Gathering Strength:. Peggy Kelsey
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uncle had a big fight with my mother when I was singing on Afghan Star. Now he and his family have stopped socializing with us and they won’t come to our house. They accuse my parents of changing their culture. I have to be careful now because some people don’t like me because I’m a singer.
Peggy: Even without all this repression from society, it’s hard enough to be an artist. I’m wondering where you find the strength to stand up to this.
Elaha: First of all I have self-confidence. When I was young, my parents always encouraged me and they believed that I could achieve something great. I have always been a leader among my friends, so that gives me confidence, too. Believing in myself, my talent, and skill is the most important thing.
Our society has suffered a lot and our generation has different ideas from our parents’ generation. We have to sacrifice in order to bring the changes we want to see.
Peggy: When you encounter people trying to stop you or condemn you, what is your response?
Elaha: It depends. If somebody tries to put me down I will ignore them. This way I can make them feel that they didn’t touch me. Other times I will try to give them my reasons.
Peggy: What is the best part of your life so far?
Setara: The best part of my life is my education, my struggles for my education, and the conflicts I face. Whatever I see I find interesting and it becomes the best part of my life. Most Afghan women are far from education. If they try to continue, they have to hide it in the kitchen while they stay at home and raise their children. I’m not going to be like those women. I’m going to change my life and think differently. I’m going to experience the things that are my right. I have to show my sisters, my friends, my family, and Afghan women all over the world that we can change if we have a chance.
Peggy: During those five years under the Taliban, did you have poetry, were you interested in literature?
Setara: Yes, I studied poetry, but I was not writing at that time, only following my English classes at home with my father. Sometimes I took courses like knitting, and I can make many nice things now.
Peggy: So during the Taliban, were there things that helped you deal with depression and sadness?
Setara: There was nothing because I was not writing, just studying. I had my poetry books and my diary notebooks, and whatever poems were my favorites. I spent my time trying to memorize them. I lived the way the scholars and the classic poets lived, in a sort of monastery. Now when I write, it is my healing. If I don’t think that I’m a writer and if I can’t write, then for me there is nothing. I have to express myself.
Peggy: This impulse and even compulsion to express is the driver of the "artistic soul." Sometimes what comes out is beautiful; sometimes ugly, but it is the truth as seen or felt by that person in that moment. The truth can be different in another moment, and that also can demand expression.
When something happens to you that you don’t like, how do you react to that?
Setara: Afghan women and girls hide everything inside. They feel a mountain of pain and have no way to struggle against it. I am the same as others, but now whatever I see I write about. Positive or negative, it doesn’t matter. If I limit myself and write only about positive things, I can’t write. I’m not going to hide anything in my writing. Whenever you try to hide something, you cannot present reality.
Peggy: How did your art help you get through difficult times?
Saghar: In those [Taliban] times we could do nothing. We couldn’t go out. We couldn’t visit our friends. My only choice was to work inside my home and leave everything else to the almighty Allah. When I felt bad and when I was suffering, I painted. It helped me forget my isolated condition. Do you see this [7 foot tall] painting of an ancient pillar? I painted it from a picture I had. By painting it, I was able to bring something from outside into my house.
Peggy: In order to create my own art, I need a conducive space. I need quiet. I need the space of mind to let my spirit soar beyond my physical surroundings. I need to be in the "right" mood. When I’m down, I just don’t feel like being creative. If I do work during those times, my art reflects that and the result is mediocre, half-hearted, and forced. Harnessing anger to make art is another story. Depression, however, is much more prevalent in Afghanistan, one consequence of a cultural norm that seeks to protect loved ones from unpleasantness.
Listening to Saghar, I wondered if I could have created anything under the circumstances she endured. The truth is, at that time, during the Taliban she wasn’t being very creative either. Her simply-drawn children’s faces featuring huge sad eyes were a worthwhile exercise. They did express her feelings, but they were copies of pictures popular in the 1960s that she found in books. We didn’t discuss it, but perhaps painting those faces had also been a small rebellion. Had the Taliban discovered her paintings of living beings, or her books of images, they would have been destroyed and she would have been punished.
One day back in Austin I attended a lecture by my friend Jen O’Neal about her work in Uganda. She told us stories of women who had sustained or been forced to perpetrate horrific atrocities. Although those women she met certainly had residual emotional effects as a result, she told me that they were generally not depressed. They had access to their emotions, both positive and negative.
I thought about this in comparison to the Afghan women I’d met. I realized that there was a key difference between the two groups.
In 2003, I asked women in Welayat prison5 how they supported each other. A few told me that when a new woman came into their room, they encouraged her to tell her story and they cried together. Their mutual tears helped them bond as each woman in the group took on some of the storyteller’s pain. By connecting with their own similar stories, they could begin to heal their traumas. These women in the prison were strangers who had already fallen from respectability by being jailed. They didn’t feel the need to protect each other’s reputations or dignity as they might have with relatives or the still-respectable. When I asked women outside of prison how they most often dealt with the difficulties they faced, many said that they hid their troubles so as not to add to the burdens of their loved ones. Silence is a prescription for isolation and depression.
Whether Ugandans or Afghans, those who move forward are actively engaged in creating better lives for their children and/or the wider society. They heal more quickly and have access to the most joy. In Setara’s case, she moves forward and finds healing by sharing in her writing the experiences of Afghan women.
Who helped you get through your hard times?
Mariam: My cousin. When the mujahidin came to Kabul [1992], my uncle, who had already gone to Pakistan, advised us to join him. So my father closed up his wood heater shop and we set off. We lived in Pakistan for 11 years while my brothers, sisters, and I studied. My father sold tea and cold drinks in the bus station because he couldn’t get a job. He was the only one supporting us – seven children, my mother, his mother-in-law, and grandmother.
When we first went to Pakistan, I was very weak in studying. On the first day of school they put my younger sister in fifth grade and me into second, even though I’m older. How can it be possible for me to be in second grade and my younger sister in fifth? It’s not fair! I