Transcript
Pulling the Strings: Gender Roles in Afghan Culture, as portrayed by The Kite Runner Andrea Dworkin writes that gender roles “ predetermines who we are, how we behave, what we are willing to know, what we are able to feel. We are born into a sex role which is determined by visible sex, or gender” (34). The gender roles in Afghan culture are depicted in The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini and have changed as the Taliban gained and lost power over Kabul. Though it is difficult to examine whether the influences it had was personal or political, one can assume that they were deeply intertwined. Institutions such as marriage and religion engage on a personal level, and the genders are affected differently by the structure of Taliban rule – which is a part of Islam. While men are promoted by the strict rules of Afghan culture and traditions, women are oppressed by taking away their agency, prescribing their dress code and social conduct. One of the ways in which Hosseini criticises the gender roles in Afghan culture is by making all the central characters male. Both Amir and Hassan are motherless, and they grow up with mere tales of what their mothers were like. The father figures in the novel – Baba, Rahim Kahn, Ali and General Taheri – are all very prominent characters that are well rounded and developed. The biggest difference in men and women in Afghanistan is their ability to make their own decisions. Women have no choice or voice in who they will have to spend their life with as arranged marriages are centre in Afghan culture – this is shown especially in two cases: Ali and Sanaubar; and Amir and Soraya. In order to save her reputation, Sanaubar must marry Ali, for he is her first cousin and “therefore a natural choice for a spouse” (Hosseini 7). The two p arties have nothing in common, but Sanaubar’s father arranged the marriage to save her reputation and his honour. Because there was no love in the marriage, she leaves Ali with Hassan just days after his birth, and it brings shame to them as it is a “fate most Afghans considered far worse than death” (Hosseini 6). This especially difficult for them to grasp and process as women don’t normally act on their urges and desires, nor do they disobey their fathers in such a manner. When Amir meets Soraya he is instantly drawn to her, but do not speak for their culture does not allow it. When he learns that Soraya knows that he is a writer it baffles him, because “Fathers and sons could talk freely about women. But no Afghan girl – no decent and mohtaram (honourable) Afghan girl, at least – queried her father about a young man” (Hosseinin 128, 129). Even after Baba goes to Soraya’s father, it is still his decision whether they will be allowed to get married, and even after they are engaged they are not allowed to spend time alone together until after they are married. When Afghan women get married, they take on a very traditional role of an Afghan wife. The Kite Runner gives us a glimpse of what is means to be a wife in Afghanistan through Jamila, Soraya’s mother. Jam ila had a beautiful voice, but in order for her to marry General Taheri she had to stop singing. It is believed that “every woman needed a husband. Even if he did silence the song in her” (Hosseini 155). Amir also revealed that General Taheri did not share a bed with his wife, and he was petty and rude to her. It is also frowned upon for women to drink, and thus Soraya would only enjoy a glass of wine when she was alone with her husband. A woman’s reputation is central to arranged marriages and the role of the wife. It is Soraya who speaks out about this double standard, “Their sons go out to nightclubs looking for meat and get their girlfriends pregnant, they have kids out of wedlock and no one says a goddamn thing” (Hosseini 156). She had told Amir about her past, about how she ran off to Virginia with a man and got involved in drugs. It is interesting to note that she was not a virgin in Virginia. After a month of living with the man, her father came to her aid and threatened to murder the man and commit suicide. She returned home and was told to shave her head. “I make one mistake and suddenly everyone is talking nang and namoos (pride and honour), and I have to have my face rubbed in it for the rest of my life” (Hosseini 156). Amir is painfully conscious of his privilege as a male in Afghan culture, as he claims: “ I was fully aware of the Afghan double standard that favo ured my gender” (Hosseini 128). After Soraya told Amir about her past, he questioned why he did not subject her to shame, as most Afghan men did. “ Maybe it was because I had been raised by men; I hadn't grown up around women and had never been exposed firsthand to the double standard with which Afghan society sometimes treated them. Maybe it was because Baba had been such an unusual Afghan father, a liberal who had lived by his own rules, a maverick who had disregarded or embraced societal customs as he had seen fit ” (Hosseini 157). The biggest difference between Soraya and Amir was that she felt shame, while he felt guilt. The difference is that shame is public, it is scrutinised under the eyes of the society, while guilt festers within, it is private, and it is secretive, but both accumulates and feeds on one another. Peter Brooks explains this in his book Troubling Confessions: Speaking Guilt in Law and Literature : “The more guilt or shame he finds to confess, the more guilt and shame he accumulates by the act of confessing (52). The women in The Kite Runner is subjected to shame – Soraya for her past, Sanaubar for her scandalous life, and Jamila for supressing her singing voice to please her husband. He men, however, are subjected to guilt with Baba feeling guilty about his relations with Sanaubar, Rahim Kahn equipped with guilt for knowing Hassan