The Illegal Photos of Afghanistan
Inequality has been a major problem since the dawn of civilization. Within inequality, is women’s rights during the Taliban’s rule. They were restricted to stay home, without education. Also, man gained all the power in a household. Women were stripped of freedom and were left with nothing but their burqa and their hatred for man. This is evident in both the book Thousand Splendid Suns, written by Khaled Hosseini, and the film Osama directed by Siddiq Barmak. In both of these compositions, the main character is a subject to the utmost inequality by gender. The inequality affects their individuality, their loved ones, and the entire country.
The inequality in Afghanistan affected every woman living there.
…show more content…
Both Hosseini and Barmak wants to emphasize how women are treated. The film Osama takes place in Afghanistan when the Taliban had power. The women are treated poorly and this is evident in the film when the film shows the condition in which the family lives in. Osama’s family is all women which arise problems such as, the family is very poor because the women aren’t allowed to work. This ends up affecting “Osama” directly because she is forced to work in order to provide food for her family. In order to do so, it is imperative that she disguises as a man. Her childhood comes to an end at that moment. The director tries to convey that by placing scenes of her jump roping at times when her life seemed unbearable. Furthermore, “Osama” is clearly not mature enough to handle the pressure. Despite doing this to feed the family, she is still haunted of getting caught. Also, Osama is unfamiliar with the male traditions, for instance, when she had to follow the traditional praying methods, she was clueless and unable to follow it . The hardest thing, that Osama has to deal with, is having female characteristics. Her voice is higher and her body is different. This causes many problems, an example was when she had to take a bath. From this the director wants to point out how tough a life is for women because they are forbidden to work. In Thousand Splendid Suns, Mariam is left with no choice but to marry Rasheed after her mother’s death. The reason Mariam had to marry Rasheed was that she was incapable to take care of herself due to the fact that she never lived outside her house and that she is a women. Marrying Rasheed would lead to her getting verbally and physically abused. Hosseini wanted to acknowledge that women are left with no choice and marry men because they are forced to. Laila’s child Aziza is sent to an orphan center in order to save food. However, Laila couldn’t walk alone to Aziza because she would have been tormented by the Taliban. She must go there with Rasheed. Being banned to leave alone is a major way the Taliban are crippling women’s freedom. Not being allowed to leave is a major issue because it forces women to stay home; without jobs or education. By being banned to stay home, Laila and Mariam are unable to escape or get help. In the book, it mentions that Laila got beaten up for not following the rules. This shows how dangerous it was to disobey the Taliban. Due to strict policies that women have to follow, their everyday life is affected dramatically. Everyone was affected when the Taliban restricted women’s freedom. In Thousand Splendid Suns, Mariam’s mother, Nana, is undoubtedly overwhelmed by women inequality. She tells Mariam about all that she had to suffer through and teaches her that all men are corrupted and are violent. Later in the story, her mother’s lesson’s made her respect Rasheed to prevent him from being abusive. Because she was heartbroken, she loses all of her self-confidence. That is what kept her from arguing and revolting against Rasheed. On the other hand, Laila grew up with intellectual parents. They were a “modern” family as her father and mother were same in the family. Laila’s parents despite inequality as well as violence. Unlike her friends, Laila wasn’t going to be forcefully married. If the parent’s were alive when the Taliban took over, they would be outraged at the new rules. Laila was shocked when she found out the new changes. After she marries Rasheed, she helps Mariam get her courage back. Laila is willing to stand up to Rasheed despite the consequences. Laila defends for Mariam which infuriates Rasheed. Eventually, Mariam becomes strong and they both attempt to flee the country but is caught. From that point on they had each other’s backs. Laila changed Mariam from small and vulnerable to a courageous and strong willed women. By way of contrast, in Osama, Osama’s grandmother had lived at a time when men and women were equal. Being born at a peaceful time, she still believes in equality. But being faced the problem of poverty, she convinces Osama to change genders. She does so by telling a story of how a man turned into a woman by going beneath a rainbow. Despite believing in equality, the grandma wants Osama to be a boy to receive food. Realizing that there is nothing that she can do, the grandma turns on her idea for food. Clearly this shows how there are many people who would rather have food than commit to an improbable idea. By letting Osama become a man, she indirectly admits that men are superior in Afghanistan. Many characters have been changed when the Taliban took over, but the most surprising one is Espandi. Even though he is a guy, he opposes inequality. In the opening scenes, Espandi warned the protesters that the Taliban was coming. He was also known for trying to defend Osama at school. It is clear that Espandi isn’t corrupted like the Taliban. From this, the viewer can analyze that Espandi is either young to understand what is happening or he is one of the few men who oppose the injustice. The Taliban had affected many people’s lives. The corruption created by men had changed the course of many women in both the film and novel.
