Rev elations

Women in Kabul, Afghanistan I would like to begin by telling you the story of an Afghan teenage girl called Rahila Muska, which I read in Mark Oakley’s book  A Splash of Poetry .  Her story starts with a poem -a form of Afghan poetry called ‘Landay’.    Landay is an ancient, anonymous and oral form of folk poetry, written in couplets, mainly by and for illiterate Pashtun women on the Afghanistan and Pakistan border.  This is the Landay that starts our story: I call. You’re stone. One day you’ll look and find I’m gone. Rahila, the heroine of our story, lived in Helmand, a Taliban stronghold. Her father had taken her out of school for fear of the Taliban, as they saw the education of women as dishonourable; and it left her vulnerable to attack- kidnap or rape. Rahila found some consolation in poetry; Rahila loved Landay and she was a frequent caller to a radio programme, a chatline run by a women’s literary group, to which women would call and share their experienc