I remember being on lockdown in Afghanistan, usually triggered by a violent event – a shooting, an IED explosion, or a kidnapping. Expats would confine themselves to the walls of their own homes for weeks, moving only when absolutely necessary. At one point, lockdowns were happening so frequently without breaks in between that I felt like I was under house arrest. I ached just to feel the sunshine on my skin, go for a walk, and see the world outside my own windows. The only thing I was missing was the ankle bracelet.
Today, as I sit on my back steps in Georgia with the sun kissing my face and arms, I thank God for the simple privilege, one denied women in Afghanistan. For four years now, the Taliban has barred Afghan women and girls from school and work, except in rare cases where women are segregated from men in the workplace. More oppressive edicts followed that one – forbidding women to move about the city without a mahram, a male relative, forcing them to cover the windows of their own homes lest they be seen by unrelated men, and denying them the right to speak where their voices may be heard by unrelated men. The walls of their world have closed in on them, turning their own homes into prisons. The Taliban has effectively erased women from society.
The handful of women I remain in communication with inside Afghanistan describe what it’s like to live as a woman in a land that seems to hate them, unfree, unable to develop their minds or pursue their dreams. Their mental and physical health suffers. One friend suffers from a vitamin D deficiency brought on by her confinement. The simple remedy is to get sun on her skin, but that she cannot do. Her college-educated daughter finds herself trapped, her dreams held hostage by her own government.
The situation looks bleak for Afghan women, but I’m convinced God is not done working in Afghanistan.
He hears the cries of the oppressed and ours on their behalf.
There is power in our prayers.
When you feel the sun on your skin, would you pray with me for these dear women who long for such simple pleasures? Will you pray for their deliverance from oppression so they might once again live in the sunshine? When you exercise your freedom to climb into your car to drive to the grocery store or to laugh out loud or have a conversation with another woman in public, will you pray with me for Afghan women?
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