Mohammad Shehzad

The true story of a gilded cage created by the Taliban makes one recent Bollywood release impossible to ignore.

Escape from the Taliban is a new Bollywood offering based on the true story of one woman’s experience of life in Afghanistan and her escape from the Taliban. Reactions to the film have been varied, but many expressed doubt about the veracity of the events described. Events portrayed by the film might appear to be fiction, but it is possible to meet people living and working in Pakistan today who can testify to at least some of the attitudes and acts that Escape from the Taliban presents.

The film’s heroine, Sushmita, is a young Hindu girl who falls in love with a dashing Afghan Muslim, Janbaz. She would like to marry him but her parents won’t approve the match. Janbaz portrays Afghanistan (which is under Taliban rule) as a heaven on earth. He describes tall trees, mountains, running rivers and the Afghan people in such bright colours, that Sushmita becomes convinced that Afghanistan is an earthly paradise. She runs away with Janbaz to start a new life in Afghanistan, but soon learns the heaven she looked forward to is a kind of hell under Taliban rule.

Sushmita suffers humiliation and violence under Taliban rule.

Life for a woman in the Taliban’s Afghanistan is portrayed in the most brutal terms, a picture of captivity and suffering. While the Taliban mete out physical punishment to Sushmita, for refusing to renounce all Gods but Allah and other “Islamic crimes”, Janbaz subjects her to painful mental and emotional suffering. It emerges, for example, that Janbaz is already married to another woman. Nobody talks to her or acknowledges her existence. She sees the way women around her are treated, and life for her becomes increasingly unbearable, living in the kind of abominable conditions that she does.

On one occasion, when ill, a cleric is called to treat her. She insists on being examined by a doctor, and is taken to one living several miles away who gives her expired medicine, which she refuses to take. Manisha’s sister-in-law dies in childbirth, crying with labour pains while a cleric helps the delivery by sitting beside her bed reciting the Quran.

Sushmita is accused of adultery and sentenced to rijam (death through stoning). One of the clerics mentions that rijam can only be invoked against a Muslim, so they decide that Sushmita must be converted to Islam, then lashed, and finally stoned to death. Before this punishment is delivered, Sushmita manages to escape in a most dramatic manner with the help of Janbaz’s uncle.

The Taliban in the film are portrayed as a product of Pakistan’s seminaries. They are sadistic, fiendish, hypocritical vandals, intolerant of women and minorities, who terrorize Afghans, murder minority members and their opponents, and try to push the country into the dark ages. The film has Taliban members give a completely false interpretation of Islam, barking out slogans like, “Friends, Islam says behead those who are the infidels; who don’t pray; and defy shariat. It is forbidden in Islam to talk to women,” “The one who does not pray is a bad man. He should be killed,” or “All divine books, except the Holy Quran, are satanic! They propagate the teachings of Satan.” The excesses of the Taliban are also shown to include killing many non-Muslims for refusing to recite the kalima , executing Sushmita’s brother for spreading rumours about Taliban drug trafficking, forcing beautiful girls to marry them, and killing their opponents’ children.

Powerful and moving though Escape from the Taliban is, its impact amongst some seems to be reduced because the behaviour of the Taliban seems so outrageous. Many of those who saw the film were incredulous, unwilling to see it as a true story, good but ridiculously exaggerated. Would an educated Hindu girl really marry a Muslim and come to Afghanistan in ignorance of the Taliban’s attitude? Did the Taliban really behave like that, or is it all being sensationalised for profit? They weren’t really quite so morally corrupt, were they?

Some films are colossally exaggerated. Sometimes, however, the reality itself is so horrific that presenting it in film makes it seem fictional, hard to believe, too awful to be true. Meena Jan, Laila Hadi and Matina Gohar, three friends – 28, 29, and 27 – are living witnesses to the Taliban’s hypocrisy. They are Islamabad-based Afghan prostitutes and claim to have become captive concubines to some mid-ranking Taliban commanders before managing, like Escape from the Taliban’s Sushmita, to flee their clutches. Talking to them, I found their story to be a forceful reminder that it can be too easy to dismiss the stories we hear, labelling them exaggerated or fanciful in order to ignore them and our consciences.

Meena, Laila and Matina all have a respectable background. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan displaced their families, and their parents migrated to Islamabad. They all studied nursing and worked in different private clinics, encountering sexual harassment at work. They resisted it but it cost them all their jobs. In order to stay in work, they found they had to compromise and allow their employers to use their bodies for pleasure. Since they had lost their “purity” already, it was less difficult to contemplate becoming full-time prostitutes.

They gave up nursing and hired a small house. They bought mobile phones and an 800 cc Suzuki car. They would drive around the capital and “hunt” those who are looking for “business”. Very soon, their unique and safe brothel became extremely successful. Among their regular clients were their former employers — Dr Azam and Dr Khalil — self-proclaimed “philanthropists” who would provide mujahideen free treatment. On October 15, 1999, the two doctors came to the three women. They wanted them to entertain some “very special” guests staying at their farm, and the three friends were promised a special rate — Rs 10,000 each for a night. They were given Rs 15,000 in advance. Accepting the offer, they were taken to the farm where they were introduced to four bearded men — Afghans, in their late thirties, dressed in shalwar kameez. They all had sex with the three prostitutes in turn, and left leaving the women no sign as to the identity of their generous clients.

A month later, Meena received a call from Dr Azam. He wanted them to provide their services to the same clients, again on the same terms and conditions. The three were unwilling to accept the offer, and to discourage Dr Azam, doubled their rate. To their surprise, the demand was immediately accepted and they spent another night with their four countrymen. Afterwards, the four men disclosed their identities and made Meena, Laila and Matina a lucrative offer. They were Taliban commanders and wanted the three women to become their mistresses, to come to Kabul and stay with them. They promised them a good furnished house, decent food and dresses and whatever money they might demand. After careful thought, the women accepted and moved to Kabul in January 2000.

The three prostitutes were put up in a decent and spacious house. They were provided with a colour TV and VCR along with hundreds of Indian movies. There was no shortage of alcohol — beer, wines, vodka, champagne, and more. The Taliban commanders would come over in the evening, have a drink, and watch pornographic movies for a while before enjoying their captive courtesans. They would ask the women to imitate what they had been shown in the films. After six months the three women felt unbearably trapped—they had become prisoners in a golden cage. They were not allowed to go out, they were not allowed to meet anyone, and they were watched constantly. Laila become pregnant. This upset their captors who took her to Dr Azam’s clinic where she was put through a forced abortion. Afterwards, her charm faded for her captors and she was abandoned, winning her freedom.

Matina and Meena continued to serve their Taliban masters. One day, one of the men left his satellite phone in their house. It was a perfect opportunity to pave a way for an escape, one which Meena did not waste. She called one of her former clients who worked with an NGO, explaining her plight and pleaded for him to come to their rescue. Meena’s “friend” was an influential man. He traced their whereabouts and convinced their Taliban captors to let the girls go. He assured them that whatever had happened would be kept secret. Matina and Meena were freed, driven safely back to Islamabad in a vehicle owned by an international agency. Meena and Matina are still sex workers – with cellular phones and a Suzuki car – living proof of the excess and hypocrisy that some seem so ready to wave away as Bollywood hype.


Copyright ©2002 Mohammad Shehzad and The Friday Times. About the author