If Osama hadn’t been urged to disguise as a boy, she wouldn’t have been married to a very old man. However, if there was no law against women, her mother could have gotten a job to support the family and Osama could have received education. With the possibility of education, she had a shot at a successful job. Likewise, Mariam had to deal with inequality her whole life. She was forced to marry Rasheed and that was the last time she was free. If there had been no such thing as inequality, then Mariam’s mother wouldn’t be depressed meaning that she wouldn’t hang herself. Mariam’s mother had to deal with a lot of emotional abuses; she was abandoned by Jalil, also her father left town when he heard what happened. At a young age, Mariam was restricted to stay near her mother, but if women were equal then the relationship with Jalil could have been stronger. There is a chance that young Mariam gets her wish for education. Laila’s family doesn't believe in inequality and this noticeable as her mother is able to rest all day without her father abusing her. Her father really wanted to flee the country and move to the US in order to pursue an opportunity for Laila. If there hadn’t been laws the character could have achieved they wanted
to. Hosseini incorporates events that had been taking place throughout his novel. For example, halfway through his book he writes that the Taliban had won the war and was in control of the war. Hosseini writes: “ From each truck a loudspeaker blared announcements… women are forbidden from working.” (Hosseini 279). Hosseini includes this in order to prove that the Taliban worsened equality. After the Taliban takes control, women are left powerless. They have to stay home and clean. Not only does it affect the character’s in the novel but also the whole female race living in Afghanistan. Before the Taliban, Laila and Mariam were allowed to go outside by themselves, now they can’t even put on make up. A significant scene in Osama was when the journalist was executed for taking photos. The Taliban had banned photography because of their “religion”. However, Barmak wants the viewer to believe that photography was banned because they don’t want women to protest. The journalist had been capturing photos of the women rebellion. Had he been recording something else, his punishment probably wouldn’t have been as severe as death. The death of the journalist clearly shows the Talibans attempts to keep the women powerless. The characters are treated horribly however they don’t give in. They are deeply affected by the Taliban and all the rules that forbid them from happiness. The characters try to manage a life in the madness aroused by men. They try to make the best out of this tough situation. Even at harsh times they manage to live and survive. The women of Afghanistan had lived in a tough time. Hosseini and Barmak did an extraordinary job of capturing how brutal life had been. They took literature photos of the mistreatment occurring in Afghanistan.
Mariam and Laila face a lot of social injustice yet they do not attempt to challenge the issues because they are told to endure all forms of pain and social injustice. From a very young age, Mariam was told by her mother that all she needed to do was to withstand any pain and suffering, it’s the one skill she needed.” Endure . . . Women like us. We endure. It’s all we have”(17). In addition, Laila also suffered the injustice of society since she was a single mother it was not safe for her to live on her own so she had no choice but to marry Rasheed. The society gave women no choice but to endure and that’s the main reason why Laila and Mariam were unable to take a stand. However, close to the end of the novel Mariam decides to take initiative and fights back. She finally takes action because she is driven by the love she has for Laila and her child since they are the only family she’s had that loved her. So when Rasheed her husband attempts to choke Laila to death, Mariam reflects on how much injustice she has faced and how unjust both her husband and the society have been towards her and other women. At this point, Mariam realizes that she must end her and Laila’s suffering once and for all. So she takes Rasheed’s life. Although Mariam is executed as a form of punishment, she is very successful at taking a stand to end the oppression and injustice. Mariam knew her actions were fatal yet she still did what she knew was right. Furthermore, she sacrificed herself and didn’t regret her action instead she was pleased that “she was leaving the world as a woman who had loved and been loved back. She was leaving it as a friend, a companion, a guardian. A mother” ( 329). Her actions freed Laila and her child from Rasheed’s abuse and helped them build a better life. Thus Mariam was successful and did not want to endure the injustice or see Laila suffer, she did it by
