Word: madrasahs
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...answers. "When we live according to God's law, we are successful, and others will emulate us." How far would she go to defend this principle? I never get an answer. Hassan looks out the window. Government rangers, a kind of paramilitary force, are trying to cordon off the madrasah complex with razor wire. The male students are fighting them off. "Emergency!" Hassan declares, and leaps to her feet. The teacher's lounge, a room of brightly dressed women, is doused in black as students and teachers don dark floor-length robes and headscarves that show only their eyes. Stout...
...down video and music shops for promoting un-Islamic behavior. Twice now, the female students have abducted alleged prostitutes, saying that if the government doesn't cleanse the capital of sin, they will. "A man goes to medical school and becomes a doctor," says Aman. "We go to a madrasah, so we must practice Islam. But the government is not letting us. How can we allow this to happen...
...Come on, we are going out to protest," says Aman, now recognizable only by the glasses perched on the outside of her burqa mask. I follow her outside the madrasah gate where a hundred or so black-robed women chant in unison against Musharraf and Bush. A crack, a small explosion, and a cloud of acrid tear gas drifts our way, fronted by a pack of stampeding men. Apparently they tried to occupy the neighboring Environment Ministry...
...burns my skin. Someone from the second floor above the gate pours a bucket of water on us. Blissful reprieve, even if it lasts only a few seconds. Eyes streaming, coughing, choking, spitting, we scrabble at the front door, battling to get through the narrow passageway, back into the madrasah, to safety...
...Once inside the metal gate, we suck lungfuls of air through wetted rags. Young girls pass bowls of salt. Eating salt lessens the effects of the tear gas, they say, with an air of practiced impatience. This is the second time the madrasah students have been tear-gassed; they know what to do. The afternoon call to prayer echoes through the halls, barely audible above the wails of women hurt by burns, tear-gas inhalation and, in one case, bullets. Dozens of hands push cups of water on me, conscientious, even in the middle of mayhem, about the foreigner...