Living Behind the Veil

I'm often asked what I wear in Afghanistan and what it's like to wear a veil. It's freedom. Freedom to have a bad hair day, freedom to arrange my chadar to conceal the curve of my breasts and backside, freedom to not be an expatriate for a little while. It means freedom to hide even on the street from the Afghan men's eyes which seem to strip me naked.
When I relax my shoulders and walk less purposefully, less confidently, my eyes downcast and covered by sunglasses, I pass for an Afghan woman. I hear the men whisper in Dari, "Is she a foreigner or local woman?" I chuckle but am silent. On the street, I'm also a free target....freely exposed to groping, sexual innuendos whispered to me as a man bicycles by, free to have stones thrown at me, freely seen as no one's wife, daughter, sister, mother, friend, or boss. I step inside my gate, and remove my chapan and chadar. Now I'm someone's boss, motherhood returns to me as little steps run to greet me, and I receive a kiss from my adoring husband. Now I'm free to his loving and gentle eyes which know and enjoy my curves, free to once again be under the protective umbrella of being a wife, mother, friend, colleague, boss, niece, sister, daughter, woman.

Monday, October 8, 2018

A Tiny Tiny Taste


It's time to share another treasure from my Afghanistan suitcase.  Several authors new to me have given me the insight to be able to begin to explain this experience, even as I continue to seek to understand its relevance for me.

Being a white woman with my eye and hair coloring, I will never ever be able to fully understand what many non-whites experience throughout their lives, especially African-Americans.

One of the earliest experiences that began to weave new awareness of oppression, powerlessness, physical brutality, sexual exploitation, emotional dehumanization, racism, and sexism into my life occurred during the massive home invasion we experienced in Afghanistan in 2002.

At one point that evening, the 10 armed men from the Panjshir Valley became frustrated I wouldn't do what they wanted. The tall leader pushed me so hard I flew against the wall, my head cracking on the cement. My husband jumped up to defend me, and immediately he had the barrels of two Kalishnikovs touching the temples on both sides of his head, their fingers on the trigger ready to blow his brains out.  In a millisecond, three major thoughts ran through my mind.

The one I'm focusing on today is this: 

...In their eyes, I was nothing. I had no value, no significance, no threat, no relevance, nothing. I was a woman with 2 children, two college degrees, a master's degree, and was in a doctoral program. I was accomplished, talented, generally a nice person.

But they were blinded to that.

My female gender and light skin, aspects I cannot change, made me a person of nothing, other than that I was getting in the way of what they wanted.

I never forgot I felt like the value of dirt...what you sweep away. 

My experiences continued.

After the robbery, the police asked us to go to the police station for Neal to identify the robbers they caught. I sat in an outer room, not wishing to see those men again.  My night watchmen who also had been tied up was sitting in the room with me after he had been taken to identify the robbers, and a police captain of some sort also sat there with us.  As I sat there, the Police Captain behind the desk was staring at me, and then asked my illiterate guard (in Dari of course), "Does she milk her children?" (translated means does she breast feed?).

I was horrified.

In his eyes, I was literally a piece of meat, one he spoke about something so personally to my guard, assuming I didn't speak their language.

Again, I experienced the indignity of no value. 

On the street, as I posted earlier, sexual harassment was very common. At the very least, I would have stones throne at my direction, vegetables thrown, and often young boys riding their big green Chinese bikes towards me, veering off at the last possible moment. They did this to all expat women, and certainly Afghan women have plenty of their own harassment and sexual abuse much worse to share about.

The physical and sexual harassment was constant. It was rarely a peaceful experience to walk the streets. When I went out, it was because I had to and simply could not delegate the errand to my guard.  My experience was common to many other women.

It was one of those hot days when I was walking fully veiled on the streets of Kabul, ignoring the harassment coming my direction, that I realized I was tasting just a tiny bit of what oppressive racism felt like.  There was nothing I could do to change my skin color or gender, and that meant that I could not change how Afghans viewed me on the street.

God! This is what it feels like to live in a culture where White Supremacy doesn't reign. 

What is it like to live 24/7 at the bottom of the power curve? 
What is it like to be a citizen of a nation that is at the bottom of the "Global Power Curve?"  

We White Westerners cannot fathom this "way of seeing, this perspective of reading the Bible."

God's people are there, at the bottom of the power curve, and they are crying out, "How long O Lord will you look away from our pain?" 

Unreached people cry out, "There is no hope!  Only despair!"  


How insensitive I've been to the oppression many African Americans experience. I also immediately knew how truly tiny my recognition-through-experience really was.  At any moment, I had the power to use my credit card and get myself out of there back to where I could comfortably live in my home culture where Whites hold most of the power.

Most people living in oppressive cultures don't have the power I had to change my situation by leaving Afghanistan.

In Afghanistan, I had a taste, just a tiny tiny taste, of what it may feel like for my African-American sisters on just a few levels. When the flash of recognition came that I was experiencing the oppressiveness and powerlessness and indignity akin to racism, I also knew immediately that even with what I was experiencing, it was nothing compared to what African slaves experienced in my home country and what many non-whites experience to this day.

What would it be like to read the Bible from the perspective of those who have no power in society, who are deemed as expendable, who deal with issues of discrimination in four primary areas: gender, race, class, and language?

It's a dirty little secret in the missions world that even missionaries can be racist. Let's be honest, all of us, whatever our skin color, usually gravitate "to our kind" due to comfort level.  I don't think that's automatically bad.  It is sinful, however, when we refuse to lift others up because we minister out of a unconscious (or conscious) view that "our way is better."

When skin color and/or ethnicity is the dividing line of "whose way is better" ....that is racism, cultural colonialism, and theological imperialism. 

I saw first hand white NGO workers treat Afghan believers not as equals, but from a top-down partiarchal, white supremecist approach.  It's the equivalent of Western Christianity Colonialism all over again, in the name of Christ, of course (sarcasm).

God's Spirit and His Word offer a different way. A way of listening to the leading of the Holy Spirit in each situation. A way of viewing the other as a brother or sister, seeing first not what makes us different but what binds us together. A way of recognizing God's image stamped in the other.

God forgive us in how we treat others who are not like us. Help us to have increased sensitivity to those who carry the legacy of being on the receiving end of white oppression, and to lift up all those who have been down trodden. Forgive us for the horrible sins our fathers and mothers committed against Africans and all those not from Caucasian backgrounds. Forgive us for our own sins of abuse and lack of awareness of racism in our own lives. Help us all to truly be God's family, seeing each other as brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers. 

Reading: 
(Disclaimer: You most likely won't and nor do I agree with all the theology of the authors below. However, these authors will help you understand much more about living in oppression, persecution, and what it feels like for so many of the unreached people groups in the world who have no power to change anything about their situation.  

Take the risk to pick up something outside your normal theological worldview and be challenged to consider the views of the African American experience in light of the oppression and persecution of many missionaries and people groups where you serve.)

Robert Kelleman and Susan Ellis Sacred Friendships, chapter 12, "Voices of Healing: African American Women of Faith."
Howard Thurman Jesus and the Disinherited
Dorothy S. Williams Sisters in the Wilderness
James. H Cone The Cross and the Lynching Tree

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