AFGHAN LANDAY --- A VOICE OF REBELLION

Nada Rajan
Asst.Professor
Dept. of English
M.S.M. College, Kayamkulam

Afghanistan is one of the most patriarchal societies in the world. Like all patriarchal the women
there are oppressed and silenced by the agents of fundamental conservatism, the Taliban. They are
restricted to only the most traditional of roles - marrying, bearing children and running a household - and
are kept strictly out of public life. The few women who dare to enter politics, medicine or other
professions face routine assassination attempts. This incessant misery and repression became evident in
literature, primarily through the medium of poetry.

Afghan women poetry occupies a unique place in literature. It is one of the strongest forces of
Afghan culture. The major themes dwelt in it are displacement, healing, and rebuilding. Consequently the
poetry is fragmented. Pashtun poetry, a variant of Afghan poetry, has long been a form of rebellion for
Afghan women, belying the notion that they are submissive or defeated.

Landai means short, poisonous snake in Pashto, a language spoken on both sides of the
Afghanistan-Pakistan border. The word also refers to two-line folk poems that can be just as lethal . They
can, therefore, be called mirrors which reflect the sentiments and passions of every sensitive pashtoon
man and woman. Although men do recite them, almost all are cast in the voices of women.

Afghan women mainly use the traditional folk form called the landai a 2-line poem that can
cut like a knife. Even shorter than haiku, this form probably developed because of its ease of
memorization which makes sense in a culture where few are schooled and women are forbidden to
write or read poetry. The women and girls share their landai when they congregate for chores at the
watering hole.

Every inch of me is covered except my eyes

That way I can speak with more than my mouth.

I am shouting but you dont answer

One day youll look for me and Ill be gone from this world.
My heart is like a child; it cries,
and demands flowers from a strangers garden.

These couplets, composed of plain, easily understood, yet fluent language, are totally free of the
influence of foreign, languages. Although some pashto poems are based on Arabic prosody yet these
couplets are not only unfettered by Arabic versification, they are based on a syllabic-prosody of their own
in as much as the first line of the couplet has nine syllables and the second thirteen.

Another exceptional quality of these couplets in that contrary to the general pattern of poetry in
most (landay) the woman address the man. This is so because compared to the male the sentiments of the
female are more tender, her sorrow more profound and he voice more sweeter, and that is why the
(landay) are more moving in their effects, and the enjoyment is proportionately greater than that found in
conventional pashto poetry.
Similarly every (Landay) couplet can be recited in different ways on different occasions. To be
more explicit, a landay couplet can be sung in different tunes and with different musical notes in combat
and rejoicing, while travelling, whether inactive or dancing, in travail and happiness, in fact at all times
and on all occasions.

This form can be compared to the confessional poetry that emerged in the late 1950s and early
1960s and is associated with poets such as Robert Lowell, Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, and W.D.
Snodgrass. The confessional poetry of the mid-twentieth century dealt with subject matter that previously
had not been openly discussed in American poetry. Private experiences with and feelings about death,
trauma, depression and relationships were addressed in this type of poetry, often in an autobiographical
manner. The confessional poets were not merely recording their emotions on paper; craft and construction
were extremely important to their work. While their treatment of the poetic self may have been
groundbreaking and shocking to some readers, these poets maintained a high level of craftsmanship
through their careful attention to and use of prosody.

Mirman Baheer, Afghanistans largest womens literary society, is a contemporary version of a

Taliban-era literary network known as the Golden Needle. In Herat, women, pretending to sew, gathered
to talk about literature. In Kabul, Mirman Baheer has no need for subterfuge. Its more than 100 members
are drawn primarily from the Afghan elite: professors, parliamentarians, journalists and scholars. They
travel on city buses to their Saturday meetings, their faces uncovered, wearing high-heeled boots and
shearling coats. But in the outlying provinces Khost, Paktia, Maidan Wardak, Kunduz, Kandahar,
Herat and Farah where the societys members number 300, Mirman Baheer functions largely in secret.
As members of parliament, radio and TV journalists, doctors, teachers and students, the women of
Mirman Baheer Association all come from progressive families. All of them are struggling for women
rights and culture, the only means and hope to break the cycle of poverty and wars that ravaged their
country since decades.

Mirman Baheer Associations members meet every Friday at the last floor of the Ministry of
Culture in Kabul. Middle aged women and young girls meet together to read their poems, eat cakes and
sip tea. Even these relaxed meetings form part of the cultural struggle that each one of them is fighting
every day. Their poems talk about freedom, love and life, their language is Pashto, the language of the
Taliban, a dialect used in parts of Pakistan and Afghanistan. Love is a sensitive issue in Afghanistan, its
not always clear if the poems talk about spiritual or earthly love, but some of these women have to suffer
the consequences of their behaviour outside the traditions. A girl from Kandahar burnt herself after her
mother discovered some of her poems, which revealed too many details about her love. Despite the old
Persian tradition, poetry is always been publicly banned to women. Most women use pen names to
conceal their identity.

Meena, a member of the literary group, had already faced a lifetime of tragedy.
Her fiance recently died when she was 17, and in accordance with Afghan tradition she must marry one
of his brothers. Writing poetry is the only way she can express her fear and misery; it has also served as
her only means of education since her father pulled her out of school four years ago. Despite her evident
skill, Meena can never share her poetry with her family for fear of being beaten, and instead she reads it
secretly over the phone to the women's literary group Mirman Baheer. Meena does this at a high risk: if
caught by her family, they would assume she was reading the poems to a lover, and she would
be severely punished. This is a region where honor killings are still practiced.

Mirman Baheer has over 100 members and is Afghanistan's largest female literary society. Members,
like Meena, live in rural regions, have to participate in secrecy for their own safety. In Kabul, women can
attend without fear, especially since they tend to be members of the elite, such as academics, politicians,
and journalists. The women share landai, poems of only two lines, which are usually written collectively.
Love and grief are common themes, but landai can be bawdy or tragic: for example, the miseries of
marriage to a much-older husband, or the unending series of wars that have wracked their nation.
The most moving story of all, though, was that of a young woman named Zarmina, who wrote under
the pen name Rahila. Zarmina was being forced into a marriage to a much-older man; instead of the
marriage to the young man she loved. Zarmina's family caught her reading her poems to fellow Mirman
Baheer members and assumed she had a lover. Her brothers beat her and tore up her notebooks. A few
days later, Zarmina locked herself in a closet and set herself on fire, dying in a hospital a few days later.
One of the leaders of Mirman Baheer wrote this landai for her:

"Her memory will be a flower tucked into literature's turban.

In her loneliness, every sister cries for her."

The most tragic aspect of this is that this fate is not uncommon for young Afghani women. In a nation
where 3 out of 4 women are forced into marriage, and almost all women are married before 16, her story
is not uncommon. Zarmina is unique only in that she had the courage to put her suffering into words.
The poem themselves are beautiful, but far more impressive is the courage it took to speak or write those
words. We hope that one day these young women will enjoy the freedom and opportunities as we all do.