In partnership with Bertha DocHouse, the UK’s first cinema dedicated to documentary cinema, several volunteers from the Afghanistan and the Central Asian Association were invited to attend an intimate screening of Writing Hawa, an award-winning film produced by the Franco-Afghan filmmaker, Najiba Noori, centering powerful and intimate multi-generational stories of Afghan women seeking to liberate themselves from deep-rooted patriarchal traditions. This blog brings together two short pieces, written by two volunteers who attended the screening, sharing their personal reflections and perspectives on the film.
Perspective 1
If you want to truly understand how Afghan women and girls are affected by Taliban patriarchy, then Najiba Noori’s Writing Hawa is compulsory viewing. I recently had the opportunity to watch this powerful documentary at the UK’s only documentary cinema, Bertha Dochouse in Bloomsbury, who partnered with the ACAA in screening the film.
The documentary centres Najiba’s mother Hawa, who at the age of 13 was married to a man 30 years her senior. Now 50, after decades of caring for her many children and more recently her dementia-afflicted husband, Hawa has determined to make something of her life. Over the course of 5 years, we get behind the eyes and camera lens of her daughter Najiba, a journalist by trade, and follow along as Hawa endeavours to start a textiles business and learn to read and write. We follow many twists and turns, most notably Hawa’s joyous re-union with her granddaughter Zahra, who has fled her abusive father to join her mother, who divorced him, and the rest of the family. The ensuing scenes as Hawa and Zahra visit Kabul’s markets together and share a whiteboard to practice writing are truly heartwarming, but the uncertainty of Afghanistan’s future looms large. The film progresses concurrently with the Doha negotiations and resulting return of the Taliban, which will ultimately force Zahra back to her father’s village, and derail Hawa’s dreams.
The film is full of compelling moments, but I was struck by one scene where Hawa, in her efforts to learn to read, goes shopping for books, which, since she is illiterate, are tailored for young children. Seeing her, the shopkeeper comes over and remarks that “they would be good for your grandchildren”. Taken on its own, this seems like a kind of inane interaction which takes place in shops the world over. However, when we view the shopkeepers’ seemingly harmless sales pitch within Afghanistan’s sociopolitical context, the implication is clear – the books are suitable for Hawa’s grandchildren, but not for her. Just as before, despite promises to the contrary, the Taliban have heavily restricted the education of women since they took power in 2021, with around 80% of girls and young women of school age not in education according to the UN. The image of Hawa, aged 50, buying children’s books so that she can learn to read lays bare the consequences of the kind of anachronistic, patriarchal oppression which women have faced for decades in Afghanistan. Knowing as we do now that the Taliban would return to power shortly after this scene was filmed, we are forced to wonder how many of the young girls for whom these books were intended will ever be allowed to read them.
In some ways, Writing Hawa seems to have a happy ending. Hawa and the rest of Najiba’s family are able to leave Kabul, first for Iran, and then eventually to join her in exile in Paris. But it can only be bittersweet. Without any legal claim to custody over her, Hawa and Zahra’s mother were forced to send her back to her father when the Taliban took Kabul – Zahra would be in great danger if detected by the Taliban there. After losing contact with Zahra, Najiba and her family eventually learn that Zahra, aged 13, has been married off, likely to a much older man just like her grandmother. In this way, while Hawa’s struggle for emancipation symbolises the struggle of all Afghan women, Zahra becomes a symbol for the millions of women and girls who were not lucky enough to leave, and continue to exist under the Taliban’s oppressive regime.
Writing Hawa kickstarted an impact campaign that unites the Afghan diaspora and (other) decision-makers to change the lives of women and girls in Afghanistan. You can learn more about how you can support that campaign at https://www.writinghawa.com/what-can-i-do.
By Isaac Lordon
Perspective 2
Writing Hawa is a poignant tribute to the resiliency of an Afghan woman and her quest to attain literacy and self-empowerment within the most extraordinary of circumstances. For those of us who were fortunate to attend an intimate screening of the film at the Curzon in Bloomsbury, London, the experience was profoundly moving. Directed by celebrated Afghan filmmaker, Najiba Noori, who relocated to Paris after the Taliban seized control of Afghanistan in 2021, we follow the story of Noori’s mother, Hawa, over 5 years and her resilient efforts to become literate while also establishing her own textile business as an ethnic Hazara woman in Afghanistan. Married at the tender age of 13 to a man 30 years her senior, Hawa’s life has been largely defined by deep-rooted patriarchal and cultural limitations, making her story emblematic of the lives of many Afghan women. Yet for those women, their realities rarely receive the recognition that hers does, their struggles and tragedies permanently rendered to the peripheries of the world’s consciousness.
