#DoNotTouchMyClothes: Afghan Women Abroad Explore Heritage, Identity & History Through Dress

In yesterday's post we looked at the Met Gala guests using their gowns and attires to make various statements, support a cause or spread a message. But you don't necessarily need a red carpet to use the power of fashion.

Afghan women around the world, for example, have turned to social media and have started posting pictures of themselves in traditional clothes with the hashtag #DoNotTouchMyClothes. In this way they want to highlight the current condition of women since the Taliban regained control of the country last month following the withdrawal of US and international troops in August.

Ruling between 1996 and 2001 the Taliban subjected women to violence and forced marriages, hiding them under burqas and making them invisible. Since they came back the situation seems to have gone back to what it was: the country has now got an all-male interim government that also reinstated the ministry for the propagation of virtue and the prevention of vice.

From now on women will not be allowed to hold high-ranking government positions, while schools and universities became gender-segregated and female students, lecturers and employees must wear hijabs following the Taliban's interpretation of Sharia law.

In August the Taliban claimed there was going to be an amnesty for government and NGO workers, but so far there have been cases of women who were government employees or who worked in the Afghan police who were targeted and killed.

In the last few weeks there have been protests led by women across the country and, in response to them, last week the Taliban orchestrated a demonstration at Kabul University, with around 300 women waving Taliban flags and banners supporting the Islamist government. All the women were covered head-to-toe in black robes and had their faces and hands covered. The images showing the event are uncanny as they show rows of black ghosts sitting in a university lecture hall. 

The answer to that demo is now arriving via social media with Afghan women living and working abroad sharing photos of them in traditional Afghan dresses covered in intricate embroideries and motifs, to protest the Taliban's black hijab.

A few days ago Dr Bahar Jalali, an Afghan historian and gender studies expert and a former faculty member of the American University of Afghanistan retweeted an image of a woman all clad in black in Kabul, explaining, "No woman has ever dressed like this in the history of Afghanistan. This is utterly foreign and alien to Afghan culture. I posted my pic in the traditional Afghan dress to inform, educate, and dispel the misinformation that is being propagated by Taliban."

After Dr Jalali posted a picture of herself in Afghan dress, more Afghan women across the globe followed her example. 

Waslat Hasrat-Nazimi, head of the Afghan service at DW News, tweeted a picture of herself in traditional Afghan dress and headdress, adding in her comment, "Me wearing traditional Afghan attire in Kabul. This is Afghan culture and this is how Afghan women dress."

Tahmina Aziz, a journalist working for Chek, an independent and employee-owned news service from Vancouver Island, also posted her picture and so did BBC's Sana Safi.

 

 

Safi stated in a post accompanying her picture: "So how do Afghan women dress then? This is how. If I was in Afghanistan then I would have the scarf on my head. This is as 'conservative' and 'traditional' as I/you can get."

 

 

Peymana Assad, the first person of Afghan origin to be elected to public office in the UK, posted a photo of herself in colourful garments and tweeted: "This is Afghan culture. My traditional dress. Our cultural attire is not the dementor outfits the Taliban have women wearing."

 

 

A the beginning of September Italian sculptor Elisa Morucci, a guest at the 78th Venice Film Festival, decided to wear a traditional Afghan dress at a film premiere as a sign of solidarity to all Afghan women, especially those ones who manifested in Kabul against the Taliban risking their lives.

 

 

The Venice film festival has actually always shown a great interest in the stories of Afghan women: in 2019 Afghanistan's first female director, Sahraa Karimi, premiered her debut film "Hava, Maryam, Ayesha", the story of three women, in the Horizons section of the festival.

 

 

Karimi, current head of the Afghan Film Organisation, was at the 78th Venice Film Festival at the beginning of September for the "International panel on Afghanistan and the situation of Afghan filmmakers and artists", together with another director, Sahra Mani. 

 

 

Karimi was producing her second feature when Taliban fighters swept into Kabul, while also working on workshops and festival programmes, but she had to leave the country at the end of August with the help of the Ukrainian and Turkish authorities.

 

Mani presented a project at the Venice film market fair entitled "Kabul Melody" and chronicling the work of the first and only music school in Kabul, Afghanistan's National Institute of Music (ANIM), founded in 2010, that taught both young girls and boys how to play music. While in Venice the director highlighted that the school has been occupied by the Taliban and the instruments were destroyed. Karimi explained during the festival that all artists, filmmakers and creative minds left behind in Afghanistan need intellectual support to keep on creating and warned that the country will lose its identity if it loses its culture.

 

So, while let's hope to learn more about Afghan attire, heritage, identity, history and traditions from all the women posting images on social media, let's also hope to see their stories on the big screen at some point in the future.