Afghan women who refused to bow to the Taliban | M.R. Narayan Swamy

BOOK REVIEW

My Beautiful Sisters:

by Khalida Popal

John Murray Press (Hachette India)
Pages: ix + 213; Price: Rs 699

How do you rate a society that treats women so shabbily that they are branded as whores and prostitutes simply for playing football?
And what can you say about a country where the male head of the Afghan Football Federation treats players from the women’s team as members of his personal harem?

If you think this is the natural outcome of an ideology that the Taliban has preached, you are in for a shock. This is a gripping and deeply moving story of a group of women who battled male chauvinism of the worst order even when the Taliban was not in power, and who had to flee Kabul with just their clothes on when the medieval militia returned to rule in 2021.

When Khalida began taking an interest in football, she was lucky to have extremely supportive parents, a privilege many of her friends lacked. Her grandfather was a university professor and widely travelled; her grandmother was one of the first women to graduate from a school in Kabul. Her father came from a very Westernised, liberal-minded military family that valued education above all. More significantly, the family was not religious.

Khalida’s first introduction to street football took place when she lived with her family in Peshawar, like millions of Afghan refugees. She was just nine years of age when the family moved to Pakistan to escape the unending fighting in Afghanistan. Eventually, when the Taliban was ousted from power after an American blitzkrieg, the family, like scores of Afghans, returned to Kabul. Khalida was 15 years old then, and in love with the game. Little did she realise that her passion for that sport would pit her against a society where male chauvinism combined with the Taliban ideology would turn her into a refugee again – this time in distant Europe.

The inevitable happened. People gave ugly stares when the young Khalida began kicking the football in supposedly “liberated” Kabul. What Khalida learnt early on to her horror – like innumerable Afghans – was that even though its influence had waned after the US invasion, the Taliban’s legacy was everywhere. There was no music. Women had to wear burqas. Women got beaten up for wearing sandals. It was as terrible as life could get – even minus the Taliban.

Because Khalida did not wear a burqa, she often got stopped on the streets on the way to and from school. “Are you even Muslim?” was one of the questions posed by total strangers. She was called names. Her family was insulted and taunted for allowing her to play football. But she would not only not give up football but lured many girls across Kabul to play. All of them did so secretly within the school walls, at times with the tacit encouragement of sympathetic teachers. As luck would have it, thanks to the German Football Association, Khalida and seven other Afghan girls were flown to Germany to get more exposure to the game.

The foreign jaunt brought more problems. Knowing that the girls had gone to Germany, more abuse erupted on Kabul’s streets. Khalida was openly called a “whore” and a “prostitute”. Other football-playing girls found the going tough in their homes. One girl was beaten up by her brother because she rushed to play before washing the dishes. Another poured fuel on herself and set herself alight after being mercilessly beaten at home for playing football. The parents of some girls began hunting for grooms to marry off their daughter so as to kill the football hunger. One promising woman footballer fled to Australia after being arrested on a dubious charge.

Surprisingly, the Afghan authorities reluctantly looked the other way to the growing craze for women’s football – although the sport remained largely hidden. But when the girls went to Islamabad to play matches, President Hamid Karzai took an interest in the game. The display in Pakistan fetched the women a lot of media publicity in Afghanistan – but more trouble.

Unrelenting abuse followed on the streets. More girls deserted the game – even as more came in. A second trip to Germany did not greatly help. An Afghan man angry at what he thought was a violation of Islamic morality pounced on Khalida on a street, only to be beaten black and blue by the gutsy woman footballer.

The daring Khalida went on to become the head of the women’s football and the Afghan Football Federation’s finance officer. This sent shockwaves among men who were not used to dealing with a woman at the workplace. But her luck did not hold too long. Many men in the federation openly revolted. She was threatened with rape. One thing led to another, until she was forced one day to use a fake passport to fly to New Delhi and then to Denmark. It was only in the safe confines of Europe did Khalida realised the extent of sexual exploitation of Afghan women footballers by men who controlled the game. It was shocking beyond words.

Worse happened when the Taliban stormed back to power, finally taking charge of Kabul as the US literally fled. Amid the widespread mayhem, the militia lost no time in trying to track down the “degenerate” women footballers. How these players – amid the violence and mass panic at the Kabul airport — were rescued out of a tense Afghanistan and how Khalida played a key role in the evacuation is the best and most thrilling part of this unputdownable book.