According to the Pentagon over 10,000 people at Kabul Airport in Afghanistan are waiting to be evacuated and, while the US withdrawal deadline is getting nearer (31st August), the German military confirmed that the Taliban, that entered Kabul on 15th August, agreed to let Afghans leave the country after it. In the meantime, it was recently confirmed that, among those ones who managed to leave the country, there is also the Afghan female robotics team.
The Herat girls have taken part in the last few years in events and competitions all over the world and they became one of the symbols of progress of their country.
Knowing that under Taliban rule they may not be allowed to continue their studies they bravely decided to leave their families and country behind and pursue their dreams. For these girls feeling empowered comes from fixing things and creating devices that can improve people's lives, such as their recent robot that uses ultraviolet light to disinfect surfaces. You can be sure these young women will continue their studies and let's hope they will be able to take part in further competitions and pursue their robotic dreams.
But the history of Afghanistan features also the stories of other indomitable women, one of them is a little-known fashion designer, Safia Tarzi, that the British Vogue team met when the magazine went to Kabul in 1969 for a reportage, published in December of the same year that also featured a piece entitled "Adventure in Afghanistan", by Safia Tarzi.
The feature recounted an "unforgettable adventure" Tarzi had lived in Afghanistan when she stumbled upon a game of Buzkashi, a wild sport that was played for state visits and also on ceremonial occasions like the king's birthday and that consisted in horsemen fighting for possession of a dead calf. Tarzi first started taking some pictures (one accompanied the feature on Vogue) and then she joined the Chapandaz riders in the game on a wild horse.
In her designs Tarzi focused on combining traditional elements and local embroideries with Western styles; her collections balanced innovations and traditions and her signature piece remained the turban, often donned with functional and modern mini-dresses.
There had been other attempts at modernise fashion in Afghanistan before Tarzi when an American woman, Jeanne Beecher, the wife of an airline executive working in Afghanistan, realising local women were interested in Western fashion, launched a dressmaking school in Kabul at the end of the '50s. Pan Am Airlines helped establishing the school providing sewing supplies and patterns that were donated by the Vogue Pattern Services. The first course started in 1959 and included over 32 students, mainly women from the city's middle and upper classes. The first show was organized in 1960 and Pan Am kept on supporting the school by donating more materials in the following years.
Like the women at the dressmaking school, Tarzi had upper-middle class origins, so she came from a privileged background. She was also a photographer and a keen air balloonist, race car driver and scuba diver. When she wrote the feature for Vogue, Tarzi had just completed an archaeological course in Paris, driven by Land Rover from Paris to Kabul, given lectures about Afghanistan in the French capital and opened a boutique in a hotel in Kabul. Tarzi, who died in an air balloon crash, descended from another indomitable Afghan woman, Queen Soraya Tarzi (1899-1968), wife of King Amanullah Khan.
Born in Damascus, Syria, where her family was exiled, she was educated by her father, the Afghan leader and intellectual Sardar Mahmud Tarzi. Her family returned to Afghanistan under King Habibullah.
Her father's liberal ideals influenced her future actions and promoted the modernisation of Afghanistan and, after she married, she had a key role in the evolution of the country. Queen Soraya Tarzi was the first Muslim sovereign to appear in public with her husband, besides, she regularly participated in hunting parties riding on horseback, and in Cabinet meetings. A feminist who fought for gender equality, Queen Soraya was also the Minister of Education and encouraged women in Kabul and in the countryside to study, opening the first primary school for girls in Kabul, the Masturat School. In 1928 she also sent 15 young women to Turkey for higher education.
King Amanullah Khan publicly campaigned against the veil: after he stated at a public function that Islam did not require women to cover their bodies or wear a veil, Queen Soraya tore off her veil in public, an example that the wives of other officials also followed. Time Magazine voted her Woman of the Year in 1927 and the following year she received an honorary degree from the University of Oxford.
In 1929 when the liberal reforms of King Amanullah Khan enraged the country's more conservative religious groups, the royals went into exile to prevent a civil war. Invited to live in Italy, Queen Soraya died in April 1968 in Rome. It is sad that it seems that exile awaits all those women who fight for their rights in Afghanistan, but some of the girls from the Afghan female robotics team stated in interviews that they wish to go back to their country one day and help it. For teh time being they have also been offered scholarships at universities in the United States. Queen Soraya is long gone, but you bet she would have been proud of these indomitable "robot girls".
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