November 19, 2001

RESISTANCE

Behind the Burka: Women Subtly Fought Taliban

By AMY WALDMAN

HERAT, Afghanistan, Nov. 18 — In the walled garden of her house, Soheila Helal waged a quiet
rebellion against the Taliban. On a patio softened by rugs and book-ended by two small
blackboards, she ran a school for 120 students, mostly girls. It was a transgression on two counts: as a
woman Mrs. Helal was not supposed to work, and her female students were not supposed to learn.

So her students' lessons included what to tell any Taliban forces who stopped them — that they were
just going to visit her. The after-school activities included learning how to leave discreetly in small
groups, so as not to attract attention.

Mrs. Helal, a teacher for 17 years, saw no other choice. Her husband died as the Taliban came to
power, leaving her with three small children to support. She says that continuing to teach also kept her
sane.

"I thought of killing myself many times," she said of life under the Taliban. As a woman she was not
supposed to leave home without a male relative; as a widow she had no choice. Buying groceries could
bring a beating from the religious police. "Only my love for my students saved me."

That love no longer needs to be hidden behind an adobe wall. The school where Mrs. Helal worked
before the Taliban came to power is reopening now that they are gone from Herat and much of
Afghanistan. In areas now controlled by the Northern Alliance, the petty brutality that women endured
for nearly a half decade has ended. When Ismail Khan, the commander now in control here, arrived last
week, he made clear that he believed that women should be in school and at work.

The freedom is still too new to completely trust, and the wounds too fresh to be healed, but for the first
time in years, women here say they have hope — that they will be treated like human beings, not
wayward cattle; that they will be free to leave their homes and work; that their daughters will be able to learn.

"The good days are ahead," said Rana Entezari, a neighbor who stopped by Mrs. Helal's house today. A doctor, she was fired from a laboratory for being a woman after the Taliban came to power.

Herat is still full of women in burkas, the full-length shroud that covers even the face, rendering a
woman more column than human, and making it impossible for close friends to recognize each other on
the street. But now many of the burka-clad women are on their own or with other women. A week ago, that would have brought a lashing.

Today women showed off bruises and scars earned for going it alone or daring to speak in a
government office. They described the cruel illogic of the Taliban: male doctors were not allowed to
treat women but female doctors were not permitted to be trained; many widows here who were the sole support of their family were barred from going to work. Many of them resorted to shelling nuts or
washing clothes at home, barely earning enough to fill their children's stomachs.

Women also showed resilience, even crafty defiance, for those who were expected to be neither seen
nor heard. Knowing they would be lashed, they went out alone anyway. Confined to their homes, many
taught their daughters to read. They started secret schools or secured small concessions — permission
to open a nursing school, for example — from the Taliban bureaucracy.

Nouri, who uses only one name, described going to a courtroom on behalf of a relative who had been
wrongly arrested. The Taliban beat her so hard for appearing there that her hands were swollen for
days.

"Why are you doing this?" she said she shouted. "Aren't you Muslim? Aren't you afraid of God?" They
told her they would do it as long as she was out of the house. Today she was out looking for work at the office of Habitat, the United Nations Centre for Human Settlement. Many other women were there as well.

Sima Rezahi, 22, said she needed to support her elderly parents but had been allowed to work only in a
relief distribution center since her family returned from Iran two years ago. She has been well educated, she said, and being restricted to such a lowly job smarted.

Her younger sister, Zahra, went out of the house today for the first time in two years. No one knew it
was her since she wore a burka. But within the confines of the maternity clinic where Habitat's office is situated, the 17-year-old removed the veil, let the sun hit her face and allowed herself to think about a life outside four walls and after the Taliban. All she did for two years was cook.

"It was like being in jail," said another woman, Delband.

Today, the prisoners were free. Fatimeh Sadeghi brought her 16- year-old daughter to the office, hoping she could get a job sewing. Mrs. Sadeghi has seven children, one at her breast, and no foreseeable way out of poverty. Her only education had come from a childhood friend, Kobra Zeithi, who runs the Habitat office. Mrs. Zeithi, who had an education, shared what she had learned with her friend.

Mrs. Zeithi is a pharmacologist who became an activist. She was briefly imprisoned by the Taliban for
traveling to Pakistan to pick up educational materials. She saw the Taliban threaten to beat her
daughter, then 13, for not covering her face. She saw the opportunities for Afghanistan's women narrow unbearably.

