KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) – Afghan performance artist Kubra Khademi was just 4 years old the first time she was molested by a stranger on the street, and recalls thinking one thing: “I wish my underwear was made of iron.”
So more than 20 years later she donned a suit of armor with large breasts and buttocks and wore it on the streets of Kabul to protest Afghanistan’s endemic harassment.
The eight-minute performance was not well received: She is now in hiding and afraid for her life. But after a lifetime of being pinched and prodded on the streets – and being told to keep quiet about it – the 27 year old is determined to break her deeply conservative society’s silence on sexual harassment.
Women, even those who wear the all-encompassing burka, regularly endure verbal abuse and unwanted touching in Afghanistan, where the fight for gender equality is still in its infancy. After more than a decade of activism, girls are still sold into marriage, domestic violence goes largely unpunished, and few women occupy positions of public responsibility.
Khademi was four when a stranger touched her bottom while she was walking to a shop near her family’s home in Quetta, Pakistan, where they had joined a tide of refugees fleeing war and the brutal rule of the ultra-conservative Taliban. She was molested in the streets on many other occasions throughout her life, including one instance shortly after she had returned to Afghanistan in 2008 to take entrance exams to study fine arts at Kabul University.