Free Letters to My Daughters by Fawzia Koofi

at all. I sat on the floor with my arms folded, refusing to budge. Eventually, my mother talked me round. I did want to go to the party, and since I had spent so long getting ready it would be a shame not to. And so I begrudgingly pulled the burka over my head and reluctantly took my first steps onto the streets of Faizabad and this strange new world.
    Peering through the tiny blue mesh eye slot, I felt as though everything was closing in on me. The mountains seemed to be perched on my shoulders, as if the world had somehow grown both much larger and much smaller at the same time. My breathing was loud and hot inside the hood, and I felt claustrophobic, like I was being buried alive—smothered beneath the heavy nylon cloth. In that moment, I felt something less than human. My confidence evaporated. I became tiny and insignificant and helpless, as if the simple act of donning the burka had shut all the doors in my life I had worked so hard to open. School, pretty clothes, makeup, parties—all of these things meant nothing to me now.
    I’d grown up seeing my mother wear the burka, but I felt as though it was merely something that belonged to her generation, a cultural tradition that was slowly dying out. I had never felt any need nor had I been asked by my family to conform to it. I saw myself as part of a new generation of Afghan women, and the traditions of the burka did not represent my ambitions for myself or for my country. Unlike my mother, I had an education, and I was eager to expand upon it. I had opportunities and freedoms. One of them was the freedom to choose whether or not to wear a burka—and I chose not to.
    It wasn’t that I had, or have, a particular problem with burkas. They are traditional and can offer women some degree of protection in our society. Women all over the world must occasionally deal with unwanted attention from men, and for some women wearing a burka can be a way of avoiding that. What I object to is people imposing their decisions about what a woman should wear. I hated it when the Taliban government made the wearing of the burka law. How would women in the West react to a government policy that forced them to wear miniskirts from the onset of puberty? Islamic and cultural ideals of modesty are strong in Afghan society, but they are not so strong that a woman must, by virtue of her gender, be hidden beneath a nylon sack.
    When we got to my aunt’s house, I was relieved to get the burka off. The experience had left me feeling shocked and scared about what my life and my country were turning into. I couldn’t enjoy the party and instead kept to myself, reliving the horrible experience of the walk, suffocating beneath the tiny walls of my portable cell. All the while, I plotted how best to get home—how I would dash back hoping to avoid anybody I knew. I wasn’t ready to admit to myself, let alone anybody else, that a burka had become part of my life.
    I MISSED Kabul and my school and friends there. But Kabul airport had now been closed by the Mujahideen. Our sense of isolation from the capital started to become very real. I was extremely worried about what was happening there. Although they were now the legitimate government, the Mujahideen were fighting each other; various generals had taken control of different ministries, and although it wasn’t yet all-out civil war the news from Kabul was that things were quickly descending into chaos. I was particularly concerned that my school, if it hadn’t already been destroyed in the fighting, might be closed and I would never be able to return to my studies.
    We listened closely to the radio for any scrap of news. It was hard to know what to believe. The Mujahideen government had been smart enough to seize the radio and television stations. The announcers assured us that all was well and calm, but we knew we were watching and listening to propaganda. My mother and I listened as a radio announcer told us the