Afghanistan’s modern history is one marked by conflict, tragedy and resilience; one
Afghanistan’s modern history is one marked by conflict, tragedy and resilience; one where the experiences of everyday citizens, women in particular, reveal the complexity of survival in a nation torn apart by forces both internal and external.
This month, Cinema Asian America on XFINITY On Demand features Los Angeles-based filmmaker Meena Nanji’s acclaimed documentary “View From A Grain of Sand” which offers an incisive look into the experiences of three Afghan women whose lives were reshaped under the Taliban and whose activist efforts today are helping to rebuild their country. Shot in the sprawling Afghan refugee camps in northwestern Pakistan, as well as war-torn Kabul, “View From A Grain of Sand” offers a critical perspective on a world vital to understand and intimately connected to ours.
Your film looks at the tremendous social and political changes that have moved through Afghanistan since 2001. In particular, you look at the country’s past, present and future through the perspectives of women – how can this lens of gender shift how we understand what we read every day in the newspaper?
The newspapers tend to focus on looking at Afghanistan through the prism of statistics: military personnel and equipment, budgets, deaths – it’s all numbers. This kind of reporting has the effect of not only numbing us, the readers/viewers, to the very real impact of war on real lives, but also of normalizing war. By focusing on the experiences of women in Afghanistan, the lens shifts the focus to life, human life, everyday experience: it humanizes the population and allows us, the readers, to connect in a human way to their experiences. War becomes abnormal and outrageous when we hear their stories, the loss of loved ones, the trauma and struggle of having to rebuild, and the like. We can realize that we all share commonalities with people in our struggle to live whole, healthy, stable and safe lives, no matter what culture or country we are from.
Additionally, women bear the brunt of the destruction: they are caught between the fighters and the rulers. It is their bodies that are restricted by laws of war and civilian law in Afghanistan, made by men. I think the perspectives of women are essential to hear if anything is to change for the better in Afghanistan.
Your subjects include a doctor, a teacher and a rights activist. How did you find them? What drew you to their stories and how they as individuals fit into the larger fabric of Afghan society and history?
I first visited the women’s rights group RAWA – Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan – in a refugee camp, near Peshawar in NWFP Pakistan – I had heard them speak at a bookstore in Los Angeles, and told them I wanted to make a documentary about women under the Taliban. So they invited me to Pakistan and I interviewed quite a number of their members. Eventually, one woman, Wajia, emerged as someone who had an incredibly compelling story and who was willing to be on camera – and willing to allow me to follow her around over a number of years! I met the doctor and teacher on subsequent visits – basically I visited the refugee camps and talked to people. I must have interviewed over 50 women.
Everyone I spoke to had remarkable stories of survival: each one had been through incredibly heart-wrenching experiences and each had lived to tell the tale. And each was an example of an individual who had lived through these historic times of the last 30 years – each was directly affected by the massive national and world events taking place in the country. The doctor and teacher in my film both wanted their stories to be told and had families who allowed them to be on camera and allowed us into their lives. I think I was drawn to these three women in particular, because of their inimitable optimism and strength – they had not only survived but were determined to really make something of themselves and contribute to the community around them. And each, again, had very directly been impacted by the people who ruled their region, so their experiences really reflected the events of the country – these in turn determined the events depicted in the film.
“View From A Grain of Sand” was completed in 2006; have you kept in touch with your subjects since? As the US prepares to pull its troops out of Afghanistan today in 2011, and as the religious and political dynamics in the region continue to shift, are there new, vital concerns which have arisen?
I am in touch with the three women: now two of them, the RAWA member Wajia and the teacher Shapiray, are living in Afghanistan, but the doctor is still in Pakistan. She unfortunately had a bad experience with some militia who stopped her while she was visiting Afghanistan a couple of years ago, and now doesn’t feel very safe to go out in public. It’s a great shame.
Unfortunately I think the concerns are largely old ones, namely that US foreign policy over the last 10 years has empowered old warlords who each have their own militias and who are unwilling to cede any of their own power to the central government. Indeed, they have consolidated their power more strongly over the last decade, and continue to act with impunity, imposing their own law in their own regions. In pursuing a ‘military’ solution rather than a civilian or political one, I think the US missed a great opportunity to help build and strengthen national civic institutions which are so vital in any country, and in Afghanistan, even more so, since there are few that can enforce the constitution and law. So this is going to be a continuing challenge in the future.
Does the Afghanistan of the future lie in its past? Are there traditions and practices to reclaim? Or should we look ahead to its uncharted future?
Of course the future is informed by the past, and Afghanistan has many traditions and practices that are rich and of course intrinsic to Afghan culture. I also think that in building the future, those acting in the present must learn from history. This is what recent U.S foreign policy in Afghanistan has failed to do, and I feel, that the U.S has repeated some terrible mistakes there, which have led to a re-iteration of the worst aspects of Afghanistan’s recent political history. I think we must have faith and hope in the future for Afghanistan, and learn from these past mistakes in order to create that future. For Afghanistan, there are many people committed to rebuilding their country, disarming the militias, choosing leaders who believe in democratic principles and the rule of law and it is these forces in Afghanistan that we should be supporting – not the old warlords – they are the way to a more hopeful future.
What are you working on next?
I am working on a feature narrative film about a tribal artist in India.