“My identity is hiding somewhere in the kitchen, where destiny told me to be. I don’t know where it is. If you look for it, maybe you could find it. On my father’s favorite plate? In my brother’s soup bowl? On the shelf covered with salt? In the morning, I am the broom eating dust. At 10 o’ clock, it is time to cook the bread in the wood-fired oven. Eleven is time to cook lunch. Then I wash the dishes. After that, the cow calls me “Come on, milk, milk.” Then back to the kitchen, more cooking and washing. I wait till the moon appears in the sky. I greet her as I go to my bed in the yard. I look at the moon, I understand nothing. In my dreams, I see myself big. I go to school, books in my hands. I see a nice office with a computer and my favorite clothes, a pink handbag. But nothing comes true. It is always the same. I am without dreams. There is empty space in my soul. The kitchen is my past and future. I am Afghan woman.” Poem by Ms. Roya.

Perhaps, the images of abused and helpless Afghan women incessantly flood our minds, undermining the significant role of women as agents of change in Afghanistan. During the 1920s and 70s, a period of economic and political stability, a large number of Afghan women asserted their rights and continued their education and professional pursuits. These women belonged to a privileged economic background; all the same their role and aspirations offer the world an alternative narrative. Acknowledging the agency, contributions, and strong voice of Afghan women does not undermine the stories of women like Nazai, an 18-year-old Afghan woman whose nose and ears were sliced off by her husband and appeared on the cover of Time magazine in August 2010, or Sitara, a 30-year-old women whose nose and lips were lopped off by her addict husband in Herat province in 2013 and their audacious spirit, whose story of sufferings is one too many for our world.

The history of Afghan women’s struggle for social recognition and equality chronicles Afghanistan’s physical and cultural devastation. Following the Soviet Invasion (1979-89), the Afghan Civil War (1994-96) and the dictatorial regime of Taliban (1996-2001) women’s access to education, security and jobs has been minimal. Today, in the post-Taliban era, the Western “liberation” and Islamic fundamentalism each impose their own values on Afghan society as political models. Westernization, with regards to gender equality, does not take into account the traditional concept of family in Islamic or Afghan culture and tends to negotiate the rights of Afghan women outside their community and family.

On the other hand, misogynistic readings of the Quran deprive women of their most basic rights. Neither ideology is central to the daily lives and aspirations of Afghan women; their day to day struggle narrates their hopes for a democratic and just Afghanistan, social visibility and involvement in the reconstruction of their homeland. Afghan women are agents of change in numerous ways, one of which is poetry.

The tradition of poetry is one of the most celebrated components of arts and culture in contemporary Afghanistan – once the center for Persian poetry. Though marginalized in the literary arena, women are not exempt from this ancient tradition. Women can play a key role in this regard. Overall, widespread acceptance for women poets who reveal their sentiments through verse and receive social recognition has yet to come, most especially in rural Afghanistan. Nadia Anjuman, was a young pet from Herat who published her first collection at the age of twenty-five. Nadia, who was known in both Afghanistan and Iran, was murdered in 2005. In spite of restrictions, countless women write and share their poetry in public and private meetings.

Meena, an Afghan women’s rights activist and the founder of the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan who was assassinated in Pakistan in 1987, reflects her deep sentiments through poem very nicely, “I’m the woman who has awoken. I’ve arisen and become a tempest through the ashes of my burnt children. I’ve arisen from the rivulets of my brother’s blood. My nation’s wrath has empowered me. My ruined and burnt villages fill me with hatred against the enemy; I am the woman who has awoken. I’ve found my path and will never return. I’ve opened closed doors of ignorance. I’ve said farewell to all golden bracelets. Oh compatriot, I’m not what I was. I am the woman who has awoken. I have found my path and will never return. I’ve seen barefoot wandering, and homeless children. I’ve see henna-handed brides with mourning clothes. I’ve seen giant walls of the prisons swallow freedom in their ravenous stomach. I’ve been reborn amidst epics of resistance and courage. I’ve learned the song of freedom in the last breaths, in the waves of blood and in victory. Oh compatriot, oh brother, no longer regard me as weak and incapable. With all my strength I’m with you on the path of my land’s liberation. My voice has mingled with thousands of arisen women. My fists are clenched with the fists of thousands of compatriots. Along with you I’ve stepped up to the path of my nation, to break all these sufferings, all these fetters of slavery. Oh compatriot, oh brother, I’m not what I was. I’m the woman who has awoken. I’ve found my path and will never return.”

At the end, I would like to tribute to Rahila Moska, who was 16, committed suicide on April 8, 2010, after her parents had caught her, once again, reading one of her love poems over the phone: “My love will gather us both together on the day of resurrection. Brutes have placed stones between us in this world.” Her parents assumed there was a boy on the other end of the line, not a girl named Ogai, who was also a poet and a member of Moska’s weekly poetry group of 40 women. Although Moska wasn’t allowed to attend in person, her parents had pulled her out of school; she called in on the phone to share her powerful two-line poems called landai – traditional Pashto poems that criticize the social order and a woman’s lot within it.