She would not give up fighting, she said. "If we stayed home these five years, we would lose what little
culture we have."

She managed to get permission from the Taliban to start a sewing program for women, although the
permission took a month to get. She got permission to teach the Koran to women at a new cultural
center, although the permission was then revoked. Her organization was one of the only places in Herat that women could get jobs. For 80 jobs at the cultural center she received 1,500 applications, mostly from educated women. Her activities were financed by international organizations. She and other employees had to swear to the Taliban that they would continue to uphold the Islamic values.

Now jobs, not to mention dreams and plans, do not have to be scrimped and hoarded. Mrs. Zeithi had
forced her 16-year-old daughter to go to a nursing school started here three years ago because it was
the only schooling available to women. Her daughter cried because she wanted to be anything but a
nurse. Now she is free to choose.

The nursing school was a hard-won victory. It has 230 students, including Jamileh Ramani, 18, who said she enrolled because the country desperately needed medical practitioners — and because it was the only avenue out of the house.

The school's director, Sadaat Satahi, said she expected that applications would drop now that women
have other options. But the problem that took root during Taliban rule remains: Doctors here say the
lack of female surgeons and specialists working over the last few years has led to a higher mortality
rate among women.

Afghanistan's illiteracy rate is high but education is valued, particularly in this wealthy western city.
Woman after woman lamented that she had been educated only to be reduced by the Taliban to menial
labor or no labor at all.

"I was educated but it was worth nothing," Mrs. Helal, the teacher, said. "The Taliban did not care."

Her daughter Ghazal, 13, would ask her why boys could go to school when she could not. Mrs. Helal
could only tell her to thank God she was not in a society that buried women alive. Mrs. Helal also said
she was so desperate financially that she had considered marrying Ghazal off as many desperate
families here have done with young girls. Now she feels optimistic enough to let Ghazal wait for
marriage.

For Mrs. Helal, one thing will not change — she will continue to wear her burka in public. Her
husband's family would be very upset if she did not, she said. Showing her face in public would suggest
she was looking for a new husband.

To the outside world, the burka was the most obvious and chilling symbol of the Taliban rule. Its
meaning here is more complicated, which helps explain why women have not thrown it off en masse.
Many women here said they would like to return to wearing a chador, which leaves the face exposed,
but are frightened that the Taliban may return.

"If other women take off their veils, I'll take mine off," said Tayebeh Amini, 48, a mother of three out
shopping alone today.

Many other women, usually poor or less-educated, said that they would continue to wear the burka as
they had done before the Taliban came to power. "I wore it then and I'll wear it now," said Maryam
Nazhamat, 55. "I'm a Muslim." Nonetheless she said she was thankful the Taliban were gone: she
wanted her 11-year-old, whom she had taught to read at home, in school.

Many men who say women should be able to work or go to school still say they should wear the burka.
"It is a tradition in Afghanistan," said Gholom Mohammed, 55. The dusty street around him was filled
with women in light blue burkas.

Ismail Khan, the local commander, said he would not enforce the wearing of the burka but would not
ban it either. He said he supports full rights for women, but that progress might be slow — in appointing women to government posts, for example.

"The Taliban created very bad notions about women," he said. "If we go to the other extreme some
people might confront us in hostile ways." He said that after he announced that television broadcasting
would resume here, some men had approached him to argue that women should not be on television.
"Afghanistan is a backward country," he said. "There's a kind of patriarchy in most families, especially
in the villages, in which men tell women what to do and what to wear."

But for most women here what they wear is the least of their worries. That is certainly true for Parigol
Abdulrasoul. She is 50, with no schooling, eight children and a dead husband. Unable to leave the house
under Taliban rule, she shelled nuts in the dark at home, her eyes weakening from the strain of working
with no electricity. Even now, she wonders how she will be able to earn enough to feed her family. "It
doesn't make any difference who rules here," she said. "We are hungry."

On Saturday, though, she came on her own to Herat's main hotel to look for a person powerful enough
to help her get food for her family from relief shipments entering the country. She assertively corralled
journalists and buttonholed government officials — male officials. It was a mission she could never have undertaken under the Taliban.