Yalda Sarab no longer writes love poems. These days, she pours herself into tragic poems for women. She says she has written at least 700 ghazals.**
Wali shaza swi wali khoday nar nakri/ Zan mi la grewana raniwali.
(Translation: Why did you become a woman? Why didn’t God make you a man? / I am baffled, searching deeply.)
“I have put all the words of my heart, all my pain, into this one verse,” Yalda, 22, says. She is one of the handful of women poets in Afghanistan’s southern Kandahar province.
In an interview with Rukhshana Media, Yalda says that the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan in August 2021 has put an end to any public activities of poets in Kandahar. “Women poets have lost the little freedom that we had in the past. We no longer have any rights,” she says.
Yalda, who was raised in Kandahar’s Shawalikot district, has not attended school since sixth grade. She started writing poetry six years ago and became engaged in Afghanistan’s rich poetry movement. Before August 2021, she says there were 13 women poets active in Kandahar. One of them, Soraiya Hamidi Afghan, had even published a collection of her work Band-e-Roh. But Soraiya, like many Afghan artists, has since fled the country, and the others are losing hope.
“My sisters are disaffected and disappointed,” Yalda says of her fellow poets. “Desperation is evident in their words.”
Women poets living in Kandahar’s traditional Pashtun heartland did not have an easy time even before the Taliban took power. The culture ties women’s value to marriage, child rearing, and homemaking. Women engaging in other pursuits were discouraged or mostly ignored. But with the Taliban takeover, that discouragement now comes with lethal threats.
“We did not get any support in the time of the Republic either,” Yalda says. “Not from the (Kandahar) Directorate of Information and Culture nor from the tribal elders – no one supported us at that time. But it was just a good thing that nor did anyone stop us.”
“My heart shatters with poetry like broken glass”
Before August 2021, there were public poetry contests which provided an exciting opportunity for women poets in Kandahar to showcase their work. But since then, Yalda says the poets have not had one poetry session together in private, let alone sharing anything publicly.
“We used to have poetry contests on the radio. The girls would call in and share their work in person, but now the radio programs can’t even call girls for a medical program,” Yalda says. “The stations now say, ‘Tell a male member of your family your problem and he can pass on your message.’ The restrictions are to this extent. The Taliban have blocked everything.”
Yalda was a frequent guest on the program Khyal Adabi Bahir, or Dream Literary Stream, on the local Zema radio. In the program, she would talk to the girls of Kandahar about poetry, art, and creative expression. She says the programs were a source of joy in a place like Kandahar where there was so much cultural pressure on girls and women to not engage with these activities.
The value of art is not understood in Kandahari society, Yalda says. “No one will let us progress, No one respects us. Our art is not appreciated. When women’s voices were banned in local media by the Taliban, many people called that a good thing.”
In November 2021, the Taliban announced women should not appear in television dramas. And if they work in the media, all female presenters were to cover their faces, apart from their eyes. Yalda says some places like traditional Kandahar took this decree as a chance to remove women completely. Art has also become a casualty of such bans.
“We want to share our art with others, but the Taliban has made us stay at home,” she says. “Art is very underrated.”
She describes her feelings in a poem:
Baad khalag mi mukhta kawam honar pa spok yad kri / Zra mi mati sam da khpali shaeri laka kokei.
(Translation: Bad people see the art before us as insignificant / My heart splinters with poetry like shattered glass.)
“A girl is either at home or in the grave”
But Yalda doesn’t level all the blame for women’s situation on the Taliban. She says the prevailing traditional culture in Kandahar is at the root of women’s obstacles, and until women’s rights are upheld in their own families, there will be no change outside the home. “Parents should not differentiate rights between their children,” she says. “If the father gives rights to his daughter, society will also give it.”
“Unfortunately, most fathers are of the opinion that a girl is either at home or in the grave,” she says. “This belief is passed from generation to generation. During the Republic, the problem was with the tribal elders, the way they treated their sons and daughters differently at home, they were doing the same outside.”
Yalda points to these values as the reason she lost a job offer at a local radio station during the time of the Republic because of opposition from her father.
But with the Taliban taking these values to a government-level mandate, Yalda fears much worse problems are ahead, including the longterm loss of Pashto and Pashtun art.
“No one will work for the Pashto language and it will be left behind all the other languages,” she says. “Before the Taliban, people used to go to libraries and many books were being printed. But now people are disappointed even with their school and university books.”
As for her fellow poets and friends still in Afghanistan, Yalda says almost they are in contact mostly through phone calls and communication is limited to simply greeting each other.
“Our tears flow like streams to our necks”
Selgai Derzar, 20, is one of the 13 women poets in Kandahar that Yalda spoke of. She does not have a mobile phone as her family no longer permits it. Rukhshana Media spoke with her through her mother’s phone through coordination with one of Selgai’s friends.
Like Yalda, Selgi finds her society’s expectations on women deeply challenging. “In Kandahar, the conditions are not ready for us to share our poetry with others,” she says. “Everything is against us. Family, people, the culture have never supported female poets.”
Selgai, who grew up in Kandahar’s sixth district, learned to read and write in a religious school and has never attended a modern school or university. She says that she has written about 450 verses in a ghazal format.
Since the Taliban takeover in August 2021, she says she has not left her house expect when she goes with her family to visit relatives.
“After the Taliban came, we don’t have poetry activities anymore,” she says. “I have not gone out. The family won’t allows me to leave home. The rest of the women poets are also like that – all of us are homebound.”
She shared two of her recent poems.
Paroon parda rala aw nan darwaze band swi/ Smozh por pakh pohantoon darwazi band swali.
Oshki mo khod laka selab zi da griwan tar pata/ Chi mo da heli da tarhoon darwazi bande swali.
*Translation: Yesterday, they pulled the curtain across the window / Today they closed the gates of the university on us.
Our tears flow like floods to our necks/ Because the doors to our hopes and promises are shut.
Pa mahfel ki awazoona ba nasa de la koshiya tola zrhoona pa nasa de/ La asamana da baran saski ra awri aw par mzaka hobaboona ba nasa de.
La gonah ye toba wakra ba teenka, gonah zhari sawaboona ba nasa de/ La maktaba tar pohantoona bandezoona, pa hewad ke azaboona pa nasa de.
(Translation: At celebrations, the sounds dance, hearts are happy dancing / Like raindrops falling from the sky, their splash dances on the earth.
You repent your sin in earnest, The sin replies the rewards are in the dance / Constraints spread from the schools to the universities, the darkness of ignorance dances across the earth.)
Hasibullah Fitrat, a social expert in Kandahar, says that in the history of pashto, there have been many female poets, including revered figures such as Malalai Maiwandi and Parween Malala.
He says they have all faced similar social restrictions in the face of Pashtun culture as the women are facing now. “Women were not even allowed to leave the house, let alone if a woman wants to work or become a poet!”
“The Pashtun community does not condone this behaviour, female poets participating in contests and all,” he adds.
Recently, the Taliban has attempted to ban writing poems arguing they are similar to song composition. The Taliban’s Ministry of Virtue and Vice has said in its explanation of the order that poets should not write verses that singers can use to make songs. Playing and listening to music has been banned since the Taliban takeover, with the exception of melodies used in religious sermons or readings of the Quran.
**The ghazal is a genre that traces back to 7th-century Arabic poetry. Its structure commonly consists of five to fifteen couplets, which are independent, but thematically linked in the abstract concepts.
