Courage

I'm in awe of the incredible courage shown by these girls and young women in continuing to go to school despite horrifying acid attacks and continuing threats.

One morning two months ago, Shamsia Husseini and her sister were walking through the muddy streets to the local girls school when a man pulled alongside them on a motorcycle and posed what seemed like an ordinary question.

“Are you going to school?”

Then the man pulled Shamsia’s burqa from her head and sprayed her face with burning acid. Scars, jagged and discolored, now spread across Shamsia’s eyelids and most of her left cheek. These days, her vision goes blurry, making it hard for her to read.

But if the acid attack against Shamsia and 14 others — students and teachers — was meant to terrorize the girls into staying home, it appears to have completely failed.

Today, nearly all of the wounded girls are back at the Mirwais School for Girls, including even Shamsia, whose face was so badly burned that she had to be sent abroad for treatment. Perhaps even more remarkable, nearly every other female student in this deeply conservative community has returned as well — about 1,300 in all.

“My parents told me to keep coming to school even if I am killed,” said Shamsia, 17, in a moment after class. Shamsia’s mother, like nearly all of the adult women in the area, is unable to read or write. “The people who did this to me don’t want women to be educated. They want us to be stupid things.”

I find it impossible to conceive of doing such a horrible thing. It's possible to imagine coming to support some terrorist actions. Belief that it's the only way to fight oppressors who outgun you, various rationalizations about teaching the populace 'a lesson' in whom they support, a certain distance from the messy actual bomb detonation, perhaps a searing need for revenge for dead family members--while not actually supporting any such actions I can imagine what it would be like to support them. Actually I'm giving myself too much credit. Hell, I thought it was a good idea to go kill a bunch of people in Iraq who never did me any harm, and honestly the line between that and supporting acts of terrorism against the people of some group is--what again?

But I just can't begin to put myself in the shoes of a man who would throw acid on a girl's face because she wants to learn to read. It seems that even the local Taliban didn't want to claim credit, though they're no doubt responsible. This is when my head starts to swim and I really want someone to find those men and pour acid on their eyes. I suppose this is how Republican torture-supporters feel all the time? Also, I hate idiotic sexism that condemns half the human race to near slavery in so many places.

Comments

[The Modesto Kid]

Perhaps even more remarkable, nearly every other female student in this deeply conservative community has returned as well

If I'm reading this correctly -- if the community is demonstrating solidarity with the girls who were attacked and against the attackers -- that is really good news. (Though balanced out of course by the horrible news of the attacks occurring.)

[Indie]

I just read at another blog someone complaining that people are making too big a deal out of Obama and his presidency. I think that blogger forgets that as recently as 50 (?) years ago, a Black man could be attacked for no reason, killed with no consequence for the killer, that his life was plainly and simply valued less than his white counterparts.

I hope that someday-- when these girls in your post are holding office and doing great things-- people don't say, "what's the big deal?" It is painful how quickly people can forget how life was and can be.

That little girl with burnt face and eyes must really be suffering inside. If she comes out of this without pure hatred and loss of faith in humanity, it will be a miracle.

[David Moles]

One suspects the acid-thrower's real motives are not exactly ideological.

["Mike"]

The only way to overcome injustice is to fight it and these brave girls are doing just that by going to school. A pox on the Taliban. Whomever did this to this girl is a thug and deserves to be punished !

[Julian Elson]

Southwest Asia seems to be fertile ground for heroines. (Heroin too, but that's not the point.) Perhaps among these girls, there is another Shirin Ebadi or Mukhtaran Bibi: perhaps several. It is hard to imagine that such great spirits can be kept down for very long.

As for the acid thrower, it is difficult to imagine such cruelty.

Yet these two spectra of humanity -- the courage of these girls, the sadism of their assailent -- is perhaps what we are as a species. I see little of myself in those girls, and cannot imagine such courage in myself, and I see little of myself in their attacker, and cannot imagine such monstrosity in myself. Yet although it is tempting to say that their attacker was "inhuman," he was behaving in a precisely human -- exclusively human -- manner. Lynxes don't throw acid into girls faces. Oysters don't. Lobsters don't.

Sorry for the ramble. I don't know what I'm talking about, but reading this story I felt the need to write something.