign of shame for retten.’Malalai, Afghan heroine who is well known in the second Anglo-Afghan war, this Landay called during the 1880 Battle of Maiwand. Locals believe the Malalai Landay motivated fighters then defeat the British invaders. These days, Mirman Baheer few hundred members aged between 13 and 55 houses in the club on a handful of Afghan cities and provinces including Kandahar, Khost and Jalalabad. Younger poets are mentored by professors and poets. During the pandemic, physical Assembly has become more difficult, but the founders have come up with a solution: live stream on Facebook. Members can log on from the safety of their homes to join the conversation and literary criticism. Pakiza Arezo, a former student of literature who works with the Ministry of Information and Culture in Kabul is now a member of Mirman Baheer the foundation of the group. “Our members are predominantly Pashtun town girl whose family disapprove of her writing and reading poetry in front of men. Their society is more conservative,” he says. “So we formed a unique group of women.” For these women from rural areas who have mostly not access the Internet or smartphones, the participation is still possible. “For women who are not in a position in group discussions in person to join, because of the distance, questions about the safety or the permission of the family, we will hear and discuss their poetry phone,” said Arezo. Azerbaijani says the growing access to the Internet will help transform the prospects of women poets in rural areas and provide opportunities for their long and shared mostly anonymous, when the poet chooses. “Social media has encouraged women to share their ideas and opinions, and one offered space to be more open to women,” he says. Technology has Afghan women the opportunity to share their experiences to share in ways that were not previously available, right Farzaneh Milani, an author and professor of Persian literature and women’s studies at the University of the Iranian-American Virginia . He says the technology has played a key role in the movement for women’s equality in the country. “Although the relations between women and poetry were deep and strong in Afghanistan, the online digital poetry shares a last act of disclosure for women in cyberspace without boundaries,” says Milani. “Give the invisible presence and the voice of the unheard.” In Kabul Aafshid is optimistic about the possibility that the tightness of the rights of Afghan women leads. But they also recognize that the reason social attitudes must move to meet this change. “Women have the right to shape policy to determine the political and cultural landscape in their own country,” says Afshid. To get there, he says, requires Afghan women perspectives are recognized. “Women need to feel safe to share their voice in public. Until then, they are only safe in the anonymity found online and with one another.”
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