Since the rise of the conservative Islamic Taliban regime in 1996, the lives of women in Afghanistan have changed dramatically. Women who had held professional jobs for years were told they were no longer allowed to work outside the home. In public they were now required to wear a burqa–a cumbersome head-to-toe garment with an opaque mesh veil covering the eyes–and to be chaperoned by a male relative at all times. As punishment for violating the rules, some women have been beaten or stoned to death.
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It’s a huge step backward for Afghan women, who since the late 50s had enjoyed a gradual relaxation of the dictates on their behavior and dress. In August 1959 a member of the royal family appeared unveiled at the annual independence day parade. During the evening celebration that followed, “all women had to come without a veil,” says Taraki, who attended the event. “The prime minister’s daughters and wife came out unveiled. People were feeling very uncomfortable.”
The situation had been quite different when Taraki arrived in Afghanistan with her husband, Mohamed, in 1947, three years after the two were married. They had met through mutual friends when she was a student at the University of Chicago and he was at Northwestern. Her parents, who lived in Roseland, were not happy about the union; nor was his government, which terminated his scholarship.
Taraki had read Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique in Afghanistan, and upon her return to the U.S. she joined a women’s liberation group and turned her back on her former home. Her resolve lasted until the Soviet invasion in 1979, when reports of thousands of Afghan refugees pouring into Pakistan convinced her to get involved in resettlement efforts. She became a member of Amnesty International after learning that a nephew in Kabul had been imprisoned by the communists and was the object of a letter-writing campaign. Eventually she organized the Afghan Women’s Task Force, a group that promotes ties within the local Afghan community and raises funds for overseas aid, most of it earmarked for women. For the past several years Taraki has hosted a slide talk, “An American Woman in Afghanistan,” detailing her experiences.
