Hidden in plain sight are the bacha posh of Afghanistan--young girls chosen by their families to be boys during their childhood years in order to improve the family's social standing. This is not a transgender experiment, some sort of odd sexual trend, but rather an adaptation to a culture which values boys and crushes girls. Jenny Nordberg, in The Underground Girls of Kabul, explores this fascinating phenomenon.
Threading through the book is her budding friendship with Azita, a woman who defies many of Afghanistan's edicts about women being hidden away in burkas behind the closed doors of their homes. Azita holds political office and is devoted to improving her country. However, because she has had no daughters, she and her husband have chosen to make their youngest daughter into a boy. Although others in the city know these boys are really girls, they choose to accept them as boys, allowing these families improved social standing: a family with no sons is frowned upon, and the wife is mocked. Yet Azita suffers many of the difficulties of Afghan women, including an arranged marriage to an abusive husband.
Nordberg profiles a number of bacha posh from a variety of circumstances, highlighting the perhaps heretofore unknown prevalence of this strange cultural dynamic. As she does, she remarks upon the phenomenon of bacha posh as, really, an underground revolt against the patriarchal system of Afghanistan.
I found this book very interesting for a number of reasons, not the least of which was simply learning more about the social climate of this area of the world. As someone with a graduate degree in psychology, I found the idea of bacha posh very curious and interesting. I doubt that anyone could read this book and not come away with a new compassion for the extreme hardships women face under these political, religious, and social edicts.
I received this book for free from Waterbrook Multnomah in exchange for my review.
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