Ukmina Manoori: I Am a Bacha Posh
Aug. 31st, 2018 06:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bibliogrammaIn traditional homes in Afghanistan, it is a misfortune to have no son. So in many such homes, a daughter is chosen, to be a bacha posh, a “girl dressed as a boy,” a surrogate to be the family’s son until, the family hopes, a true son is born. These girls dress as boys, have the freedom of boys, and the privileges - school, involvement in public social life, having jobs, as many young children do in underdeveloped nations. Usually, when a boy is born, or when the bacha posh reaches puberty, she is forcibly pushed back into the restricted sphere of female life, no more freedom of dress and action, no more school. Some resist, refuse to be forced into a female role, despite the disapproval of family and mullahs and society.
Ukmina Manoori, author of I Am a Bacha Posh, is one such person. They write: “This is how I am. This is why I wrote this book. So I could tell the truth about Afghani women.
Because I lived as a man for most of my life, I could do this today. What a paradox! But I was seizing the opportunity. I learned not very long ago that I was the only Afghan to know of such a special fate. In our country, we, the bacha posh, the “women dressed as men,” made ourselves discreet. No one could say how many of us there were. We made the choice in a single moment of our lives not to renounce the freedom that our simple masculine clothes give but to risk our lives every single day. I wanted to write this book before I became an old woman or ill, before I was no longer able to remember my life, my special fate. Everyone wanted to know why some Afghan women made this choice. I think that from reading what I am going to recount of my life, they will understand. I want them to talk about us, the Afghans who fight to no longer be ghosts, to come back to the visible world. To no longer hide ourselves under burqas or men’s clothing.”
In telling their story, Manoori also tells the story of what it is like to be a woman in Afghanistan, for every freedom they speak of gaining because they wear men’s clothing is a freedom denied to women. The freedom to go to school, to read, to be literate is one of the key freedoms: “I liked school; I really wanted to know how to read and write. There, I came close to that which separated the men from the women in our country: education. Men have the right to learn. I did not understand why this right was refused to girls, why there were so few schools for them. Later, these boys would become men, and they would make it their duty to prevent women from accessing this knowledge. Why should women learn to read, when it would only pervert their minds? Why would they need to write, if only to tell nonsense? And the Pashtun men argued that they must protect the women, to make them respectable. They prohibited them from showing themselves, especially in public places, like schools.”
By the time that Manoori, now late in their teens, had won their struggle with their family and community, to continue living as a man, the Russian invasion ended any hopes they had entertained for getting a good education and winning respect as a literate, well-employed man. After helping their mother and younger siblings escape into the mountains, Manoori joined the Mujahideen, the guerrilla fighters resisting the Russian forces, despite their qualms over the violence that the Mujahideen often brought against Afghan villagers trying to survive.
By the time the Russians left Afghanistan, Manoori’s father was ill from the privations of living as a refugee, and woukd soon die. Manoori was now the man of the family, respected as one who fought the jihad against the Russians. The family returned to their native village to find their home and farm destroyed. Hard work slowly brought things back, though nowhere near the level of security the family had known before the Russian invasion. But just as the hopes of the family began to grow, the Taliban began its drive to power in Afghanistan. Once more, Manoori was in jeopardy for their choice to live as a man. Under the Taliban, they became a prisoner in their home, unable to go out in case they were seen as a woman, waiting for the knock on the door that meant some neighbour had betrayed their secret. But the knick never came. Only the American bombs, in 2001.
With the restoration of democratic rule, Manoori became valuable to the new government. Because they lived as a man, and had been a Mujahideen, they could travel, attend meetings, talk to her fellow Pashtun with some authority - but because they were a woman, they could speak to women directly, work to engage them in the new government, begin the process of bringing the women of rural Afghanistan into public life as citizens. They would later serve their district as an elected representative on the Provincial Council.
In 2006, Manoori fulfilled a promise to their dying father, and made the Hadj, to present themselves before Allah as they were, a woman living as a man, and receive judgement from Him. And their sense was that Allah accepted them as they were.
Manoori writes in a very simple and straight-forward fashion of their experiences, their life as a woman dressed as, acting as, a man in such a male-dominated society. They have suffered much, as have the Afghan people, but express no regret for their choice to live as a man, even though that has meant, in their culture, that they have had no opportunity to take a partner or lover, to have a family. They say they have never felt a need for love, that respect and freedom have been more than enough in their life.
