November 28th, 2004

Afghan Women Strive to Mix New Liberties and Old Beliefs
By JOSEPH BERGER

NEW YORK - By all appearances, Ashrat Khwajazadah and Naheed Mawjzada are thoroughly modern American women.

Long-haired and dark-eyed, they spurn the headscarves and modest outfits customarily worn by Afghan women, preferring hip-hugging slacks. Both of them are in their early 20s, and both have taken a route still somewhat controversial among Afghans in Flushing, Queens: attending college to pursue professions.
Khwajazadah studied speech pathology at Queens College, and Mawjzada majors in political science at Adelphi University. Both also defy the ideal of reticent Afghan womanhood, with Mawjzada speaking up forcefully when men talk politics at the dinner table.

But there are incongruities. Both of them, by design, have never dated. Like most young women in their Afghan enclave in Flushing, they are waiting for their parents to pick their spouses.

"It's been drilled into your head since you were a little girl: 'Don't talk with guys; don't ruin your reputation. Everyone will gossip about you,' " said Khwajazadah, a high-spirited woman who came here as a 2-year-old with her refugee parents. Nevertheless, she said, "I'm happy with my decision."

"I'm very close with my family, and that helps me because they want to do what's best for me," she said.

In testing how far they can go in forsaking tradition, these women illustrate the delicate balance that younger Afghans, particularly women, have had to strike as they grow up in a comparatively freewheeling society with parents -- often uneducated and unable to speak English -- who have held fast to their Afghan conventions.

Older Afghans, particularly women, often have had no schooling. Even today, some families insist that girls, whose non-Afghan friends roam freely, return home immediately after school. It is not uncommon for girls to be engaged as young as 13 and be married by 16.

The Afghan story in New York has garnered more than the usual curiosity because Afghanistan has drawn so much attention on the world stage, first in the military response to Sept. 11 and now as the fragile government of President Hamid Karzai tries to establish democracy, including an expansion of women's rights.

There are 5,446 Afghans in New York City and more than 9,100 in the metropolitan area, according to the 2000 census. A large proportion came here with grants of asylum after treacherous odysseys to escape either the Soviet occupation of 1979 or Taliban rule that began in 1996.

Manizha Naderi, the 28-year-old director of Women for Afghan Women, which offers counseling and instructional programs, remembers how, at 4 years old, she crossed the desert into Pakistan on a single motorcycle that also carried her parents, her 2-year-old brother, 9-month-old -month sister and the driver.

New York's two largest enclaves of Afghans are in Flushing -- north of Queens  College and in the largely Chinese and Korean area north of Northern  Boulevard. Flushing has four Afghan mosques, a half-dozen kabob houses and the Kouchi Market, which besides native spices and breads carries Afghan mandolins, or "rababs," and billiardslike board games, or "karams."

Naderi said, "Afghanistan has a very patriarchal culture, and women don't have rights," and those views have migrated here.

"Men have corrupted views of Islam and actually believe women are second-class citizens and are there to take care of them," she said. "They don't let them go to school or to work."

Afghans from the capital, Kabul, are less bound by tradition than those from the villages, and those who fled the Soviets are more conservative than those who fled the Taliban. Some Afghan Muslims who have been here for decades are so acculturated they put up Christmas trees, but in general Afghans here are trying to sustain crucial traditions of their culture.

For more than a few families, even the notion of educating their daughters beyond high school is regarded as daring, Naderi said. But more leaders are encouraging it.  Mohammed Sherzad, the imam of Masjid Hazrat-I-Abubakr Sadiq, on Union Street in north Flushing (there is a similarly named mosque nearby from which Imam Sherzad was ousted), looks favorably upon women who postpone having children until they finish college.

"A good woman is one who is educated, both for her children and her society," he said.

Dr. Tahira Homayun, a gynecologist whose husband is an economic adviser to President Karzai, said some Afghan girls have more successful school careers than their brothers because struggling families often press boys to work.

Naderi said that as a result of the community's lingering patriarchal structures, violence toward wives is much more common than the community admits.

"There's a saying that the food your husband feeds you doesn't come for free," she said. "And men actually think they have a right under the Quran to beat their wives."

But no characteristic seems more ironclad than the convention of having parents arrange their children's marriages.

"Afghan people can't meet each other prior to getting engaged," said a 65-year-old mother of six who was taking English classes given by Women for Afghan Women. She asked that her name not be used because seeing her name in print made her uncomfortable. "It's an embarrassment for the family."

Much of that stigma derives from the treasured principle of family honor. If a daughter chooses to find her own spouse, her father's stature will be diminished, the family name tainted by gossip, and her sisters may find it harder to marry.

"The girl is a trophy piece," said Mawjzada, the daughter of a coffee vendor who, in addition to studying at Adelphi, works in customer service for an insurance company. "If the girl has a good reputation, the family has a good reputation."