There is no longer the sound of bombing day and night, or explosions and ambulance sirens, but there are many other issues. I am now more determined than ever to write,” Sharifa Pasun, one of the contributors to this anthology, said recently. The situation for women and girls in Afghanistan remains uncertain and frightening. Many have been prevented from going to school and work, and the world’s media is shifting its gaze elsewhere, despite the worsening humanitarian crisis.
We have heard from Afghan journalists and global commentators how the sheer speed of the Taliban takeover last August took everyone by surprise. As an anxious and fragmented nation tried to make sense of this dramatic punctuation point in its history, the writers in My Pen Is the Wing of a Bird were still working on their pieces. Their creative process, and their lives more broadly, were thrown into question as Kabul fell.
Untold, a development program for writers marginalized in society by community or conflict, had been working for more than two years with women writers across Afghanistan. Where the events of August 2021 were marked by their suddenness, Untold’s editorial program was patient and long-term.
As the world watched the devastating scenes at Kabul airport and elsewhere in the country, our focus shifted swiftly from creativity to safety, working to support both those writers who wanted to leave, and those who wished to—or had to—remain. At the time, someone asked me: “Why would people carry on writing at a time like this?” And the answer is that if you are a writer, this is what you do. Stories help us make sense of our world, particularly in the face of uncertainty and fear. As one of the writers said: “All we can do is give each other moral support. Sharing our writing is one way of doing that. Unrest won’t take our creativity away.”
These eighteen women looked to each other for reassurance. They started an online diary and shared how they couldn’t sleep, how they dyed their clothes black, how they had soaked away the ink from pages of writing that was now a risk to possess in hard copy. Some took to the streets; others went into hiding. Since then, ten have found their way across borders and are now living in Australia, Germany, Iran, Italy, Sweden, Tajikistan, and the USA. Today, nine months on from the fall of Kabul, they are still writing this diary—to stay connected from different parts of the world, and to chronicle their thoughts and experiences of this challenging time.
The writers came together through Untold’s Write Afghanistan project, which started after conversations in 2018 with women scriptwriters in Kabul. They were frustrated by the lack of opportunity to publish their prose fiction and described the challenge writers face across Afghanistan of developing an internal market for their work. One had published short stories online in Pashto and Dari, but she said: “I have never come across a local publisher willing to publish a book without asking for money from the author. And it’s impossible to find a foreign publisher who wants to read books about anything except the war.” It was from these conversations—from what writers in Afghanistan wanted, needed, and were calling for—that Untold’s work was born.
Short stories lend themselves to fractured, pressured environments. It makes sense that a form which contains complexity, beauty, and truth in so few words, on such small canvases, feels easier to produce than something longer. Writing at length requires peace of mind, space, concentration and, crucially, the knowledge that if your work is strong enough, there is a well-developed local creative industry that has the enthusiasm and the resources to find you a readership.
In 2019, Untold put out an open call across Afghanistan, inviting women writers to submit short fiction in Dari and Pashto. Around one hundred submissions came in from all the major cities, with a few from more rural provinces. Of those writers, one, who has two stories included here, was inspired by the opportunity to write several new pieces. But it was her older sister who submitted them to the call, because the writer felt she was too inexperienced for her work to be taken seriously. She had never shared her writing, had never edited, or rewritten a story, and had not been able to attend any of the rare writers’ meetings in the capital.
A second open call, in early 2021, focused on the more rural parts of the country. The word was spread on social media, via radio broadcasts, and on posters in the smaller towns and villages. This time, more than two hundred writers in twenty provinces sent in work from internet cafes, home computers, and mobile phones. One of the stories in this collection was written by hand, photographed, and sent via WhatsApp messages through a chain of people before reaching Untold.
These stories are snapshots of Afghanistan before the Taliban took control last August. They are set in the home, at work, in the future, long ago. They touch on universal themes of family, friendship, love, and betrayal. Fiction, yes, but often inspired by real-life events—some refer to the period when the Taliban were last in power. Maryam Mahjoba, the author of “Companion,” the first piece in this anthology, wrote her story well before the events of last summer. Her character, Nooria, grapples with feelings of loneliness after her children have emigrated. Maryam, who remains in Afghanistan, wanted to explore this experience, common to so many families, and how individuals deal with separation. Though it was written before August 2021, the story, like many in this collection, takes on new significance today.
A team of Afghan readers selected writers from the open calls to collaborate with international editors and translators. These working relationships developed via WhatsApp, Zoom, SMS, email—whatever was needed for safety and for accessibility. The process continued despite the pandemic (Afghanistan has known the word “lockdown” since long before Covid-19) with the editors, translators, and writers discussing drafts of stories in one language, for readers in another. It was an intensive editorial process that worked across three languages, several countries, and many time zones: a mix of hard labor, creative relationships, and the best and worst of technology. Words were lost and found. The internet went down. Power failed and lights would cut out, but the urge to write was always undimmed.
One of the many joys of reading is that the literature of a world far from our own has the potential to alter how we see ourselves. For writers lucky enough to live in a place with a healthy publishing infrastructure and access to literary translators, their imagined worlds have the chance to reach and engage readers far beyond their country’s borders. For many of the writers in this anthology, it has been a different story. My Pen Is the Wing of a Bird is just a small sample of these writers’ work; they continue to write fiction in their own languages, ready for readers both at home and across the globe.
The contributors agreed that this book should not include a section About the Writers. I wish it were here. The situation in Afghanistan at the time of writing still means that detailed profiles of the eighteen women whose stories feature here cannot, for now, be printed. We hope that future editions will be able to tell you more, and that the collection will also be published in Afghanistan—in Pashto and Dari—when it is safe and possible to do so. In the meantime, several have chosen to use a pen name, but the majority insisted on using their real names because they are adamant that they are acknowledged, and their voices heard.
Much has changed in the nine months since the fall of Kabul. And in a few days or weeks, this piece may be out of date, the situation for those writers in Afghanistan and those beginning new lives elsewhere changed again. But whilst this Afterword will need updating, the stories in this anthology have enduring, universal value. As Marie Bamyani, the author of “Black Crow of Winter,” says, “My Pen Is the Wing of a Bird is the starting point of bringing Afghan writers together and sharing their voices and stories with the world. The world must not let this light be turned off.”
Lucy Hannah, founder and codirector of Untold Narratives