Women choose exile as Taliban laws return.
THE first Afghan woman to appear on television after the fall of the Taliban has fled the country, saying it is too dangerous, as her husband was shot dead outside their house.
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Paween began her career aged 19 but fled to Pakistan when the mujaheddin entered Kabul in 1992 and closed the theatres. She later returned and married a taxi driver from Khost, with whom she had a son and daughter, now aged eight and seven.
When the Taliban fell she seized the opportunity to be the first woman to appear on TV. “Others were scared but I thought it was good to show the way,” she explained.
Her own family did not agree. “My sisters cut me off, saying, ‘Why are you appearing on TV? Being an actress in this country is like being a whore’.”
Last summer she appeared in a production of the Shakespeare comedy Love’s Labour’s Lost, staged by a French director, after which she began to receive death threats. People in turbans came on motorbikes, saying: “Don’t act or you’ll be killed.” Her husband was also threatened. “They told him, ‘You pimp, letting your wife on TV. If you’re a real man you’ll beat her and kick her and take her back to Khost’.”
There are women who are professional loudmouths – I’m one. And then you have really brave women, like Paween Mushtakhel. I know some very good people who are angry at people like me for asking why we (the West) are spending time, energy, and brave soldiers’ lives trying to help rebuild Afghanistan given how irredeemably crazy Afghanistan seems to be. I wonder what Ms. Mushtakhel would say about that.
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