AN ABSTRACT OF THE THESIS OF

Fatima Rezai for the degree of Masters of Arts in Women, Gender, & Sexuality Studies presented on March 18, 2020

Title: Narratives of Motherwork, Agency, and Resilience: An Oral History of Afghan Immigrant Mothers in the Pacific Northwest Diaspora

Abstract Approved: ______Cari S. Maes

Using intersectional, matricentric feminist of color approaches, this study interrogates the particularities of Afghan immigrants' mothering experiences—as one of the hidden facets of their lived experience—in the United States from a life-course perspective. Using a combination of feminist oral historical approaches, semi-structured interviews, and participant observation, this thesis explores the textures of maternal experiences to gain insight on how these mothers navigate through two overlapping contexts that frame their lives. The first context comprises women’s recollections of mothering in the midst of oppression and war in Afghanistan. These narratives specifically reveal the ways in which gender and, in some cases, ethnicity shape women’s experiences of conflict at home in Afghanistan. As will be explored, the stories they share help rupture dominant Western characterizations of mothers as “passive victims” in the protracted wars waged in the country spanning the last four decades. The second key context focuses on life in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States and reveals how Afghan mothers experience the twin processes of cultural alienation and adaptation. This work ultimately provides a unique window into the intimate space of mothering, home, and family for a small group of Afghan mothers living outside the traditional diasporic hubs of the United States.

 Copyright by Fatima Rezai March 18, 2020 All Rights Reserved

Narratives of Motherwork, Agency, and Resilience: An Oral History of Afghan Immigrant Mothers in the Pacific Northwest Diaspora

by Fatima Rezai

A THESIS

Submitted to

Oregon State University

in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

Master of Arts

Presented March 18, 2020 Commencement June 2020

Master of Arts thesis of Fatima Rezai presented on March 18, 2020

APPROVED:

Major Professor, representing Women, Gender, & Sexuality Studies

Director of the School of Language, Culture, and Society

Dean of the Graduate School

I understand that my thesis will become a part of the permanent collection of Oregon State University libraries. My signature below authorizes release of my thesis to any reader upon request.

Fatima Rezai, Author

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my incredible supervisor, Dr. Cari Maes, for her mentorship and guidance through each stage of the process. This thesis would have not been possible without her generous support, invaluable insights, and enthusiasm. I wish to express my sincere appreciation to each of the member of my committee members, Dr. Melissa Cheyney, Dr.

Liddy Detar, and Dr. Kelly Chandler, who have generously provided me with extensive support in the pursuit of this project. I also gratefully acknowledge the grant received from Fulbright Foreign

Student Program for completion of this Master program.

I dedicate this thesis to the Afghan women at the center of this study who welcomed me warmly to their homes, opened up their lives, and offered illuminating insights. I am also indebted to their families for their friendship, trust, and kindness throughout the life of this project.

The last but not least, for their inspiration, love, and emotional support, I am profoundly grateful to my family, in particular my mother, whose life story and resilience in the face of adversity inspired this work.

INDIGENOUS LANDS STATEMENT

Let it be acknowledged that Oregon State University in Corvallis, OR is located within the traditional homelands of the Mary's River or Ampinefu Band of Kalapuya. Following the Willamette Valley Treaty of 1855 (Kalapuya etc. Treaty), Kalapuya people were forcibly removed to reservations in Western Oregon. Today, living descendants of these people are a part of the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde Community of Oregon (https://www.grandronde.org) and the Confederated Tribes of the Siletz Indians (https://ctsi.nsn.us)

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

Introduction …….....…………..………………………………………………………..……1

Background……………..………………..…………………………………………………… 14

Methodology……....……………………………...………………………………………...… 25

Narratives………………...………...... …………………………………………...... ……….. 37

Mina……………………………………………………………………………………..37

Mahtab………………………………………………………………..…………………47

Habiba ………………………………………………………………..…………………60

Tahera …………………………………………………………………..………………69

Discussion...…………………………………………………………………….………………82

Conclusion.……………………………………………………………………….……………94

Bibliography………………………………………………………………..…….…………....98

Appendices……………………………………………………………………………………110

Appendix A: Overview of Afghan Displacement Numbers……………………. …..……….110

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure Page

Figure I and II: Map of Hazarajat Region and Regional Map of Afghanistan…………..15

Figure III: Map of Jaghori District location within Ghazni Province……………………39

Figure IV: Kakrak Valley Location within Ghazni Province...………………………….48

Figure V: City of Ghazni……..………………………………………………………….50 Figure VI: Photograph of Traditional Attire……………………………………………..78 Figure VII: Phonograph of Henna Patterns………………………………………………81

1 Narratives of Motherwork, Agency, and Resilience: An Oral History of Afghan Immigrant Mothers in the Pacific Northwest

Introduction

Can anyone teach me how to make a homeland? Heartfelt thanks if you can, heartiest thanks… -from “Lament for Syria,” Amineh Abou Kerech (2017)

