Summary Of The Underground Girls Of Kabul By Jenny Nordberg

The Underground Girls of Kabul by Jenny Nordberg is a nonfiction documenting the stories of young girls in the Middle East through a series of interviews with them. She represents the sexual discrimination in the Middle East through her encounters with a few young girls as they search for a way to achieve personal freedoms. The primary focus of her book is studying how young girls chose to cross-dress as the liberated sex in the post-Taliban era Afghanistan. Through her interviews of Kabul’s Bacha Posh population, Nordberg establishes for the Western reader how the maltreated young girls of Afghanistan constantly dream of an elusive freedom granted to their brothers, fathers, and husbands, and how few establish the otherwise unattainable

by presuming the role of a boy for their adolescence. Norberg believes that this tradition generally helps those who participated in it through its roots in three different causes, to make your family seem more respectable, the search for more opportunities, or to act as a source of income for your family.
One of the primary focus of The Underground Girls of Kabul is on the family of a young girl Mehran, how dresses as a boy to make her family and her mother appear as respectable. In Afghanistan, where boy children are seen as superior, it is shameful to be a mother of only daughters. Mehran’s mother, Azita is a young female parliamentarian, and her career dictates that her reputation must always be under scrutiny. Her constituents would have put significant value on the centuries old dogma that prescribes that the value of a mother is dependent on how many sons she has. The value put on the different gender of the society is evident simply by the words used to address children, “He is Bacha, the word for a child. A boy. She is the “other”: a dokhtar. A daughter.”( Norberg, 39). When something as basic as the words for the different sexes is a testament to the value of male children, it can become apparent why Azita needed a male child so desperately. In order to protect her family’s reputation and her career in politics, Azita was forced to pretend that her female child was a male. In a culture where reputation defines your future, women like Azita feel pressured to disguise their children as males through the tradition of Bacha Posh in order to be seen as respectable and succeed through life.
Moreover, parents are driven to disguise their daughters for their well-being, believe that the will have more freedom to do as they chose as young boys.

In Afghanistan, boys are allowed greater liberty to act as they chose and society and are not viewed as if they can break and lose their value. Boys are given freedom in society to climb trees, run freely, and act generally reckless. However, it is instead believed that daughters should instead be protected from society, and live a more sheltered life. The ability to live a free life is a draw that is determined at birth, and as Norberg was once told, “Regardless of who they are, whether they are rich or poor, educated or illiterate, Afghan women often describe the difference between men and women in just one word: freedom. As in: Men have it, women do not.” (Nordberg, 268). It is initially and undeniably human to not only fight for freedom for yourself, but to fight for your children to be endowed with the same right. In patriarchal societies such as the one in Afghanistan, women are not granted with the same opportunities than male counterparts, in order to give their children greater opportunities and a sense of freedom, parents have adopted the centuries old tradition of disguising their children as Bacha

Posh.
The last reason Nordberg gives for the reason why girls become Bacha Posh is to earn an income for her family.

In a society where the majority of women are barred from merely going outside unescorted, it can be a challenge for many families to earn a sizeable income. Instead of dressing as a boy for freedom of choice or for the reputation of their family, many girls are required to behave like a boy so that their family does not starve. When a father abandons his children and wife, they have no means to support themselves, such as the case for ten years old Niima, how has to work as an errand boy so that her family may eat. For her, being Bacha Posh is not a fun adventure nor a liberating experience, and as Nordberg states, “Niima poses as a boy purely for the survival of her family. There is nothing voluntary about it and her act hardly contains an element of freedom” (63). Unfortunately, while being Bacha Posh is a fun and liberating experience for some, however this is mainly reserved for the middle and upper class. The darker side of the tradition comes from young children labouring to feed their families because it would be improper for their mothers to do so. Lower class Bacha Posh are forced to do so out of necessity, so that they may support their family and keep them from becoming

impoverished.
The Underground Girls of Kabul mentions three different beneficial reasons as to why a girls would become Bacha Posh in Kabul, including for a family’s reputation, to have a childhood with no restrictions, and to financially support your family. Bacha Posh is a centuries old tradition, which Norberg believes helps children and family alike, and allows for girls to undergo new experiences previously restricted to them. The only fault in her argument however, is the girl's life after they reach puberty and have all freedoms taken away from them. In Afghanistan, puberty for girls means going from little freedom to none, but for Bacha Posh, it means that your whole life is taken away from you, and your world shrinks to just a small house. Furthermore, the tradition of Bacha Posh, while helps to liberate several young girls, only solidifies the idea for young girls the superiority of the patriarchy. While being a Bacha Posh enables young girls opportunities they would otherwise not have, its aftermath can be debilitating to adolescent girls.