Women of the axis
Alexandra Boulat
VII pour Paris Match
The paths which, since 9/11, George W. Bush has been referring to as the “axis of evil”, about to spread, are paved with horror. Young girls are forced to wed hideous, tyrannical old men. Women are set alight, or forced to set fire to themselves, in a bid to destroy them. Others are lined up, five in a row, giving birth on a rubber sheet, to children whose future is as dubious as the token hygiene at the hospital. Then one day we met an Afghan man from the Northern Alliance, proudly boasting of his opposition to the forces of darkness and the Taliban, who was not in favor of wearing the burqa: “My wife has never worn the burqa.” For a moment we thought that the modern ideas which the West promised to bring along with the weapons may have had an impact, when the fellow added, snidely: “But then if you took her to the bazaar, 500 meters away, I reckon she’d never find her way home. She hasn’t been out of the house in the twenty years we’ve been living here.”
Preview
Before Paris-Match gave us the opportunity of embarking on this venture, with our eyes and our words as western women, Alexandra and I had never thought that the burqa might be seen as an instrument for women’s liberation. Nor did we think that the black abaya covering women in Iran, and which by law we too were forced to wear, could be seen as an egalitarian force. Yet that was the argument put forth by Anah, aged 32: “If you let women who are too beautiful go out without veils, it is being cruel to those who are not as beautiful.” Anah is a journalist, has a doctorate in mathematics, was married by the age of fourteen and has four children. According to her criteria, her life has been quite normal, or as she said “a model of success”. While they have found emancipation in what we see as shackles, we remained curious, seeking to discover the thousand reasons, beliefs and differences, sometimes cruel, sometimes rational, which hold them back. And following the line that runs parallel to the axis, across borders, along dusty tracks or paved highways just like ours, we observed these miles of fascinating “inhabited” fabric swaying in front of our eyes, observing, to see what was hidden underneath.
Caroline Mangez / Paris Match
Some of these pictures were shot for National Geographic Magazine.
