Читать книгу Voice of Rebellion - Roberta Staley - Страница 5

Prologue

“CUT!” YELLED THE director.

Mozhdah Jamalzadah flipped the front of the burka up over her head, breathing in the fresh, sagebrush-scented breeze blowing off the parched hills of Kamloops, feeling the heavily beaded sweat along her hairline dissipate. The addition of the heavy dark wig made the burka almost unbearable in the baking heat. Mozhdah sighed. There were many hours of filming still ahead for Red Snow—a movie about a Canadian Armed Forces soldier who is taken prisoner by the Taliban in Kandahar while fighting for peace and security in Afghanistan.

The blue burka belonged to Mozhdah’s mother, Nasrin, and as Mozhdah wore it, she couldn’t help but think about the journey it had taken. Many years ago, Nasrin, along with her husband Bashir, escaped from Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan, as civil war ravaged what was left of the country following the Soviet Union’s ten-year battle against fierce mujahideen warriors. At the time, Mozhdah was just five years old. The Jamalzadah family fled disguised as peasants, with Nasrin donning the burka, transforming her from an educated urbanite into a silent and obedient Afghan wife and mother. The ruse had worked; Mozhdah and her family eventually made their way to Vancouver, Canada. This symbol of female subjugation had been a means to freedom, and Nasrin had kept it carefully wrapped in tissue paper until now, like a talisman.

But arriving in Canada had been the beginning—not the end—of Mozhdah’s odyssey. Growing up, she faced racism and struggled to fit into her new country. Later, as a teen, she learned to sing, with Afghanistan as her muse. Obsessed with the thought of helping Afghanistan—and especially Afghan women—Mozhdah returned to the country of her birth to launch her own television talk show, based upon The Oprah Winfrey Show. But to some Afghans, Mozhdah was just another foreign invader, and she was eventually forced to flee, brutalized and defeated.

Today, surrounded by film cameras, under the shimmering heat, with the director poised to call “Action!” Mozhdah pulled the burka back down over her head. Yes, she thought, this blue burka—this is where the story truly begins.