Afghan women speak out on abuse from behind mask

I had so many dreams for my life, but when I saw him, they just disappeared." Saraya spoke softly, her hunched-over body and nervously twisting hands testimony to all she says she has had to endure.

"I told my father I didn't want to marry him: 'why are you doing this to me?'" She continued: "My father said 'you are of an age to be married and this is my decision, not yours.'"

Saraya says it only took three days for her to realize she had been married off to a madman.

Emotions and turmoil she never dared publicly speak of tumble out freely -- concealed, along with her face, behind a mask.

Half the mask is pale blue, the color of the "chaudari" or burka, symbolizing the oppression of women; the other half white, representing innocence.

This is Afghanistan's new revolutionary TV show called "Niqab," meaning "The Mask."

Behind the concept is 28-year-old Sami Mahdi.

"I was always desiring to have something like the mask, like this show in our media," Mahdi said. "I was not very sure about the concept and the format, but I was very sure about the mask, you know. Because in Afghanistan, it's very difficult for women to talk about their difficulties and their problems, and the violence they are facing in their home."

Her identity safely concealed behind the mask, Saraya said she was forcibly married off to a known rapist, a man with an existing criminal record when she was 15 years old. He was 58.

"When my youngest was just four years old, my husband brought women to the house and raped them.

"My child asked me: 'who are these women?' I could not say anything to my child -- my husband would just beat me."

She said she eventually ran away, fearing that he would harm their daughter. She said she firmly believes that if her husband ever found her and their three children he would murder them all.

But she says, she had to speak out for the sake and future of her children and other women.

"I am not sure we can make a difference for the victims," Mahdi said. "You know for the women who are coming here and talking about life, sometimes I think they are victims forever.

"But we can use the life of these individuals as an example to show the people, I am sure we can make some changes in the life of the women. And I am sure we can change in the minds of men in Afghanistan."

The studio audience is made up of a panel of religious and legal experts, as well as human rights campaigners, who offer their insight, opinions and advice.

"Your marriage at such a young age to such an older man is against Islam," a religious expert told Saraya. "His behavior is against Islam and against the law."
Mahdi said the inspiration for the show came from watching his mother.
"In the mind and eye of the people, her work is not worthy although she is doing much more than I. I am not talking just about my mother, I am talking about all the mothers in Afghanistan," he said. "Maybe there are a lot of mothers, thousands of mothers who are living in the same situation, they don't have a tongue, they don't have a voice to talk about what they are suffering."

Although the situation for women in Afghanistan has improved since the days of the Taliban's oppressive regime, women have been treated as commodities for centuries.
At least 59% of marriages in the most recent survey done by an Afghan non-governmental organization, Women and Children Legal Research Foundation, were considered forced marriages. Of these, 30% were "badal" or "exchange" marriages in which men trade their daughters or other female relatives for women or girls from other families for the purpose of marriage.

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