“MMy mother always told me that being uneducated is tantamount to being blind. It was she, together with my father, who encouraged me to receive an education, freeing me from the traditional role of the eldest daughter who, in our country, is destined to marry within the extended family “he says. Parwana Fayyaz, a young Afghan poet who, through the gift of education, intends to shed light on the existence of Afghan women, giving them back the voice they are deprived of.
Parwana Fayyaz
The freedom enclosed in poetry
She composed the first lines just over 18, but poetry has always been part of her life, giving her that feeling of freedom that has allowed her to face the vicissitudes of life.
“I was only six years old – he remembers – when, with my parents and my four brothers, we fled the war, finding refuge in Pakistan. After the fall of the first Taliban regime, we returned to Kabul, where I finished high school. Then, thanks to the support of my parents, I went to Bangladesh to learn English and subsequently in Stanford, California, I earned my BA in Comparative Literature and a Masters in Religious Science“.
The value of memories
Made foreign, but never alien, by her life path that allowed her to discover unexplored cultures, Parwana began to analyze the system of values handed down in Afghanistan and to refute the idea that the highest virtues reside in honor and patience. feminine.
“Over time, distance has united me even more to my country. It would have been impossible for me to disconnect from my past, from the stories in which my present is imbued and, most likely, also my future. Like this, instead of letting go of the memories, I reawakened them by turning them into poems ».
Storytelling, on the other hand, is an Afghan tradition handed down from generation to generation. Each story is intended to teach a moral value as well as a lesson for life.
The collection of poems
By pursuing this goal, Parwana gave birth to Forty nameshis first collection of poems in verse, written in English and translated into Italian, in which, amidst echoes of memory and medieval Persian mysticism, he portrays powerful female figures who have marked his existence and the Afghan legends.
“I have been living in Cambridge since 2016, where I moved for a PhD in Persian literature. Here, during the 2020 lockdown, the idea of collecting poems was born. I had just presented my doctoral thesis, so I had the time to assemble the verses to make Afghan women known to a wider audience through their stories and their names “she says proudly of the book. on February 24, it will also be released in Italy, published by Aguaplano.
The link with Italy
With our country, he is keen to emphasize, he has a special bond: his partner is from Milan. And her faithful friend and translator Lea Niccolai is also Italian, who she strongly wanted to publish in Italy her poems which, in England, earned her the Forward Poetry Prize.
Narrating individual and collective stories, Parwana Fayyaz accompanies the reader in the discovery of villages and cities, unexplored landscapes and territories, horizons and traditions that the Western gaze, in reporting the dramatic war chronicles, sometimes trivializes and ignores.
The dignity of Afghan women
His mother, Roqeeya, capable of transforming chaos into beauty; Zari, a young man killed because she asked too much; Durrani, a Pashtun woman, who dishonored her family by falling in love with a Hazara man; Aunt Sediqa, forced into silence after a punitive marriage with a brutal and illiterate man: are just some of the Afghan women, known only as daughters or mothers or wives of men, to whom Parwana restores dignity and name, sometimes uprooted from the collective memory.
The gaze turned to Kabul
Inevitably, his thoughts turn to the current situation in Kabul, his beloved land from which he has been missing for years and from which his parents have recently fled: “The scale of the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan, with the vast majority of the population facing starvation, is devastating.. Since the Taliban regime took office, many Afghan brains have fled and very little hope remains for the country’s future. Even less for women who live in a state of anguish and despair, deprived of dreams and possibilities“.
A new generation of Afghan poetesses
Amplifying the courageous voice of the poetess Nadia Anjumanhis guide to whom he dedicates Forty names, Parwana, just like her, is confident that poetry, considered a blasphemous act by the Taliban, can represent an opportunity to resist so that “a new generation of Afghan poetesses can rain on the land that harvested them”. without having to hide anymore.
The “Don’t leave them alone” campaign
UNHCR Campaign – “Afghanistan Emergency, let’s not leave them alone”
As Parwana also highlighted, in Afghanistan already exhausted by 40 years of war, the most serious humanitarian emergency in the world is taking place: 23 million people are starving, nearly half of the country’s total population. To help save the lives of Afghans in extreme vulnerability, UNHCR has launched the campaign “Afghanistan emergency: let’s not leave them alone“, supported by a large parterre of well-known faces of the show.
By donating to the solidarity number 45588, until 6 Marcheveryone can contribute to the distribution of tents and essential goods for families. UNHCR is also funding the construction of 9 clinics, 19 schools, training centers for young people and a service center for women. Because, as the Afghan poet attests, education gives sight to glimpse the future, despite everything.
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