gendered cities
TRANSCRIPT
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Gendered Cities: Kabul in A Thousand Splendid Suns, by
Khaled Hosseini
Ramona BranUniversity of the West Timisoara
Faculty of Sociology and Psychology
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“One cannot count the moons that shimmer on her roofsOr the thousand splendid suns that hide behind her walls”
Ode to Kabul by Saeb-e-Tabrizi
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Women of Afghanistan:
● wives and mothers
● restricted to the home
● no / low education
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Wives
• … of the same man
• Rasheed is 40 when he marries Mariam, 60 when he marries Laila
• Jamil has 3 wives and a lover (Mariam’s mother)
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Polygamy
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• Maximum number of 4 wives
• The husband should not discriminate among them
BUT
• Muhammad: 9 wives (Aisha was his favourite)
• Rasheed: 2 wives (Laila is his favourite, if only for a short while)
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Child brides
“A girl should have her first period in her husband’s house, not in her father’s house” (Afghan proverb)
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• Aisha is 9
• Mariam is 15 (marriage arranged by her father)
• Laila is 14 (orphaned, is forced by circumstances)
● Rasheed believes marrying Laila is “right down charitable”
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Mothers
• …of boys preferably
• Rasheed had had a boy from a previous marriage
• Mariam – 7 miscarriages (apparently failed in her “career” as a mother)
• Laila – 2 children (Aziza and Zalmai, the boy)
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The home
Women forbidden to go OUTSIDE unaccompanied
-Flogged if caught-Imprisoned (and then beaten by their fathers) if they tried to runaway
Women secluded INSIDE their homes
-Doing all the chores-Rearing the children-Being abused
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Domestic violence
Rasheed beats both his wives fiercely
-makes Mariam chew pebbles-Laila loses a few teeth after being battered
-both are kept for 3 days in separate rooms, without light,water or food
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• “cooperation” between the wives (try to run away)
• Mariam: - befriends Laila - succeeds as a “mother” to Aziza
- kills Rasheed when he was suffocating Laila
- is sentenced to death
● Laila: - runs to Pakistan with Tariq and the children
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Thank you!
All the photos were taken from flickrcc (under Creative Commons License)