I am reluctant to frame the experiences of a person like Manoori in the terms we use for gender and sexuality in the West. Are they transgender? Non-binary? Asexual? I’m not sure what those concepts might mean to them. But the story of their life, of who they are on their own terms, is a fascinating one, and in their terms Manoori says clearly, “I am a bacha posh.”
Ukmina Manoori, author of I Am a Bacha Posh, is one such person. They write: “This is how I am. This is why I wrote this book. So I could tell the truth about Afghani women.
Because I lived as a man for most of my life, I could do this today. What a paradox! But I was seizing the opportunity. I learned not very long ago that I was the only Afghan to know of such a special fate. In our country, we, the bacha posh, the “women dressed as men,” made ourselves discreet. No one could say how many of us there were. We made the choice in a single moment of our lives not to renounce the freedom that our simple masculine clothes give but to risk our lives every single day. I wanted to write this book before I became an old woman or ill, before I was no longer able to remember my life, my special fate. Everyone wanted to know why some Afghan women made this choice. I think that from reading what I am going to recount of my life, they will understand. I want them to talk about us, the Afghans who fight to no longer be ghosts, to come back to the visible world. To no longer hide ourselves under burqas or men’s clothing.”
In telling their story, Manoori also tells the story of what it is like to be a woman in Afghanistan, for every freedom they speak of gaining because they wear men’s clothing is a freedom denied to women. The freedom to go to school, to read, to be literate is one of the key freedoms: “I liked school; I really wanted to know how to read and write. There, I came close to that which separated the men from the women in our country: education. Men have the right to learn. I did not understand why this right was refused to girls, why there were so few schools for them. Later, these boys would become men, and they would make it their duty to prevent women from accessing this knowledge. Why should women learn to read, when it would only pervert their minds? Why would they need to write, if only to tell nonsense? And the Pashtun men argued that they must protect the women, to make them respectable. They prohibited them from showing themselves, especially in public places, like schools.”
By the time that Manoori, now late in their teens, had won their struggle with their family and community, to continue living as a man, the Russian invasion ended any hopes they had entertained for getting a good education and winning respect as a literate, well-employed man. After helping their mother and younger siblings escape into the mountains, Manoori joined the Mujahideen, the guerrilla fighters resisting the Russian forces, despite their qualms over the violence that the Mujahideen often brought against Afghan villagers trying to survive.
By the time the Russians left Afghanistan, Manoori’s father was ill from the privations of living as a refugee, and woukd soon die. Manoori was now the man of the family, respected as one who fought the jihad against the Russians. The family returned to their native village to find their home and farm destroyed. Hard work slowly brought things back, though nowhere near the level of security the family had known before the Russian invasion. But just as the hopes of the family began to grow, the Taliban began its drive to power in Afghanistan. Once more, Manoori was in jeopardy for their choice to live as a man. Under the Taliban, they became a prisoner in their home, unable to go out in case they were seen as a woman, waiting for the knock on the door that meant some neighbour had betrayed their secret. But the knick never came. Only the American bombs, in 2001.
With the restoration of democratic rule, Manoori became valuable to the new government. Because they lived as a man, and had been a Mujahideen, they could travel, attend meetings, talk to her fellow Pashtun with some authority - but because they were a woman, they could speak to women directly, work to engage them in the new government, begin the process of bringing the women of rural Afghanistan into public life as citizens. They would later serve their district as an elected representative on the Provincial Council.
In 2006, Manoori fulfilled a promise to their dying father, and made the Hadj, to present themselves before Allah as they were, a woman living as a man, and receive judgement from Him. And their sense was that Allah accepted them as they were.
Manoori writes in a very simple and straight-forward fashion of their experiences, their life as a woman dressed as, acting as, a man in such a male-dominated society. They have suffered much, as have the Afghan people, but express no regret for their choice to live as a man, even though that has meant, in their culture, that they have had no opportunity to take a partner or lover, to have a family. They say they have never felt a need for love, that respect and freedom have been more than enough in their life.
I am reluctant to frame the experiences of a person like Manoori in the terms we use for gender and sexuality in the West. Are they transgender? Non-binary? Asexual? I’m not sure what those concepts might mean to them. But the story of their life, of who they are on their own terms, is a fascinating one, and in their terms Manoori says clearly, “I am a bacha posh.”
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Date: 2018-09-01 10:41 am (UTC)