As lovely and inspiring as Susan Boyle’s rendition of that wretched, banal song from Les Miserables was on the British version of American idol, the performance that has been haunting me in recent days comes from a documentary about the Afghan version of the same program, Afghan Star. The performance is delivered by a young woman named Setara, who is from Herat. She’s asked to sing one last song after she’s been eliminated–and, in the midst of it, carried away by the emotion, she launches into a sweet, demure little dance. The country–the male half, at least–goes berserk. Setara is a loose woman, a whore. Her life is threatened. She goes into hiding. Finally, she makes it home to Herat and her family.
The story is all the more poignant because of the protest by about 300 incredibly courageous Afghan women in Kabul last week, who marched through the streets–against the so-called “Marital Rape” law–and were threatened and screamed at by dissolute crowds of Afghan men. It occurs to me that there is no halfway here. If we are going to create conditions that encourage the equality of women–to go to school, to not be forced into sex, to dance in public–we have a moral responsibility to see this through as far as we can. It is one thing to say that we are merely for “stability,” not “western democracy” in Afghanistan…it is another thing entirely, to figure out where to draw that line. We can’t will Afghanistan to be something it isn’t, but we surely have a responsibility to protect Setara, the young girls in Kandahar who were doused with acid because they chose to go to school and all the other women who are just beginning to claim their humanity because we’ve allowed it to happen.
In any case, if you have a chance, see the documentary about Afghan Star. It was a hit at the Sundance Festival and I recommend it highly.