He sits down for a few
minutes, gasping for breath. He has just wound down a song-and-dance routine,
his feet are still tapping a rhythm to the beat that continues in his mind. His
anklets jingle, his skirt is slowly settling around him. The men around him
cheer and exchange shouts. They talk laughingly, and then there is a heated
exchange. The men want to decide which of them would take the boy home for the
night – and they each want the boy.
This is his reality.
He is made to sing and dance, dressing like a woman. After his “performance”,
he is taken home by one of the men who attend the performance, and is then
used.
I sit watching the
documentary put together by PBS and Afghan journalist Najibullah Quraishi,
titled The Dancing Boys of Afghanistan.
My hands are numb, my eyes are transfixed on the screen as wave after wave of
young boys come and go, all victims in this disgusting game.
Nothing short of
sexual slavery and child prostitution, Afghanistan’s young boys fall prey to
the inappropriate and carnal entertainment needs of powerful and rich men in
Afghanistan. As much as the Taliban comes down on women and their social
involvement, it is shockingly involved in the ghastly form of organized abuse
of little boys. It is an organized network – the supply and demand of and for
these young boys is high, as it has grown to become something of a status
symbol to “have a boy”. These young boys have dreams, ambitions, a hope for a
better future. But instead, they are forced to live like sex slaves to men with
bestial and monstrous proclivities. Their young faces are beset with the lines
of age that their sufferings have brought to them: they have aged before their
time. Some of them are forced, some simply know no better. Some are told that
there isn’t anything more than this that they can do for their families to
enjoy money. These little boys are as much a target of the dominance of
parochial and patriarchal tendencies, as their female counterparts are.
I sit wondering how
these men can do this to these little children. They are cherubic, even the
most mischievous imp of them all. Their innocence is sacred: it is not a
football to be kicked about in the mud.
I see a little boy on
the screen. His face is blurred out for the need to preserving his identity a
secret. But I see his little hands and feet. Those hands should hold a school
book in them. Or a kite. Or the stolen fruit from a neighbour’s tree. Those
feet should carry him as he cruises through against the wind in the hopes of
escaping the catcher in a game of running-and-catching. Those feet should be
taking him fast to a place he can hide in, until the seeker is tired of finding
the hiding ones. But no. Those hands are slowly trying to tie anklets and to
fasten a skirt. Those feet are busy pirouetting and twirling.
Welcome to the world
of Bacha-baazi, as this game is called, in Afghanistan. Welcome to the Game
where no matter who plays or wins, innocence always loses.
Somewhere in the back
of my mind, Hassan’s words in Khaled Hosseini’s Kite Runner, in a letter to
Amir, rolls over: “I dream that my son will grow up to
be a good person, a free person. I dream that someday you will return to
revisit the land of our childhood. I dream that flowers will bloom in the
streets again and kites will fly in the skies.”
No comments:
Post a Comment