Word: burka
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...month ago, a Pajero jeep with four men and three burka-clad women was stopped at a checkpoint in Chapri, a village with an ancient stone arch that serves as a gateway to the Pakistani tribal region. Two tribal militiamen questioned one of the passengers and was surprised that he spoke no Pashtu. He was a Yemenite. All the passengers were ordered out of the car, and the militiamen noticed that the women in the burkas were very tall; one of them wore men's sandals. They turned out to be African men, two Sudanese and a Mauritanian. Their Pakistani...
...surprising, then, at least to western sensibilities, that four months after the overthrow of the ideologues Shahnaz still wears the burka whenever she leaves the house. Westerners expected the end of the Taliban to be followed immediately by the shedding and shredding of what we saw as one of their most visible symbol of oppression. And in the first few days after the Taliban's ouster we rejoiced in the pictures of Afghan women peeling off their burkas to feel the sun on their faces. But Shahnaz says we got it all wrong. The burka itself is not oppressive; what...
...burka, or more correctly the chadari, has long been traditional wear for Afghan women in the countryside and in conservative cities like Kandahar. In 1919, the first Afghani king encouraged women to shed the head to toe garb by revealing the face of his wife in public. Many women in the more liberal cities obliged and by the 1980s less than half the women in Kabul, the capital, wore the burka. Under the Taliban, women had little choice: wear the robe in public or face a vicious beating. But Afghan women say this was more inconvenience than hardship. "Under...
...Many women who did not wear the burka before the Taliban took over say they are still nervous about security and, for now at least, prefer to remain anonymous in public. A few rely on begging to get by and so prefer to go incognito. Others simply say they are used to the burka and feel uncomfortable going without it. "I feel safer wearing the burka," says Qasida, 26, an engineering student at Kabul University. "There are places you go where men look at you; it's just easier to be covered." When the Taliban forced Qasida to stop attending...
...Many Kabul women said they planned to start going burka-less from the Afghan New Year, which was celebrated last week. Nasrin Qasim Zai, who works in Kabul University's student registry says many of her friends are waiting for other women to lead the way. She pulls her light blue-colored burka back to reveal dark lipstick, gold earrings and faux leopard skin high heels. "Women will discard the burka only gradually as the security improves," she says, as she waits with friends for the bus home after work. "The important difference now is that we have a choice...