Panjshir in the Mirror of Civilization

(Part Ten)

Written by Salar Azizpour

Translated by: Abdul Ali Faiq

In the cold age, dark time ,gloomy period and misery condition which we were living, in the time of the war which was imposed on our nation and the time of constant resistence against aggressions and occupations , in the time of ignorance and illiteracy , in the time of sadness and bitterness, and the time of poorness and sickness ,we did not have any educational facilities or equipments that bring up our emotional satisfaction and responds our literary and immaterial society which quench our spiritual thirst and hunger and extinguish (quench) our sadness and aloneness .We were reading only some poems in the night which is called (Shab Nama) and keep that poems heart to heart and copy them and circulate them to our relatives and friends across the villages and boroughs.

Subsequently, we understood the atrocity of our history, society and regimes, we found the light of reality and the games which was played beyond the seen, slowly but surely, we realized the torch of realism. In that time, I was faced by a book in the name of Dasht Qabeel (Qabeel desert) which was a great guideline for me, which enlighten the way of happiness and glories to us. Actually, I did not understand who is the creator or writer of that book (Qabeel Desert), after a while, I found that the writer is Mrs. “Spojmai daughter of Abdul Rahof Panjshiri.”

Mrs.Spojmai Zaryab is a great poet, writer, lecture and academic figure. She is from Panjshir was born in Kabul in 1949. (*)She explained herself “I owe my love of books to my father. He was fascinated by the heroic side of France under the Occupation, during the Second World War. So naturally, when I was six he sent me to the Franco-Afghan Malalaï girls’ lycée in Kabul. I had the privilege of growing up under a liberal regime. I was ten, in 1959, when the law compelling women to wear the veil was abolished. I belong to the first generation of Afghan women not to have had to wear the burka. Women obtained the right to vote in 1964. They could go to university and work. But despite these gains, attitudes had not changed very much. Afghan society remained profoundly patriarchal”

(*)Literarily most interesting are also the texts of Spojmai Zaryab. Their love for the literature was waked already very early by their father, who, as she reports in an interview, had never obtained it the feeling to possess as girls fewer liberties and rights. He read out poems to Allabendlich, the Spojmai by heart learned and those the foundation-stone for their love for the classical Persian poetry put. Nineteen years could it in a free country live. It was exactly ten years old, when Daud waived the veil obligation for women and girls 1959, that above all the women in the city centres since that 13. Century was imposed (on the country and under the Nomadic the women carried the veil, which obstructed her in the hard manual labour) only in presence of strangers. They were fifteen, when the right to vote for women was introduced. Many women held, are it from tradition consciousness, are it under the pressure of the family, at masking firmly - usually there was the women from simpler conditions - Spojmai anyhow build-up without this restriction of their field of vision (a late constant topic in their work will be) also in the cities. It visited unverschleiert the French Mädchen gymnasium Malalai, without suspecting that the Taliban 1996 would introduce the masking obligation more radical as ever before again. After the school the attendance of the academy of art followed in Kabul as well as the study of the literature in Kabul and Besancon (a city of eastern France east of Dijon, finally attained a doctorate it in Montpellier in literature sciences.

The period of 1959 - 1978 brought a woman generation out, which could unfold relatively freely their talents within the most different ranges. It gave teachers, to lady doctors, employees in the public administration and authoresses such as Spojmai. At the High Schools of the capital English, German, French and Russian one informed. Here Spojmai discovered also its preference for the French language and literature and/or for western modern storytellers generally, who affected their own style strongly.

The short phase of the social liberalization was terminated by the murder Dauds by Muscovite Vasallen and the invasion of the Soviets in Afghanistan. It was official the goal of the Soviets of advancing the straight emancipation of the woman further which might have worked outwardly by the appointment of some women into different Ministries also in such a way. Altogether it came however, as previously mentioned, to a nearly complete extermination of the urban elite, which was too dekadent the communist ruling powers too west and their literature it. Innumerable intellectual ones - men such as women - disappeared behind the prison walls of pole é Tcharkhî not far from Kabul and were tortured there and murdered. 1991 fled Spojmai Zariab with their daughters in the French exile after Montpellier, their married man followed 1994.

Spojmai Zaryab belongs to the few Afghan authoresses, who are printed there in the exile to write and their texts. In France already two telling volumes of it appeared. One appeared in the year 2000, a further in the year 2001 on the French book market. The narrations contained in the volume witness from the expressive Kraft of the authoress. Many developed at present for the communist dictatorship, some however already in former times. In all texts it concerns humans, who the point of reference of their life was misplaced by the life circumstances controlling it. Many of them move therefore on a burr migration between reason and insanity, like e.g. an office worker, who digs books, tormented by fear, “its children”, in a nocturnal action its.

Spojmai Zaryab sketches apokalyptische scenes like e.g. in the title narration of the second volume appeared in France, where the merry atmosphere of an annually taking place celebration of an oppressing darkness yielded. The multicoloured Pferdchen of an owner of roundabout, who registers the change of the place with frights and lack of understanding, in addition, is symbol of the lost liberty, gives a notion of the gloss and the joy of life of past times.

Spojmai Zaryabs Prosa has kafkaeske courses, and also their preference for the French symbolists is clearly noticeable. One their most important, again and again and in the most diverse facets arranged topic is the fear. It tells e.g. of the fear of a nut/mother, that hides its halbwüchsigen son before the Russian soldiers, so that this is angemustert not of Russian military or in the road fight is shot. In another narration it causes an oppressing bureaucratic Totalitarismus and makes this atmosphere the symbol for the conditions in its country among the Soviets. The representation of the break-down of troops is particularly impressive into a village from the perspective of a girl wounded thereby, who in the death fight daydreamed and their loved, familiar environment notices now as apokalyptische landscape, in which the cows blood instead of milk gives and at the Weinstöcken no grapes/clusters, but human member masses hang. Again and again tries she, the point of view of the woman behind the “lattice bars” of its observation slit, the Burka, to after-arrange. The traditional clothes symbolize the prison for it, into which not only the female body, but also its spirit was put after the short phase of the emancipation.

Nearly all narrations of Spojmai Zaryab have a concrete purchase to the Afghan reality. The special at them is however that her the far beyond frameworks of a reality accomplishment. They have rather a universal character, because they tell of humans, who would have lost their liberty and their, as it happens in many parts of the world.

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