Proper car arrangements

Today I found out what is considered the proper seating arrangement in a car of 4+1 seats when the passengers are two women and two men. It is not, as one might naively think, putting three people in the back seats and one in the front. No, no, that would make people uncomfortable! In such a situation, both women ride in front - yes on one seat, even when the road is a bumpy affair, barely distinguishable from the rocky landscape...

The anonymous women

A chadari is a traditional Afghan female garment, used to cover the entire body from head to toe, including the face, leaving only a small slit for the eyes, also covered by a net. It is usually a light-medium blue and has become quite famous from the pictures published in the western media during and immediately after the Taliban regime, becoming a symbol of the direct and structural violence perpetrated against women during these short but extremely brutal years. 

In addition to expelling women completely from public life – including trained professionals who were a pillar of the country’s economy – the Taliban regime imposed, under harsh punishments for transgressors, the obligation for each and every woman to wear a chadari when leaving the house. This effectively ensured that women, in those rare and limited instances when they stepped into the public space, would be completely indistinguishable from one another, blue identical ghosts who were not really individuals, did not have a face, nor feelings, hopes, professional skills.