by Natalie Alcoba | National Post | January 7, 2011
A blue and white mask conceals the woman’s identity. The blue stands for suffering while the white represents innocence. Sami Mahdi/1TV television station.
The young Afghan woman was nervous. So was the television director. They were standing outside the Kabul studio of a fledgling broadcast station, minutes before taping the first episode of a new show about abused women.
Sami Mahdi, the program creator, was trying to calm the 16-year-old participant down. At the age of 12, she was married off as a dispute settlement after her brother killed a member of her would-be husband’s family. In Afghanistan, it is known as a “baad,” or punishment, marriage. Having fled to Kabul, she agreed to appear on this show to tell her story from behind the protection of a blue and white mask.
“It was difficult to make her assured that everything is okay. You’re not in trouble. We are your friends,” Mr. Mahdi told the National Post in a telephone interview from Kabul this week.
“She was very nervous until she used the mask. We put the mask on her face and after 15 minutes she was ready to go to the studio.”
Niqab, or The Mask, is the first show of its kind in Afghanistan. The participants hail from across the country, and over the course of 60 minutes peel back the layers of violence and indifference they have suffered in a society that often casts women as second-class citizens.
One 30-year-old victim recounted to a female host how she was bought by a powerful man at the age of 14, and beaten “like an animal”; the teenager who appeared on the inaugural show said she was mocked as a “killer” by her husband’s family and forced to sleep with livestock.
“The reality of life of women is very painful,” said Mr. Mahdi, who manages the current affairs department for 1TV, a nine-month-old private television station based in Kabul.
“But no one can speak publicly about these painful realities because the society is so conservative and most of the conservatives don’t want to change the way that men behave, the supremacy of man. … Telling publicly the dirty realities which are going on for centuries will shake the conscience of our society.”
The show includes a panel of religious, legal and human rights experts who admonish the abuse and educate participants on their rights. After two shows, the response has been varied and, Mr. Mahdi said, predictable. A colleague has received several calls from people claiming to be representatives of the Taliban who criticize them for airing a show they believe is against Islam. They want it cancelled. But many more callers, mostly women, but also men, have applauded the producers’ tenacity and urge them on.
For a while, however, Mr. Mahdi did not know if it would ever see the light of day. A graduate of politics and law from Kabul University, the 27-year-old has long been struck by how little some women are valued in his country.
While there have been meaningful gains in the last decade, with more girls going to school and women being appointed to prominent roles in the government, the plight of many begins as soon as parents look upon a newborn daughter and wish she were a boy. A recent survey by the Women and Children Legal Research Foundation, a non-governmental organization established by Afghan women lawyers, found that 59% of 576 interviewees were forced to marry, 17% of whom were used to settle disputes and another 30% traded for another female.
Mr. Mahdi came up with the idea for a show that gave women a voice about four years ago.
“I believe there are thousands of women who are living in very unacceptable situations but they fear to come and talk about the painful story, because they are afraid of their identities, that they may face really dangerous circumstances,” Mr. Mahdi said. For over a year, he visited shelters, the human rights commission and the ministry of women’s affairs, pleading with them to put him in touch with victims of abuse. While the groups considered his project worthwhile, they feared it would put already endangered women at further risk.
Finally, with the help of two female colleagues, the agencies agreed. Eight women have enlisted to be on the show, which uses different names on air and disguises the victims’ voices. They are draped in shawls and don a mask. The blue side — the colour of a chaudary, or burqa, that many women wear in public — represents women’s suffering, while the white half represents their innocence, Mr. Mahdi said.
“We are trying our best to protect them,” he said. “I am not sure we can make some changes in their lives. In Afghanistan, whenever a woman is a victim, in the eye of the people, most time they are guilty as well. They are going to be victims forever. But I believe we can change the mind of men and women in Afghanistan and we can teach and educate women about their rights.”
He is keen to tackle other controversial topics in a country that is as battered and bruised as the women who appear on his show. Next month, 1TV hopes to launch a live show, in front of a large studio audience, that wrestles with questions such as, “Is Afghanistan ready for women to work outside their home?”; “Should the country decentralize its government?”; and “Does Afghanistan need the international forces and coalition to stay beyond 2014?”
Mr. Mahdi said television helps him fulfill his passion: to confront Afghans with some hard truths.
“I can talk about realities, and the changes we can make in our society. And one day, we can talk about the pain and violence which our people have faced during more than three decades of war.”
National Post
How terrible and devastating must be for all those women,it breaks my heart and angers me that a not only girls but older women have to go trough so much pain.
I wish you well and I hope you continue with this program
Posted by: Amanda Lucia Drew | 01/16/2011 at 05:00 PM