Caledoniyya

In recent weeks the intricacies of the life and times of Afghan warlords have filled my waking hours, while the pseudo-despotic ranting of my editor has stalked my sleeping ones.

While my editors to date have sustained rationality as a significant characteristic, the most recent was, in his own words, “a military man, not a specialist in Middle East politics”.

And it showed.

As numerous exchanges in which questions concerning the guidelines were countered by bluntly vague retorts of: “It’s in the guidelines. Read them. I sent them to you.”, the response proved ever less edifying given the information was clearly lacking – unless in some form of code inscrutable to the naked eye.

Nevertheless, said editor scaled his zenith last week, in a spat over Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.

Hekmatyar is currently one of the most feared and violent warlords in Afghanistan, a man for whom cruelty  knows no bounds and whose tirades commenced during his student days when he would hurl acid in the faces of female students who did not conceal their heads fully.

After submitting the article the editor sent it back (this was my first send-back for editing, and boy, it stung) with bold, capitals squealing: “WHERE IS HEKMATYAR RIGHT NOW? WHAT IS HE DOING RIGHT NOW? WE MUST KNOW THIS!!”

Perplexed, I stared at the computer for a few minutes in complete awe.

Hekmatyar, by his very nature as one of the most wanted men by U.S. forces in Afghanistan, is hidden as well as a needle in a four-mile square haystack.

As I doubt he has time for Facebook (”Gulbuddin is currently tweezing his nasal hairs while watching a buzzard on the outskirts of Kandahar”), and having trawled news clippings for a week to no avail, I queried the editor on whether he had any suggestions on tracking Hekmatyar for the information he so craved.

Outraged by my pique, he once more bellowed the by now worn maxim of ‘me military, you academic’, before responding five minutes later with a concession that Hekmatyar’s most recent act of terrorism would suffice.

Now free from the shackles of warlordism I am working on a project concerning Arab feminist thought, and how beautiful it is: dipping into the writings and thoughts of feminists of years gone by such as Zainab Fawwaz (1891), Bahithat al-Badiya (1909) and Aisha al-Taimuriya [1888] is akin to soaking in a musky oil and rose-petal bath after a 30 mile yomp through scratchy heather with a drill instructor bellowing obscenities as your 100lb pack grinds you to the ground.

The most awesome aspect is that while women are considered to have forged feminist agendas in the twentieth century, their sisters the world over have striven long before, and their sagacious words are as relevant today as they were over 100 years ago, as this excerpt from Fawwaz’s Fair and Equal Treatment demonstrates:

What objection, then, can be raised about woman’s participation in the occupations of men and her pursuit of work in political or other spheres when she is capable of performing what she has been delegated to do? Otherwise, what benefit is derived from educating the western woman in all the branches of knowledge which men study – philosophy, law, mathematics, engineering? Or, why does she study the laws of politics if she is not then going to work in accordance with them, serving humankind and being considered one of the members of the ruling group?

For woman was not created in order to remain within the household sphere, never to emerge. Woman was not created to become involved in work outside the home only when it is directly necessary for household management, childrearing, cooking, kneading bread, and other occupations of the same sort (…) No, upon my life! Rather, the practices to which women are accustomed permit them to acquire and work in all arts and skills. As for household management and childrearing, these are natural and instinctive aptitudes from women without much difficulty, whether those women are in a state of primitiveness or not, for even primitive women manage their households and raise their children to the best of their abilities and circumstances.

Already, I am positive that the erudite forgings of Fawwaz and co. shall render the coming weeks work a joy, particularly after the acid-hurling antics of Hekmatyar.

Bring on the girls, I say…

[Image via: Warlords of Afghanistan]