Sometimes rules have to be broken

They have that fearful and mischievous look of schoolgirls who know they are breaking a rule but aren’t really sorry about it. Before entering the room, they spent almost an hour preparing their transgression, talking each other into it and weighing the consequences. They know they are likely to be chastised for it, but they decided that it’s worth it. After all, there are these other three who are doing it and they will get away with it.

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.