The life of girls who dress and act like boys for the
benefit of their families is detailed in this well researched book. Most of the
girls – called Bacha Posh – are
turned into boys because the families do not have sons. Not having a son is an
embarrassment to the family and a failure of a wife. Because girls are kept inside the home and
kept completely separate from the outside world, a family with no sons has no
one to chaperone the women/girls of the family, no one to shop or run errands
and no one to uphold the family’s honor.
Most bacha posh turn back into
girls shortly before reaching puberty, marry and have children. But some find
the return to being female in a strictly regulated, patriarchal society almost
impossible to endure.
The family stories are compelling reading, especially that
of Azita (herself once bacha posh)
who is one of the few female parliamentarians in Afghanistan. Azita is educated and had expected to become
a professional before the Taliban and then the mullahs decreed a return to
veiled and hidden women. Married into a
village family with an illiterate husband, the transition is difficult and only
bearable when she is chosen to be a Member of Parliament in the reformed
Afghanistan. With 4 girls and no boys,
Azita makes the decision to “save face” by turning her youngest daughter into a
son. With the resurgence of strict Muslim adherence, her life and the life of
her bacha posh daughter, again
becomes constrained.
The final chapters of the book detail the psychological and
legal repercussions of bacha posh as
well as the world wide incidents of daughters being made into boys in
patriarchal societies and times. These chapters drag a bit in an otherwise
engrossing book.
4 of 5 stars
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