The Dressmaker or Khair Khana

Women Of Courage

Newpapers and TV reports and quite a few books have revealed the traumatic time the women of Afghanistan had during the Taliban rule.

The beautiful mountain country was ravaged by war for many years and then the Taliban took over in 1996, imposing strict Sharia laws, forbidding women from stepping out of the home without an all-covering chadri and a mahram (a male relative as escort). This effectively meant girls could not go to school or college, women could not work outside the home. Any real or imagined infraction of rules could result in a public beating or jail. Most men for fear or being caught the crossfire between the Taliban and their opponents, simply fled to Iran or Pakistan, leaving their womenfolk to cope. Many families reached the verge of starvation.

Gayle Tzemach Lemmon’s book, The Dressmaker of Khair Khana: Five Sisters, One Remarkable Family, and the Woman Who Risked Everything to Keep Them Safe is a fictionalized account of a true story. Lemmon was an MBA student at Harvard Business School, and wanted to research the subject of women entrepreneurship in war zones like Rwanda, Bosnia and Afghanistan. It took her a while to find an Afghan female whose story she could tell and eventually she found the perfect candidate in Kamila Sidiqi.

Kamila, was one of eleven children—nine sisters and two brothers—trained to be a teacher when the Taliban forces overran Kabul. Only one of the Sidiqi girls was married with three children of her own—and she was the one who had learnt to sew from her mother.  Not one to sit home and brood over the dreadful fate to befall them, seventeen-year-old Kamila learns sewing from her sister and starts a business from home, along with her younger sisters. Her brother Rahim becomes her mahram,as she takes great risks to go to the market to negotiate with shopkeepers to buy the dresses they make.

 Kamila was not just a good seamstress and smart businesswoman, she had all the makings of a community leader. She realized that other women in the Khair Khana neighbourhood were also in dire need of money as well as something to keep them occupied.  The educated girls who had seen life outside the home found the forced isolation stifling. How many times could they read the same books and watch the same pirated movies?  (There is an amusing portion about the huge impact ofTitanic on the local populace).

As her business grew, Kamila trained and employed other girls from Khair Khana; together they survived the terrible times.  The book about the courage and tenacity of women is inspiring, even though the writing is bland and the dialogue stilted. There have been other better books on the terrible conditions under Taliban rule (Khalid Hosseini’s work) or about the continuing fight against oppression (Half the Sky and Three Cups of Tea). Still Lemmon’s best-selling book gives the reader a sense of the terror and deprivation the women of Afghanistan went through, and also chronicles their heroism.

Subsequently, Lemmon has written Ashley’s War: The Untold Story of a Team of Women Soldiers on the Special Ops Battlefield about a female soldier, the movie rights for which have reportedly been bought by Reese Witherspoon.

The Dressmaker or Khair Khana: Five Sisters, One Remarkable Family, and the Woman Who Risked Everything to Keep Them Safe

By Gayle Tzemach Lemmon

Publisher: Harper

Pages: 258