'A TALK WITH' Zohra Yusuf Daoud
BY: Monica Mehta. Monica Mehta is a freelance writer.
DATE: 12-06-2001

AS THE WORLD speculates on the future of Afghan women, it might be helpful to find a role model who represented what had been taken away from them: education, freedom and a comfortable life. ...a "Miss Afghanistan" of sorts.

Well, Miss Afghanistan exists. She now lives in a house in Malibu with sweeping views of the Pacific. She and her husband are raising three children. She spends her free time volunteering for the Afghan- American community. Nearly three decades after winning the title, Zohra Yusuf Daoud is once again hoping to inspire Afghan women.

Last week, Daoud was the keynote speaker at a Manhattan conference of Afghan women leaders and American feminists on securing the rights of Afghan women in the post-Taliban government.

Her story is as winding and as complex as that of her country's history. Daoud was crowned the first and, so far, only Miss Afghanistan in December 1972, months before a bloodless coup forced King Zahir Shah into exile. The pageant, sponsored by Afghan Life magazine, attracted nearly 100 contestants between the ages of 18 and 26, mostly from Kabul. There was no swimsuit competition. But there were evening gowns.

"They were not very revealing; they fit very much to our society and culture," said Daoud. "We didn't wear those Afghan traditional dresses; they were Western-style gowns."

Having grown up with cooks, maids and a chauffeur in high-society Kabul, Daoud had no need to enter the pageant. She was privileged; her father was a surgeon and her mother came from a well- known family. But as the pageant gained popularity, she decided to enter. She said she landed the title because of her intelligent responses during the question and answer session.

In her first months as Miss Afghanistan, Daoud promoted literacy and distributed supplies throughout the underdeveloped country. By the end of her much-publicized charity tour, the king had fled, along with his daughter, Princess Bilquis, who had been a strong promoter of the beauty pageant. Due to their departure and the perception that the pageant was "a luxury for that high society," the contest was abruptly terminated, Daoud said. She was not asked to make any more public appearances as Miss Afghanistan.

But back in Kabul, Daoud already had made an impression. Television executives were waiting with offers of high-profile positions. She became the host of a TV quiz show, in which girls would compete against boys on their knowledge of current events. Afghans still recognize her from her years in the spotlight.

"I'm not bluffing, but I'm a very well-known figure in the Afghan community," Daoud, 47, said. "Most Afghan people my age or younger recognize me."

In 1979, the fame and glory ended. The Soviets invaded Afghanistan, and the next year, Daoud fled with her family to Germany, leaving behind most of their possessions. Then came a stretch of pure misery. The family immigrated to Virginia, where Daoud got a job scrubbing floors and her husband, a former pilot, worked as a McDonald's cashier.

"For the first few months, I was depressed, because to come from being a star in my country, after so much achievement, I was a refugee in Virginia," she said.

After years of hard work and menial labor, Daoud's husband landed a job as a pilot for United Airlines, where he still works today. Working "day and night," they built a comfortable life and moved to Los Angeles.

Daoud was always involved in the Afghan-American community - in 1996 she co-founded the Afghan Women Association of Southern California, and she hosts an Afghan radio program - but she maintained a low profile about her former beauty queen status. "Always I thought at the back of my mind, 'this is something luxurious that I shouldn't think about,'" she said.

But after Sept. 11, Daoud grew weary of the media's treatment of Afghan women as illiterate, burqa-clad victims, and felt the need to speak out. "Although it was 23 years ago, and the whole of Afghanistan was not modernized, the small percentage of women who lived in a modern way - working in politics, schools and hospitals - was a very strong voice."

"I said to myself, 'It's time to get out and talk to the world about what Afghan women once were,'" she said. "I wanted to tell the world, 'We are not backwards as you think. Once we had a beautiful life. We want to restore that life again - if you help us.'"

Daoud would like to see women as "a very strong social, political and economic force in Afghan society."

"We should let Afghan women come out and participate much more in the politics of Afghanistan - even in the policymaking," Daoud said, "because they have the tolerance, and can put their political agendas and ethnicity aside for the sake of [the country]."

As for her title, Daoud said she often feels "guilty and ashamed" that she didn't do more for the women of Afghanistan while she had it. But, she says, "I hope that day comes that I can pass the title to an Afghan girl who deserves it more than me; because I am not Miss Afghanistan. Miss Afghanistan is the women and girls who have lived under such misery for the past 22 years."