My burqa

I hear the yells before I see the commotion. I round the corner and there they are. Three Taliban are beating a woman who is struggling to get free from their grasp. Two more soldiers are holding a man who is screaming and clutching a loaf of bread. He must have stolen it and is now paying the price. I close my eyes and pull my burqa around me. This is the one good thing about the light blue material that covers me from head to toe. You don't have to watch scenes like these, which happen on a daily basis on the streets of Afghanistan. You can just creep away without the screaming woman and children ever knowing you were ever there. You can't feel guilty about something that you didn't see can you? Anyway it's not like I could have helped. I'm a woman who can hardly see or walk because of the burqa.



Burqa. I hate that word more than anything else in the world, it conceals you, hides you, makes you feel worthless, it's the Taliban's way of saying that the world doesn't want to see you. It wasn't always like this though, I remember when I used to have many different clothes, when I could show my face. Different. The burqa has made me realize how important difference is. I miss seeing different faces in the market, different colours everywhere. Now it is just a mass of a few colours moving around. This makes me angry because it is one more thing to add to the list of what the Taliban has taken away from me. If I understood why they took my freedom and everything else away, maybe I would feel better about it. But I don't understand so I don't feel better, this is how things are and no matter how angry I am maybe I should just except it.