“One Wing of the Bird” – Women with Purpose as Threats to Men: A Comparison of Malalai Joya and Benazir Bhutto

 

Simone de Beauvoir in her magnum opus The Second Sex recorded her timeless words: “...her wings are cut and then she is blamed for not knowing how to fly”. The story, however, does not simply end here. If a woman breaks barriers and educates herself and tries to move ahead in a man’s world, she is labeled as unwomanly, uncultured, disrespectful, and rude (at best). At worst and in most cases, she is called a prostitute, an infidel, and an animal not worthy of respect, voice, or relations. After centuries of having defined what a woman should or should not do, and how a woman should act and talk, men and their fragile egos get bruised beyond repair when a woman breaks away from their definitions. That woman is a threat to their agency, their dominance, their oppression, and their control. Such two women are Malalai Joya and Benazir Bhutto.

            In her memoir A Woman Among Warlords, Joya recounts the struggles her family had to go through for the education of her sisters and herself. Having a progressive father reduced the familial obstacles in pursuit of knowledge (most Afghan women did not have this luxury), however, being raised as a refuge traveling between Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, all the education she could receive was in camps. This did not define her, rather it fueled her to study more and more on her own. She went from student to teacher to activist speaker.

            The proof of the fragility of men’s ego comes multiple times throughout the book, however, one example stands out. When Malalai goes to the Loya Jirga to speak her mind, she holds nothing back and pays the price for it heavily as well. Sibghatullah Mojaddedi was the chairperson of that Jirga.  I was shocked to read his response because, to the world, Sibghatullah Mojaddedi is considered as the most non-fundamentalist political leader of Afghanistan. He is considered as the person who opened new pathways for the women, and children of Afghanistan, as well as for the men. “Why would you allow criminals to be present here? They are responsible for our situation now!” exclaimed Joya standing in the midst of warlords and fundamentalists. She was given 3 minutes originally but because of her radical critical comments, the management was ordered to disconnect her microphone, mid-speech. The video of her speech is available online and even though I could not understand the Persian language, I knew from the veins bulging on Mojeddadi’s forehead and his clenched jaw, that he was not happy with Joya’s comments. People started yelling communist at her direction to stir the anger of her listeners. She was forced to move out and the most heart-wrenching part was the fact that she received rape threats and murder threats unless she apologized. After her speech, men followed her out and one of them exclaimed: “Where is that prostitute girl?” … “When we find her, we will rape her and kill her!” (74).  

            When men cannot win over the women with ambitions, when they do not have compelling arguments or the support of religious scriptures even, they lean on violence to exert their power and dominance. The men of Afghanistan could not break Malalai Joya’s spirit even when they exiled and jailed her, even when they beat her publicly and threatened to kill her – when they could not control her, they worried that other women might follow her example instead of following their definition of how a woman must act. Joya in her beautifully poignant memoir wished for a change that was devoid of such masculine toxicity. “It is a dream of mine that one day, a democratic-minded woman will take the reins of power in Afghanistan” (194). So far, this dream remains unfulfilled. In Pakistan, however, there was one such democratic woman who took the reins of a fundamentalist, rigid state and went down in history as one of the most inspirational women in the world. That woman was Benazir Bhutto, the daughter of destiny!

            Even though Bhutto came from a privileged, stable family in Pakistan, her struggles, being the head of state, were almost as painful as any other woman in power. Even before reading about her, I remember as a child, I used to hear people talk about her clothes. They would talk about how she used to wear mini skirts in Oxford and maintain a covered head in Pakistan – they called it her hypocrisy, her inability to run a state because her clothes did not make them believe that she was a morally good, ethically reasonable woman! This kind of scrutiny is never administered with men, regardless of the openness of their vulgarity and the obviousness of their debauchery. Mixing history with fiction, Bina Shah in her novel A Season for Martyrs, tells the story of a woman who aspired to go beyond the limits allowed to her by tradition and all the obstacles that stood in her way. The tragic end of Benazir Bhutto poignantly portrayed in the novel shows how insecure men go to extreme lengths to keep a woman from moving forward.

          Women with purpose threaten the egos of men which, consequently, puts them in danger. Malalai Joya lives with an alias to prevent being killed (or worse) while Benazir Bhutto was assassinated while giving a public address. People need to understand that women are one wing of the bird to which men are the other. If men keep wanting to control, dominate and oppress women, the bird of society will never be able to fly or flourish.