7 days ago
The Taliban letters show us what learning really is — hope
Last week The Times published correspondence between the author Kate Mosse and Parand, an Afghan writer who was risking her life to reply. It is one of the most moving things I have read, and I have read it several times now. Every time I do, my eyes leak.
There are so many revelations in these letters. Mosse's gentle questioning paves the way for an unflinching interaction between two women joined by the invisible thread of their art. It is a glimpse into a world locked from public view, the light from the dying star of pre-Taliban life still visible but out of reach. However bad I thought things were, they're worse.
• The Taliban letters: one woman writes in freedom, the other in fear
One statement in particular has stayed with me. 'For the fourth year running girls' high schools [are empty],' Parand writes. '… What is truly irreparable is the closure of schools. If Afghan girls are denied education, they will never understand the meaning of individual independence. They will remain dependent on men and be exploited — both within their families and in society.'
When I went to school in the mid-Noughties it wasn't cool for girls to be clever. It was better to be into boys, music and cider. I wasn't terribly academic, but the one thing I worked out fast was that the only way to leave Glenrothes was to study. So I revised and got the grades, eventually making it to university after a few missteps. A new world opened up in front of me. I kept reading, kept writing, and the worlds multiplied. Everything I am today I owe to books.
To not have books — to not be allowed to learn — is beyond my understanding. Here, education remains the only way to haul yourself out of one life and into another. Until I read those letters the thought hadn't crystallised properly. Learning isn't just something you do to pad out the years of childhood. It's the bedrock of everything solid — financial freedom, emotional regulation, curiosity, the ability to let your mind expand.
In Afghanistan, these riches are a million times harder won for women, who are banned from the office and university. They cannot enter parks, and must instead walk in laps around the edges for exercise. They can attend work meetings online but their names are not listed on attendance sheets. The simplest things we take for granted are off-limits. Without them a person is erased.
In her own work, Parand highlights these injustices. She doesn't say it explicitly, but it is part of the job of a writer. Part of committing words to the page is the refusal to turn away. Part of it is finding a cause and seeing how far you can push it. Part of it is risk, like it is for Parand, who knows that if her letters are seized she may be killed. Part of it is using your platform to illuminate, like Mosse, an author with an international following.
I didn't go to a good high school. My alma mater isn't a prestigious one. For a long time I thought this mattered, but reading these letters reminds me it doesn't. What matters is I got to go. What matters is that I ended up here. The classroom filled me with an unquenchable thirst for knowledge, something I consider a basic right of living in Scotland. In fact, it is an immense privilege to learn without limits, to read widely, to write to an audience.
Parand talks about going to the market, one of the only social spaces still open to Afghan women, where she can finally escape the entrapment of home. There she can talk in public without the walls closing in. This spot, right here on the screen, is another kind of market. A place where people gather and learn, most of all me when I open my laptop and fall into another life thousands of miles away.
One of the mistakes in reading experiences such as Parand's is focusing on the differences. It makes more sense to think about how we are the same. Only then can worlds collide. Only then can two lives connect. 'The only thing that brings me comfort is writing,' she signs off. 'Writing gives me hope for the future.' In the classrooms of Afghanistan, girls are not taught voice and structure, the art of the short story, the habit of elegant variation. But at home they wage a silent revolution. There they refuse to bow. @palebackwriter
Twenty-one women writers contribute to My Dear Kabul (£10.99, Hodder and Stoughton), an astonishing collection showing what it is to be a grandmother, a newlywed and a student in creative captivity. Order from Discount for Times+ members.
