Two sisters from Afghanistan have be engaged in a musical resistance to the Taliban’s repression of women. They began making videos of poems against the repression and in celebration of women’s strength, singing the poems, and posting them to social media. They hide their identities under the burkas they are supposed to wear in public, protecting them for discovery and arrest. Their videos have gone viral and become a key point of expression of Afghani women and their desire for respect and freedom.
“Our fight started from right under the flag of the Taliban and against the Taliban, said the younger sister. “Before the Taliban came to power, we had never written a single poem. This is what the Taliban did to us.” She went on describing how they got started as the Taliban began cracking down on women with their ultra-conservative interpretation of Sharia: “Our fight started from right under the flag of the Taliban and against the Taliban. Before the Taliban came to power, we had never written a single poem. This is what the Taliban did to us.”
One of their earlier songs was from the late Nadia Anjuman who protested the first Taliban takeover back in 1996: “How can I speak of honey when my mouth is filled with poison? // Alas my mouth is smashed by a cruel fist… // Oh for the day that I break the cage, // Break free from this isolation and sing in joy.”
Speaking of the burka, the older sister called it a mobile cage. “It’s like a graveyard where the dreams of thousands of women and girls are buried,” she said. “We wanted to use the weapon they used against us, to fight back against their restrictions.”
One of the latest songs from Last Torch speaks about the protesting women inside Afghanistan: “The waves of female voices // break locks and chains of prison. // This pen filled with our blood // breaks your swords and arrows.” The sisters of Last Torch sing at the end of this BBC report about women inside Afghanistan.
To read a BBC World report on Last Torch, click here.
