Juan C Rosario
07 February 2008
Osama
This is the true story of a twelve year old, Afghan
girl who is forced to dress and act as
boy in order to survive and not starve to
death under the Taliban regime in Kabul. The girl and her mother worked in a hospital helping the sick but after the hospital was invaded and closed they were left without a way to feed themselves. Her father and uncle were killed and under Taliban rules a woman was not allowed outside of the house without a legal male companion. That meant someone from the family such a husband, brother, or cousin. The Taliban had no regards for those
women who could not feed themselves, if you were
caught, death was certain by being stoned or shot to death.
Director Siddiq Barmak brought us an all to real picture of what living under that oppression was for the Afghan women. Not only was the movie filmed in Afghanistan, the actors were regular citizens chosen from the streets of Kabul. All through the movie I was able to sense the deep sorrow these women had to what perhaps once was their own
reality.
After mother, daughter and grandmother had not means of supporting themselves, the grandmother came up with the idea of cutting the girls hair and dressing her as a boy so that she could go out to work and earn a living for the family. This was frightening to all but more for Osama because of the consequences of getting caught. After all, she was just a child and given the biggest responsibility of her short life in an unscrupulous world. The sad reality is that she didn’t have much of a choice, as death would have been certain without food and water. After working at a store for sometime and always being afraid of getting caught, she was sent to a Taliban training camp called a Madrassa. There, she was always under other boy’s suspicions for her feminine ways. Many attempts were made by the other boys to prove that she was indeed a girl but one of the town’s boys, who once threatened her with telling everyone who she was, came to her defense and named her Osama in an attempt to prove that she was a boy. But as
faith would have it, one day, nature took it course and she was found out when her body showed signs of maturity and blood was seen running down her legs.
Osama was a beautiful girl, who’s faith was sealed just by being born in a world were religion and fanaticism ruled and blinded the human spirit from seeing what is fair and pure. Although, she felt protected under her mother and grandmother’s wing she knew that life would never be the same and that soon she would be dead and by death I mean more than one form of dying not just expiring.
Osama was being tried in the Taliban’s version of a court when an old Mullah appeared and she was given to him. She cried and begged to deaf ears. He took her to his home where she found that he had other wives. Osama was just one more treasure that he added to his collection. She knew that her faith was written and that her destiny was to be a slave to this man.
Perhaps, being stoned death was an easier way out for her than having to spend the rest of her life being abused and used. In reality she was already dead. She had no future, no life, and no freedom. She used rope jumping as a way to escape her reality and transport, herself to a better place where she couldn’t hurt. This was her life now.
What makes this story a sad one is that this is a reality that continues to play out in different parts of our world and many of us either choose to ignore it because we don’t know what to do or how to go about helping or because it is simply not our reality. We choose to ignore as if it wasn’t there.
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