Writing Hawa
(France/Netherlands/Qata,r/Afghanistan, 85 min.)
Dir. Najiba Noori
Programme: Made in Exile (Canadian premiere)
An extended tracking shot traces a bird’s-eye view of the flight path taken by Najiba Noori’s plane from Kabul to Paris. Why is she travelling? What’s at stake for her and Afghanis back home? The answers unfold in this moving portrait of the filmmaker’s family in a rapidly changing Afghanistan.
The narrative itself begins in 2019. Noori, a journalist by trade, is filming and interviewing her parents in their simple home in Kabul. Hawa, married via an arranged nuptial at age 13 to a man 30 years her senior, looks on as her husband shows obvious signs of dementia, failing to recognize his daughter. Hawa, pressured by her husband to meet his every daily need, bemoans that she’s housebound and is determined to gain her independence. She will learn to read and write and start a retail business selling embroidered garments.
The first section of the film tracks Hawa as she heads to her home town Bamiyan to purchase fabric. As she haggles and evaluates the quality of the goods, we see a vibrant woman with obvious intelligence coming into her own.
Especially affecting are the sequences showing Hawa’s literacy training. At a store where one of her sons is helping her buy books, the owner tries to discourage her, explaining that these training materials are for elementary school children. Later, her young grandchildren help her with spelling. In both instances, Hawa shows no embarrassment, just determination.
In another thread, Hawa’s 14 year-old granddaughter Zahra, not seen for years since her father took her with him after he divorced her mother, flees her father’s strict patriarchal household to stay with Hawa. Zahra is sure she’s destined for a forced arranged marriage.
As she settles in with Hawa and as her grandmother makes headway with her business plans, there are rumblings that trouble looms. It’s 2021. Televised news reports that the U.S. has made a deal with the Taliban to withdraw its troops and consultants from the country. What will happen? Will the country return to Taliban oppression? The optimistic among them say not to worry: the Taliban has reaffirmed girls’ right to education. But not for long. Soon the schools are closed to girls. The Taliban are systematically stripping women of their rights, claiming that the West “uses women’s right to force women to go naked,” exposing them to rape and violence.
The family has to make serious decisions. Some try to flee to Iran. Can Hawa keep Zahra or will they be pressured to return her? Noori, certain that she’s vulnerable as a journalist, leaves her camera to her brother Ali to finish the film and heads to Paris, harkening back to the film’s first scene.
This is obviously not a film made by a neutral observer. Enhanced by Afshin Azari’s beautiful soundtrack featuring Afghan strings and percussion and bolstered by Noori’s interviews of family members and friends, it is a moving portrait of the filmmaker’s family struggling in crisis. It’s also a potent reminder that we can’t forget Afghanistan. It is the only country in the world where girls are not allowed an education.
