Six days ago, Malalai got into a taxi from Shohada Chowk in Kandahar. On the journey, when a male passenger hailed the taxi, the driver stopped in the middle of the road and made Malalai and another elderly woman sit in the trunk.
A former radio station employee who lost her job once the Taliban returned to power because of her gender, Malalai has already tasted the bitter shame of being a woman. But the taxi incident threw it into stark relief.
“I feel such shame that I have no value as a woman. I’m not even worthy enough to sit in the seat of an old taxi,” she says.
Malalai had sometimes seen children ride in the trunk of an overcrowded car, but she’d never done so.
“Out of one hundred taxis here, you will not see even one with a man sitting in the trunk. That’s only a woman’s place,” she says. “They even put old and elderly women inside the trunk.”
While Malalai acknowledges this practice has existed for some time, she feels the pressure on women to sit in the trunk is growing. Before the Taliban, she felt that if she wanted to sit in the car, there was no objection.
“It wasn’t never that the taxi driver would get a woman out of the car and force her to sit in the trunk,” she says. “I used to travel by taxi most of the time.”
Malalai has noticed the shift towards treating women more poorly has happened since the arrival of the Taliban. “In this past year, women are not allowed to sit in the passenger seat next to the driver, even if the woman is old,” she says. “Sometimes we see sheep and some other animals put inside the trunk. Now they also put women there.”
Kandahar is one of Afghanistan’s most populated cities, with city taxis a common means of public transportation, especially for women who do not have the right to drive and use private vehicles.
Rukhshana Media spoke to multiple sources who say the relegation of women to the trunk has become more accepted and that women have not criticized this situation.
There were efforts during Afghanistan’s republic period to try and outlaw women riding in car trunks. Once, the local government in Kandahar, by order of Abdul Ali Shams, the deputy governor, banned it. But the ban did not last long and the practice was soon back.
Shukria, 32, a resident of Kandahar city, tells Rukhshana Media that making women sit in the trunk has become normalised. As a result, women feel they cannot say anything about it anymore.
“Women got used to it and no one pays attention to this issue at all,” she says. “Since the day they [the Taliban] came, the value of women has been decreasing.”
Shukria said that she has even witnessed a pregnant woman in labour put in the trunk of a taxi on the way to the hospital.
“Unfortunately she lost her child,” she says.
Shukria is a mother of one girl. She says it weighs on her to raise her daughter in a traditional society like Kandahar where women have few rights.
“All women regret having daughters and suffer and feel sorry for themselves,” she says.
Fazl Mohammad, a taxi driver in Kandahar, tells Rukhshana Media that women sitting in the trunk has become a common issue.
He says that if a woman does not want to sit in the trunk, she should pay the fare of several people in order to ensure no one else enters the car.
“Before the Taliban, some women sat in the car seats and no one said anything,” he says. “But for the Taliban, women sitting in the front seat and women without a male chaperone is forbidden.”
Mr Fazl confirms that women are sometimes forced against their wishes to sit in the trunk in order to take a taxi.
While there has been no Taliban decree against car sharing, a few months ago the Kandahar directorate of the Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, Mawlawi Abdul Rahman Tayebi, said women should not sit in the front seat next to a male driver.
“Women do not have the right to hail a taxi and sit in the front seat,” he said.
Social activists in Kandahar believe that women being made to sit in the taxi trunk stems from a culture that devalues women.
Activist Taj Mohammad Raihan, 30, says that while the culture of treating women differently has existed for years across all the southern provinces, including Helmand, Zabul, and Uruzgan provinces.
“In my opinion, regulating and activating city buses can be a solution to this treatment,” Mr Raihan says. “On city buses, seats for men and women can be separated. Activating women-only taxis could be another solution.”
In Kandahar, the spiritual capital of the Taliban, some feel the restrictions on women are more strongly adhered to, even when the rules are unspoken.
