Afghan author Anosha Zereh is a well known Afghan writer and a social activist working with orphaned children and widowed woman in Afghanistan. She lives with her husband and two children in Berkeley California.
She recently wrote book depicting pain of Afghanistan titled –‘Afghan Mona Lisa’. This book is meant to bring dignity and a broader perspective to the world that clearly shows that the Afghan people are multi-faceted culture, not the black and white version that we typically are exposed to. In an exclusive interview with The Kashmir Scenario Newsmagazine, Anosha Zereh talks to Rameez Makhdoomi.
Kashmir Scenario: Tell us a bit about your childhood days?
Anosha Zereh : My childhood in Kabul was very ordinary, I was raised in a very traditional environment until age of eight when we left Afghanistan at what time, my father apprehensive for his safety transferred his job to Yemen and subsequently to India, working in the United Nations gave him the opportunity to escape the war and save my siblings and me from the chaotic hostilities in the country.
Kashmir Scenario: Who has been your inspiration?
Anosha Zereh :I have been inspired throughout my life by my paternal grandmother who raised me, an illiterate Afghan woman from the northern mountainous region of Kabul. She was a deeply spiritual woman, her practice of internal jihad as a way of life has had much influence on me, also a strong woman, widowed in a young age that raised her children by herself as an independent woman, and she has imprinted the character of a true Afghan woman in my heart.
Kashmir Scenario: How can the vexed political issue of Afghanistan and women problems there b solved?
Anosha Zereh : I am not a political analyst to advise how the problem of Afghanistan and the question of Afghan women can be solved, however I do believe strongly that a woman is the nucleus of a family, the foundation of a household, and if she is given the opportunity to an education, the opportunity to understand her rights as a human being, her free spirit will blossom and bare a fertile prospect for the nation. As a woman, the mother of the household, the mother of the clan, and thus the nation she can originate a peaceful path for her children to trail.
Kashmir Scenario: Tell us a bit about your academic life?
Anosha Zereh:s College of California, working on my Masters degree in Leadership in Social Justice. I choose this field because I want to better understand my people, and in order to help the woman in Afghanistan I need to fully be able to empathize with their current situation and thus formulate a blueprint for enabling their voices to be heard, both domestically and on the international stage.
Kashmir Scenario: What inspired you to recently write world famed book Afghan Mona Lisa?
Anosha Zereh :s role in this political circus:
Afghan women have been marginalized, either ruthlessly suppressed by oppressive regimes, or portrayed as stereotypes by a media that shows them as submissive and primitive victims, while in truth they continue to endure the harsh realities of a nation locked in crisis. I as Author Anosha Roya Zereh aim to circumvent the ongoing and simplistic pigeonholing of the nation’s women and pierce the veil of dehumanization to show the world the true story of all the mothers, wives and daughters of Afghanistan. With this book, I narrate the story in form of The Afghan Mona Lisa: An Epic of the Unvoiced and Anonymous Women of Afghanistan.
Afghanistan has known decades of conflict, from the Soviet invasion of the 1980s, to the brutal civil war of the 1990s that saw the rise of the Taliban regime, and the American War on Terror that began in 2001 and rages on to this day.
Kashmir Scenario: Your future plans?
Anosha Zereh :My future plans are to work in the field with women in Afghanistan, furthermore I hope to travel and work in Pakistan, India, and the Central Asian countries because these issues are not bound to physical borders that divide nations, in my view we are all the offspring of one humanity and need to see beyond boundaries and restrictions. The human pain and suffering does not know any boundaries.
Kashmir Scenario: Any desire to visit Kashmir?
Anosha Zereh: Kashmir, as I remember it from my childhood recollections, watching Bollywood movies, is the paradise of South Asia, I look forward to visiting a safe Kashmir in the near future.