Saharsh Week 1: A Voice Silenced

 

 Afghan women wearing burqas in public - New York Times

If I was to tell you that you were to wake up tomorrow and the language and parts of your identity no longer are yours to choose: your voice, your self-expression, and your education, all gone. Everything that defined you stripped away, and you were powerless to do anything about it. 

Not because you failed. Not because you lacked ambition. Not because you lost sight of your dreams. But because someone else decided that you are no longer entitled to pursue them. 

The school you were supposed to attend no longer exists. Your childhood aspirations must be forgotten. The streets you roamed as a child are no longer yours to navigate freely. The choices that build your identity are taken away until there is nothing left that is truly yours. Now, what would you do? 

This sounds like a nightmare, a world where our identities are taken away from us one part at a time. Millions of Afghan women and girls do not have a choice; this is the reality that they live in. 

Identity is often thought of as your name, culture, personality, or the things you like. But identity is built through choices we make, careers we pursue, people we meet, and even places we go — which play a role in who we become. Identity is also shaped by language — the words we choose to express ourselves and tell others who we are. When people lose the choices they make and language, their identities no longer belong to themselves. 

For Afghan women and girls, the Taliban regime has imposed restrictions on education, employment, public spaces, traditional roles, and many other aspects. A girl who once had a dream does not have opportunities to pursue it. Many aspirations stay with the women throughout their lives, but are silenced and denied the freedom to chase them. 

Their silencing is not present only in Afghanistan. Language barriers prevent their sentiments from reaching an international audience. A woman may show fear or anger in writing, only for it to be censored or lost in translation. Her stories are not spread worldwide in her own voice. Her individuality expressed in her writing is not truly hers, rather a translator who may change the essence of the words for appeal to the greater audience. The language barrier goes both ways, as women in Afghanistan are unaware of figures and audiences supporting them all across the world. The figures that young girls could look up to are barred by the language gap between the countries. 

We live in a society where we take our freedoms for granted. We have the opportunity to go to school and the freedom to be in public places by ourselves. We should not only appreciate these freedoms, but speak out for those that lose their freedom. When someone loses control of basic choices and their language, they lose control of their own identity.