“In many ways, the salon felt like one of the few places where women could converse privately and freely without the watchful eyes of society. It was our sanctuary of expression. We had their freedom there. We didn’t have fear of people or relatives.”
Kaveh Kazemi
During lockdown, we all remember how much it impacted us when we couldn’t get our hair done, popping to Boots for a box of dye while we attempted to redo our roots at home and trimming our layers in the bathroom mirror, and how much it affected our self-esteem. For women struggling to get on with their lives under such difficult circumstances, when they have lost everything else, it’s the everyday things that often hit the hardest.
“When I got married, my husband used to say he didn’t like me and wanted to marry someone beautiful. I tried my best to please him and used to maintain myself at the salon,” said Ekta, 29, from Kabul.
“After I had a child, I gained weight. My husband said I was ugly. He recently remarried a girl who is in her teens. She is young and beautiful. I don’t feel good because I haven’t been allowed to cut my hair or shave my body. I have dark facial hair, which I pull out regularly. It’s scarred my face.”
As women are being pushed out of the public sphere, human rights activists fear that as Afghan women are pushed out of sight, they will be pushed out of mind. No wonder they’re calling for the international community to do more.
“That is how Afghan women feel our lives are now. Our mouths are silenced as the world is turning a blind eye.”
“For many young women, they didn’t experience the Taliban’s rule in the ‘90s, so it’s a total shock. They are a generation that grew up in a free Afghanistan where equal rights were protected under our constitution,” said Horia Mosadiq, director of the Conflict Analysis Network.
“The Taliban have turned Afghanistan into an open prison for women. They are living in a gender apartheid regime, and their fundamental rights are violated systematically, such as the right to education, health, employment and political participation,
“The world is continuing to engage and compromise with the Taliban through soft diplomacy. This isn’t working, and the Taliban are not showing any signs of relaxing their draconian rules and ending gender apartheid; on the contrary, the more flexibility the world shows to the Taliban, the more vicious they are becoming towards women.”
Fariha shows me a photo of her once-thriving salon. Outside is an advertising hoarding where a woman’s eyes and mouth have been covered with gaffer tape. “That is how Afghan women feel our lives are now,” she sighs. “Our mouths are silenced as the world is turning a blind eye.”
*Names have been changed.