The Afghanistan Story

“The single story creates stereotypes, and the trouble with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story.” —Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, “The Danger of a Single Story”

HERE IN THE UNITED STATES, there is a single story told about Afghanistan. That story is this: Afghanistan is a country with a history of nonstop chaos characterized by ceaseless factional, intertribal warfare and wars for domination by successive foreign powers—punctuated by periods of soul-curdling terror wrought by groups of Islamic extremists. Afghan society, we hear, is comprised of violent, tyrannical husbands and universally oppressed and terrorized abused and submissive women. We receive frequent reports that Afghanistan is a place where girls have been refused education and forced into marriages with much older men at very young ages.

I have learned while facilitating writing groups for Afghan girls and women at universities in the Middle East and South Asia, as well as within Afghanistan itself, that all of these generalizations hold truth. But I have also learned that there are coexisting, competing truths, exceptions to the generalizations, and great nuances to the Afghan story. There are important, little-heard stories about Afghan history, the composition of Afghan society, the role of women in Afghanistan, and the relationships between Afghan men and women which wrinkle and challenge the commonplace, simple story we hear of Afghanistan.

The seventeen-to-twenty-six-year-old young Afghan women I have come to know grew up in shattering times of great uncertainty and violence, and their mothers did as well. The mothers' and daughters' stories, however, are different. Each cohort was shaped by the geopolitical circumstances and societal gyrations particular to the years in which they grew up. The young women's mothers were born between