Young Women in Afghanistan...

First woman's football referee in Afghanistan

Afghan national basketball player.

 

Afghan girl studying human rights and politics.

 

Art Sunday; Fatana Baktash Arifi

http://www.embassyofafghanistan.org/07.16.2007newsarifi.html

http://www.embassyofafghanistan.org/07.06.2007newsartist.html

 

''Arifi, who prefers not to give her age, grew up in a Kabul that was vastly different from the war-torn capital that suffered under an oppressive Islamic regime.

In the 1970s, the city was a cosmopolitan metropolis with bustling cafes and lush gardens. Many women eschewed the restrictive burqa, moving around the city bare-headed.

Arifi's father, Mohammad, was an animal-skin trader and progressive thinker who encouraged all his six children to attend school. He especially nurtured their artistic talents, providing Arifi with rolls of paper and other art supplies.

Then came the Soviet invasion in 1979.
"The tragedy begins from there," Arifi recalled. "For three nights there were helicopters and planes, strange noises in the sky."

She said she will never forget the look on her neighbors' faces. "It was like somebody had died," Arifi said. "All the happiness gone from their mouths."

Although many of her countrymen fled, her family persevered during several more years of fighting, a period during which she studied for her master's degree in fine arts from Kabul University while bomb blasts shook the classrooms.

When a Stinger missile landed near their house one day in 1994, the family finally decided to leave, abandoning everything.

Arifi wrapped up a few possessions in a cloth, including a pen-and-ink drawing of Abraham Lincoln she did as a schoolgirl, and the family escaped on foot over the mountains into Pakistan.''

 

 

Afghan interpreter urgently needed; re Farkhunda Zahra Naderi speech

September 18th is named as the date for the next elections to the Afghan parliament. A record number of women are running in this election despite death threats, bullying, intimidation and general hassle that we, in our wildest dreams would not associate with election time.  To read more of the obstacles these women have to overcome just to do what we take for granted, go here;
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/aug/24/record-women-candidates-afghan-election
One of the candidates in these elections is a lady called Farkhunda Zahra Naderi.
Her website is here;
http://www.chadari.af/

Farkhunda Zahra Naderi
Born into an influential Ismaili family and partly educated in London, Naderi is running a highly unusual campaign, she allows no photographs of herself, and instead her campaign and posters are dominated by a pear – the symbol she chose from a random selection of three pictures each candidate puts on the ballot paper to help the largely illiterate electorate vote. Her website, chadari.af, is entitled "Burka: The Window of Power", through which she hopes women will turn their lack of equal rights to their advantage.
My real reason for posting this is this video. This is a video of Farkhunda giving a speech and from her reception, the sound of her voice and her general presence I for one would like to know more about her.

What I would like, is an Afghan interpreter, I want to know what she is saying. Come on….. there has to be an Afghan speaking person out there somewhere who can tell me what she is saying and why she is so well received by her audience.