Women are beaten, and it is culturally acceptable. Like routine, women are beaten in Afghanistan almost every day. When a person purposely inflicts sufferings on others with no feelings of concern, like the women of Afghanistan, he is cruel. Cruelty can manifest from anger, irritation, or defeat and is driven by self-interest. An idea that is explored in many works of literature, cruelty also appears in Khaled Hosseini’s A Thousand Splendid Suns in the relationship between a husband and wife. In their case, the husband uses cruelties in the form of aggression are to force his wife to submit. In A Thousand Splendid Suns, Hosseini’s use of cruelty elucidates the values of both Rasheed and Mariam as well as essential ideas about the nature of
“If women are expected to do the same work as men, we must teach them the same things.” The famous Greek philosopher Plato once said this, and society still has not fully fathomed this idea regarding gender equality. Fahrenheit 451 is a novel written by Ray Bradbury, set in a dystopian society. It touches on censorship, individuality and technology dangers, but the most prevalent recurring theme is based on gender roles and stereotypes. In the story, Guy Montag is a firefighter, whose sole mission is to burn books and any houses that contain them. Everything changes when he meets a young and insightful girl, Clarisse, who changes how he sees the world. Montag’s wife Mildred, is a housewife not only to him, but to an entirely fake family composed
Rasheed was the man in the relationship and Mariam was the typical wife that did her wifely duties and stayed home while he goes and works and provides money. He treats her as if she’s worthless and means nothing to the world. When he eats he doesn’t look at her or speak to her, he is demanding, and tells her how worthless and uneducated she is. This then leads to him becoming abusive punching her, slapping her, kicking her, speaking rudely to her, he did this to damage her. A lot of this occurs because Mariam can get have his son and she is also considered a harami. Everything she does infuriates him and blames all the issues on her. She constantly tried to avoid making mistakes and did everything to his liking, but he always found a way to abuse her and blame it on her. Rasheed did not care about anything but himself he abided by the patriarchal stereotype ,which is being the dominant one throughout society and making women inferior. Mariam felt powerless and fearful. She was a victim of abuse and oppression. She married a man that said everything he did was normal in a relationship. Even though Mariam was in a violent marriage she became a strong women and soon she overcomed these
One of the main controversies in this book is the plight of women and men’s struggles. Although both experienced different kinds of inequalities, women were the target of the Taliban. In 1978, women in Kabul were demanding their rights during the Afghan Women’s Year. The president who was in charge then was president Daoud, and he decreed, “The Afghan woman has the same right as the Afghan man to exercise personal freedom, choose a career, and fins a partner in marriage” (53). This decree was absolutely invalid when the Taliban expelled a humanitarian organization that was run by women, and because of that, the Taliban took over Kabul. Women were not allowed to work outside of home. Because of that, Latifa mentions that women in Kabul usually just bake bread, do embroidery,
Lila Abu-Lughod’s article titled, “Do Muslim Women Really Need Saving?” takes a closer look at the problematic ethnocentric approach many have when trying to gain an understanding of another culture that may be foreign to that individual. In this analytical paper, Lughod looks at women in Islam, specifically the treatment of women and how it might be utilized as a justification for invading into a country and liberating its people. The country Lughod refers to in her article is Afghanistan, and Lughod points out the misunderstanding from the people to the Bush administration like First Lady Laura Bush who believed that intervention was necessary to free women from the captivity of their own homes. It is important to consider the role that different lenses play into all of this, especially when one’s lenses are being shaped by the media. Depictions of covered women secluded from society leave a permanent image in the minds of many, who would then later support the idea of liberation. This paper will discuss that the practice of using propaganda when referring to the lifestyle in the Middle East is not exclusive to the U.S; rather it has been utilized throughout history. Additionally, we will take a closer look on the importance of symbols, such as veils in this case; help to further emphasize the cause to liberate. Finally, we will analyze Lughod’s plea towards cultural relativism and away from liberal imperialism.
The women of Afghanistan have been through every hardship imaginable. Khaled Hosseini uses his novel A Thousand Splendid Suns to show his readers how women’s rights changed through out the last half of the 20th century and how the different governments affected the women differently.