is Amir’s half -brother, and Amir ridden with guilt for seeing Hassan being raped and not doing anything about it. When Amir returns to Afghanistan to save Sohab, he discovers that the treatment of women had worsened since he had last been there. This is portrayed through Hassan’s wife, Farzana, wh o was beaten to bloody bruises for talking too loudly: “a young Talib ran over and hit her on the thighs with his wooden stick. He struck her so hard she fell down. He was screaming at her and cursing and saying the Ministry of Vice and Virtue does not allow women to speak loudly” (Hosseini 190). Farzana is also the perfect example of how an Afghan woman should behave: “So courteous she spoke in a voice barely higher than a whisper and she would not raise her pretty hazel eyes to meet my gaze. But the way she was looking at Hassan, he might as well have been sitting on the throne at the Arg ” (Hosseini 180). This is in line with the Taliban cultural expectations that women are not allowed to make eye contact or raise their eyes toward them, and must treat men with the highest of respect. Afghan culture and gender roles also expect women to provide their husband’s with a family, and when Farzana gave birth to a stillborn baby girl, she “stayed in the hut all day and wailed”, as she felt she was not fulfilling her duties as wife (Hosseini 183). On Amir’s quest to find Sohrab he learns that he is in an orphanage. The orphanage in question was overpopulated, and it becomes clear that this is because of the Taliban rule. “Most of them have lost their father in the war, and their mothers can’t feed them because the Taliban don’t allow them to work. So they bring their children here” (Hosseini 222). In addition to denying women the right to education and work, women were also treated badly for not adhering to the Talib an’s strict dress codes. There is a reference in the novel made to women being flogged, “for wearing high heels” (Hosseini 248). If these rules and regulations implemented by the Taliban were not followed, women would be subjected to punishment which included: jail time, public execution, public beating and being stoned to death. In July 2010, Time Magazine published a cover of an Afghan girl. “ It is a portrait of Aisha, a shy 18-year-old Afghan woman who was sentenced by a Taliban commander to have her nose and ears cut off for fleeing her abusive in-laws. Aisha posed for the picture and says she wants the world to see the effect a Taliban resurgence would have on the women of Afghanistan, many of whom have f lourished in the past few years” ( Stengel 2010). Malala Yousafzai is also a victim of Taliban rule – she was shot for going to school. “ I was afraid going to school because the Taleban had issued an edict banning all girls from attending schools” (2013). “How can they stop us going to school?' I was t hinking. 'It's impossible, how can they do it?” (2013). Malala was shot in the head on 9 October 2012 “and it was clear to everyone, including the Pakistan army, that her life was in danger” (Hussain 2013). “No -one thought the Taliban would target a child. There were however notorious incidents where they had chosen to make an example of women. In early 2009, a dancer was accused of immorality and executed, her body put on public display in the centre of Mingora. Soon afterwards, there was outrage across Pakistan after a video emerged from Swat showing the Taliban flogging a 17-year-old girl for alleged "illicit rela tions" with a man” ( Husain 2013). It also not just women who are subject to gender roles. Amir is seen as weak because he suffers from car sick ness. “He saw my car sickness as yes another array of weakness – I saw it on his embarrassed face” (Hosseini 96). Later, Amir gets sick again and Baba apologised to the passengers. This made Amir bitter, “As if car sickness was a crime. As if you weren’t s upposed to get sick when you were eighteen” (Hosseini 97). Baba is extremely hard on Amir, and does not like the fact that Amir prefers reading to playing sport, and Amir is aware of this. “Of course, marrying a poet was one thing, but fathering a son who preferred burying his face in poetry books to hunting… well, that wasn’t how Baba had envisioned it, I suppose. Real men didn’t read poetry – and God forbid they should ever write it! Real men – real boys – played soccer just as Baba had when he had been y oung” (Hosseini 17). Baba saw Amir as a weakling, and became mad when Hassan defended Amir instead of letting Amir fight his own battles. Baba believed that a boy who would not stand up for himself becomes a man who cannot stand up to anything (Hosseini 20). While women are not in any positions of power and mere marginal characters, Hosseini gives the reader examples of the traditional gender roles and expectations of Afghan culture. It is clear that the decision making is in the hands of men, whether husbands or fathers. The women have to sacrifice their voice, their dreams and their agency when they get married in order to be a reputable wife. While women are reprimanded for their actions, men are excused and defended. The rules become more rigid under Taliban rule, and this is exactly what The Kite Runner addresses. Works Cited Dworkin, Andrea. Woman hating . New York: Dutton, 1974. Brooks, Peter. Troubling confessions: Speaking guilt in law and literature. University of Chicago Press, 2000. Hosseini, Khaled. The Kite Runner . London, Bloomsbury Publishing PLC, 2004. Husain, Mishal. “ Malala: The girl who was shot for going to school .” BBC News . 7 October 2013. http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-24379018. Accessed 1 Mar. 2017. Stengel, Richard. “The Plight of Afghan Women: A Disturbing Picture.” Time Magazine. 29 July 2010. http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2007415,00.html. Accessed 1 Mar. 2017.
