A Second Birth

         Last week I went to a play called "A Second Birth". This play was written by a BYU student and was put on by BYU actors and actresses. The basic plot line of the play took place in Afghanistan, and involved two separate families. One of these families has all daughters, but needed to make enough money to support the family and so the daughter Nahima dressed up as a boy (and went by the name Nahim) from the time she was 5 until one day her parents tell her she must get married. Her whole life has been spent acting as a boy tutor for the older brother of her best friend. The first act of the play consists of her trying to learn the customs of being an average Afghani woman. She must learn to cook, hand sew and embroider, clean, and wear traditional head scarves and burkas. The play is sent for a whirlwind when at the end of the first act, Nahima figures out that she is engaged to the boy she has been tutoring for her whole life, and he still thinks that Nahima is the boy Nahim. This sets her for a spin, and she runs away to escape the social pressures of her family and society to get married to this boy. However in the end, she returns to her family, and fulfills her duty to Afghanistan and to her family, and she marries this boy.
         One of the points in the play that stuck out to me most is the fact that as a boy, she could continue her studies, but the minute she was a girl, she was no longer allowed to study. I complain about schooling a lot, and wish I didn't have to do homework. In this play, Nahima does not complain about doing her studies, she wishes to be reading and learning all the time. When she becomes a girl, she realizes this freedom will be taken away from her in the blink of an eye. At the end, her husband (and friend) agrees to let her travel to university and finish her studies, which was practically unheard of in the Afghanistan world.
         What struck me most in this play was the fact that the Nahima had no choice. She had no choice when she was 5 if she wanted to become a boy or not. She had no choice whether she wanted to be the one raising all the money for the family. She had no choice at what age she was ready to be married. She had no choice who her spouse was going to be. Basically, her entire life was run by the usual societal expectations of the Afghani government. This play made me realize how lucky we are in america, and not just men and women, but especially women. In Afghanistan, women are required to wear a burka whenever they are in public. The government says it is to protect the women from being taken advantage of. However, I choose what I wear every day and am perfectly safe. I have the ability to choose what I study, to go to a university, to wear whatever, to date whomever I wish, to live where I want, to do what I want on the weekends, to vote in elections, and to have complete freedom of speech. In Afghanistan, they were not allowed these seemingly simple freedoms. I am grateful for the freedoms I have, and am grateful for the fact that I live in America and have the ability to make choices based on what I want, not based on what the government wants.