Amidst the looming possibility of national collapse and political usurpation by the Taliban, Noori courageously attempts to document intimate insights into her mother’s brave journey as she seeks to attain her personal liberation after decades of obedience to patriarchal tradition. As a woman myself living in the developed world, Hawa’s story was a stark reinforcement of the privilege of literacy that I have been granted, a fundamental skill that yet so many women worldwide, like Hawa, have been systematically denied for generations, attributable to patriarchal norms that have always attempted to relegate women as subordinates to male authority. As Hawa embarks on her journey to learn how to read and write, starting off with a humbling purchase of elementary-grade literacy textbooks that the shopkeeper regards as ‘suitable for her grandchildren’, I, along with the rest of the audience, quickly found myself cheering for her success. As Noori documents her mother’s remarkable literary progress, scenes of Hawa eloquently reading start to feel personally triumphant as we, the audience, have accompanied Hawa throughout her journey from illiteracy to self-empowerment and liberation as she conquers personal setbacks to become a literate businesswoman in Afghanistan.
As we are later introduced to the character of Zahra, Hawa’s 12 year old granddaughter and Noori’s niece, who escapes abusive male family members in an attempt to be reunited with her mother and her grandmother, the struggle for liberation becomes all the more obligatory for Hawa and her granddaughter, destined to relive Hawa’s tragic story as her abusive paternal relatives threaten to wed her off soon. Hawa’s steadfast determination to emancipate both herself and her granddaughter using the power of education and literacy as a tool of female empowerment is deeply inspiring yet simultaneously humbling. As granddaughter and grandmother mentor each other in an empty room with nothing but one elementary-grade Dari textbook, a pen and whiteboard in view, it is yet another stark reinforcement of the privilege of education that women like me are granted with in the developed world and yet a fundamental right that Afghan women, like Hawa and Zahra, must fight for to defy the tragic and violent fates that extremists, like the Taliban, wish to subordinate these women to.
As recurring background scenes throughout the film document the possibility of a Taliban resurgence in Afghanistan, the revival of their extremist patriarchal ideologies becomes a very real threat to the extraordinary journey towards emancipation that Hawa and her granddaughter have embarked on. Yet, tender and comic scenes of Hawa’s grandchildren helping their grandmother to write accompanied by a heart-warming moment of Zahra, grateful to be in her grandmother’s embrace after years of forcible separation from her maternal family, represent glimpses of hope, poignant moments that embody one Afghan woman’s resilience and defiance against the draconian patriarchal laws that threaten to deprive Afghan women of the agency to redefine and reclaim their destinies. Unfortunately, the emotions of triumph and joy that we, as the audience, feel and become so strongly moved by are violently contradicted and stifled by the tragedy that unfolds towards the end of the film. As the Taliban reclaim power in August 2021, Afghan women across the nation are targeted in their educational institutions and are quickly deprived of their access to schooling. Hawa’s visible distress as Afghan women across the nation become subject to gross injustices and violence evokes a shattering feeling of injustice, an almost personal feeling of loss considering the remarkable progress towards self-emancipation that we, within the audience, have witnessed Hawa make throughout these 5 years. As Noori promises to reunite with her mother after fleeing Afghanistan herself, Hawa is later able to evacuate Afghanistan with several other family members. However, tragically, Zahra has been left behind. As we learn of her whereabouts in the concluding credits, a personal feeling of devastation and heartbreak unfolds within me. We learn Zahra has been forcibly wed off by the Taliban to a man many years her senior, tragically destined to relive the same fate of her grandmother, the very fate she had striven to free her from.
As we witness the unfolding of this tragedy through Hawa’s eyes 4 years on and the tragic repercussions for Afghan women that they remain subject to till today, Najiba Noori’s Writing Hawa reinforces that there is a duty of care we remain obligated to honour for those of us in the developed world. We must not forget Afghan women, who endure a profound tragedy of being systematically erased from not only public life but now from the world’s consciousness 4 years on, their dreams and education still indefinitely held hostage by violent patriarchal extremists.
By Amna Khan