Author: Sumit Mitra
Publication: India Today
Date: October 22, 2001
Introduction: Tales of Taliban barbarism
by an Afghan's Bengali wife become a bestseller and is now being filmed
During wars, walls have ears. However,
in the post-Soviet years in Afghanistan, when Pakistan and the indigenous
Taliban were wresting control of the country from a more civil regime,
the world outside had little idea of what the concoction of feudalism and
fundamentalism meant to ordinary lives.
These shifts in human attitudes
aren't captured by military surveillance. Sushmita Bandopadhyay, a Kolkata
girl, fell in love and got married to an Afghan moneylender, jaanbaz Khan.
She stayed with his family between 1989 and 1995 in his ancestral home
some 120 km from Kabul and has now come out with her memoir in a trilogy.
The first volume, Kabuliwalar, Bangali Bou (Kabuliwala's Bengali Wife),
published in 1998, has sold seven lakh copies, including over one lakh
copies of a somewhat amateurish English - version. Her publishers claim
that the second volume, Taliban, Afghan and I, in Bangla, out last year,
is approaching half-a-million in sales. The final volume, Ek Borno Mithya
No! (Not a Word is a Lie), published earlier this year, was a rage much
before the September 11 attacks.
Much of the trilogy has moments
which are the stuff of cinema. Like Bandopadhyay's two abortive escape
attempts which took her to and from the winding Khyber Pass, to be stopped
by her husband's relatives almost at the gate of the Indian Embassy in
Islamabad. These were journeys without a map or a passport. Or like the
encounter with a Taliban squad that could have been fatal. "The Taliban
court gave its verdict. I was to be shot dead on the morning of July 22,
1995, on the charge of disorderly behaviour unbecoming of a woman... At
10.27 a.m., I was brought to the mehman khana (guest room) where 15 Taliban
soldiers, who were to be my executioners, were reading from the Koran."
As the "suras" (verses) unfolded themselves in melodic incantation, one
of the men looked up and asked: "Do you want its to convey your last message
to your husband?" She claims that she managed to escape the jaws of death
by snatching the loaded Kalashnikov from the wall, thus turning the tables
on the soldiers who usually keep their firearms out in the courtyard.
Filmmakers are now queueing up at
Bandopadhyay's flat in the city's eastern suburbs. Kolkata film producer
Vijay Nopani and his ESC Films stole a march over others by buying the
rights of a film tentatively titled Escape from Taliban from the author.
The film, which has Manisha Koirala in the lead role, is being shot in
Ladakh, a terrain that bears close resemblance to Khan's native village.
While the producers are tightlipped
about their plans, pressure is mounting on Bandopadhyay, both from outside
and within her home to take back the film rights of her story. Pakhtoon
groups in India feel the film might trigger racial conflicts. Khan who
has not been to Afghanistan since 1990, is staunchly opposed to the idea
of his wife's stories being filmed. "My entire family back home in Afghanistan
could be killed."
Bandopadhyay thinks differently
though. "The Afghans, despite their backwardness, are a friendly lot but
the Taliban are as barbaric as the Huns from the past. I will not let my
stories be filmed if this line gets blurred by the omission or commission
of the filmmakers." Last week, the production company flew her to Ladakh
so that she could watch the shooting, examine the script and decide on
the film's fate.
Bandopadhyay and Khan live in a
city far from Ground Zero of the western powers' war on Islamic terrorism.
She has embarked on her new project, a weekly Bangla magazine focusing
on women's rights. Khan, who shies away from his wife's media friends and
spends time pursuing clients, had never suspected that his wife's memoirs
in Bangla would make a noise loud enough to find echoes back home. But
nor does Bandopadhyay think it is the wife's obligation to pass up an opportunity
to reach a large audience with first-hand tales about Taliban barbarism.