Islam has influenced many cultures around the world. For centuries, Islam has had an immense influence on the Afghan culture. According to this religion, women have no rights. The men took advantage of this system by translating only what they wanted from the Koran; to enslave the women in our culture for their own desires. From the beginning, the women on no account had any civil rights or have power over their own lives, and most were uneducated and had accepted what their teachers taught in schools and mosques. My family moved to the US when the Russians invaded Afghanistan. I thank god to be one of the lucky women who did not have to live in Afghanistan and for giving me a better place to live in America. Unfortunately, this was not the case for the majority of the Afghan women. Under the cruel Taliban government the women were banned to work, and were not allowed outside their homes without being escorted by a man. The film Osama, inspired by a true story, is about Osama, a young girl who did lived in Kabul while the Taliban regime. Through Osama's story, I had a chance to see what it was like to live in Afghanistan as a woman. This is a story of a girl whose faith was in the hands of many different people: her family, the Taliban soldiers, and the city judge. Osama and I have different lives on different continents; however, we both could have had more rights and better life if we were born men.
Both el Saadawi and Al-Shaykh both show how perception and expression are both affected within the confines of politics, social opportunities, and male privilege depicted in their stories. Whether the reader is a follower of the feminist movement or not, it is very clear and easy to see that these women are not being treated with the respect that any human being deserves. The misogynistic stranglehold on society, especially in this part of the world, is excessive and avoidable in today’s world but it is very likely that the traditional, conservative ways of the past will continue to control and inhibit women from being able to be fully treated as equals for many years to come, perhaps even after this generation has
During an in class discussion of the book 100 Years of Solitude, a fellow student suggested the women characters seem to be much more stable than the male characters. She stated that, “the women are the ones who take care of the house while the men go off and fight their silly wars.” She continued to note that the men seem to constantly immerse themselves in useless projects while the women are forced to take care of the home and dissuade their husbands’ irrational need for adventure and change. She was making the observation that the women behaved as the rational ones in the city of Macondo while the men took interest in shiny trinkets and inventions and left all care taking to the women.
Both Laila, the lucky girl with breathtaking beauty, whose luck suddenly vanishes, and Mariam, the unlucky and illegitimate daughter, whose luck goes from bad to terribly worse, become dynamic and complex characters. This transformation is brought about by the gradual revealing of Hosseini’s motivation. In fact, Hoesseini is evidently motivated to reveal the truth, and let the emotional and physical realities of Afghani women’s lives be known to the
The novel A Thousand Splendid Suns explores the plight of women in Afghanistan; the focus is put on three women Nana, Mariam and Laila. Women in Afghanistan often face difficult and unfortunate situations. In this essay we will examine some of these unfortunate situations for women.
The discussion of Muslim dress in relation to modesty is globally controversial and reiterated in the novel A Thousand Splendid Suns written by Khaled Hosseini in 2007. The three main types of modest Muslim dress are the burqa, hijab, and niqab. These accoutrements can emotionally and physically affect women in positive and negative ways. Some women feel that the burqa protects them from the world and increases their body positivity, while others argue the burqa is dangerous for health and leaves women prisoner to cloth. These garments are symbolic for the oppression of women globally, but others argue that the usage of the burqa is taken out of context to justify foreign actions in the Middle East. The burqa effects women negatively and positively,
Essentially, Laila and Mariam protect each other from Rasheed, but they also protect the other important people in their lives when they are threatened also. Equally important, they protect others, in spite of the lack of protection from the power of oppression.
The novel, The Sun Also Rises, by Ernest Hemingway is an example of how an entire generation redefined gender roles after being affected by the war. The Lost Generation of the 1920’s underwent a great significance of change that not only affected their behaviors and appearances but also how they perceived gender identity. Lady Brett Ashley and Jake Barnes are two of the many characters in the novel that experience shattered gender roles because of the post war era. The characters in the novel live a lifestyle in which drugs and alcohol are used to shadow emotions and ideals of romanticism. Brett’s lack of emotional connection to her various lovers oppose Jake’s true love for her which reveals role reversal in gender and the redefinition of masculinity and femininity. The man is usually the one that is more emotionally detached but in this case Lady Brett Ashley has a masculine quality where as Jake has a feminine quality. Both men and female characters in the novel do not necessarily fit their gender roles in society due to the post war time period and their constant partying and drinking. By analyzing Brett, Jake, and the affects the war had on gender the reader obtains a more axiomatic understanding of how gender functions in the story by examining gender role reversal and homosexuality.