Kimia Yousofi is not a name that has a ready recall. The Afghan sprinter did not break any records at the Olympics. After her 100 metre heats, she held up these words on paper: ‘Education’, ‘Sport’, ‘Our Rights’.
Of the six Afghan athletes in Paris, the ruling Taliban recognises only the three men. Yousofi, 28, lives in exile in Australia. Women in Afghanistan, she said, “Are not considered human.
” The fact that she finished two seconds behind the winner is inconsequential. That she participated at all places the medal-winning triumphalism at the Olympics in perspective. What price a gold medal when your very existence has been threatened daily? What joy being an international when you know governing bodies in sports are willing to let countries perpetuate injustices in return for votes? The story of Afghanistan’s women who dare to play a sport — the opposition is not just from the Taliban or society but from dear ones in the family who can be cruel too — is narrated in Khalida Popal’s My Beautiful Sisters , the story of the country’s football team.
Popal organised the team from scratch, got herself into the administration, organised tours and protected the players. It is, by extension, the story of a patriarchal society where violence against women, mental, physical and sexual, is commonplace. And where, as Popal says, anyone can be “arrested, raped or shot”, sometimes all three on the flimsiest excuse.
Popal and her family fled to Peshawar when.