Habiba slowly laid on her handmade Afghan sitting mattress closed to the window, a small piece of embroidered napkin in her hand, watched the last trace of the sun's light vanished in gloomy winter of West coast. “At this time of the year at 'home,’ I would sit and chat with the rest of the elder women by the wall, under the sun, watching our little grandchildren playing around us… but days are shorter here,” she said, sighing deeply in despair. After a short pause, she continued retelling her story of wartime starting with these words: “everyone looted our land in turn. We have gone through many hardship. Thank God, my children are not seeing those days anymore, they are now safe here.” -Habiba, interview with the author (2018)

This study aims to interrogate the particularities of Afghan immigrants' mothering

experiences — as one of the hidden facets of their lived experience — in the United States from

a life-course perspective. Using a combination of feminist oral historical approaches, semi- structured interviews, and participant observation, this thesis explores the textures of maternal

experiences to gain insight on how these mothers navigate through two overlapping contexts that

frame their lives. The first context comprises women’s recollections of mothering in the midst of

oppression and war in Afghanistan. These narratives specifically reveal the ways in which

gender and, in some cases, ethnicity shape women’s experiences of conflict at home in

Afghanistan. As will be explored, the stories they share help rupture dominant Western

characterizations of mothers as “passive victims” in the protracted wars waged in the country

spanning the last four decades. The second key context, the crux of this thesis, focuses on women’s experiences of alienation and adaptation in the Pacific Northwest region of the United 2 Narratives of Motherwork, Agency, and Resilience: An Oral History of Afghan Immigrant Mothers in the Pacific Northwest

States.1 What makes the position of Afghan women unique in the United States is that they took refuge in the very country that has waged war against their homeland in the name of eradicating

global terrorism. As Saskia Witteborn’s work on Iraqi refugees living in the Pacific Northwest

during the War in Iraq shows, the complex dynamics between warring nation-states deeply influence how diasporic subjects define their identity and belonging in their new home (2008:

202-204). Similarly, for Afghan women, acts of living and mothering in this context are further complicated by post- 9/11 hostilities, stereotypes, and Islamophobia against Muslims and

Afghans in particular, leading to their marginalized status in the host country (Ahmed-Ghosh

2015: 123). Hence, this study reveals how diasporic Afghan women navigate an increasingly

inhospitable social climate in the United States and how they deploy various “motherwork” strategies (Hill Collins 1994) to protect their families and build a sense of home in the Pacific

Northwest.

In recent years, the plight of Afghan women has come to the attention of global feminist movements. Humanitarian efforts sponsored by a number of local and international NGOs have brought women, particularly mothers, to the forefront of the country’s reconstruction and reconciliation processes. As of 2006, there were 1600 NGO and United Nations offices across

Afghanistan working on a range of campaigns to rebuild civil society and infrastructure (Langary

2010: xii). These campaigns have disseminated images and stories of women’s experiences in the post-conflict era, while sometimes reinforcing reductive stereotypes about how Afghanistan is “the worst place in the world to be a woman.”2 As these organizations have moved to focus on

1This study (#8573) was categorized by the Oregon State University Institutional Review Board as “not research” on April 27, 2018. Due to increased precarity and threats to Muslim communities in the United States, I have chosen not to identify the specific location within the Pacific Northwest. Participant names have also been changed. 2This phrase comes from Amnesty USA’s Women’s Human Rights Group polling in 2011, derived from a Trust Law multi-national survey, that ranked Afghanistan the number one worst place in the world to be a woman. The 3 Narratives of Motherwork, Agency, and Resilience: An Oral History of Afghan Immigrant Mothers in the Pacific Northwest

women’s empowerment, the lives and stories of women and the struggles they endured over

more than four decades of conflict have come into sharper relief. Women have also moved into

more public roles in the wake of conflict, responding to the loss of male providers and increased

pressures to support their households through wage labor (Kandiyoti 2005: 13). Due to their

efforts, today women and girls have much more social freedom, as well as access to education,

work opportunities, and political participation (Cordaid 2019). Most recently, women,

particularly those near the country’s capital in Kabul have been at the center of multilateral peace

negotiations between the United States, the national government, the Taliban. As Mary Akrami

Sahak, director of the Afghan Women’s Network (AWN) stated in 2019, “The women of

Afghanistan came out of the dark. We will never go back” (Cordaid 2019).

Simultaneously, community-based activism, media coverage, and political discussions

about the precarious status of Afghan and other Muslim diasporic communities residing in the

United States have also increased. The election of current President Donald Trump in 2016

marked the intensification of Islamophobic policy and propaganda. Trump’s campaign rhetoric

targeted Muslim-Americans and Muslims abroad by reifying dichotomies between us (Western

Christendom) versus them (Islamic world) and tying these ideas to specific policy proposals. In

2016, then candidate Trump famously stated that “Islam hates us” and intimated that his

administration would move quickly to restrict travel, increase security and surveillance in

Muslim neighborhoods, and even close mosques (Khan et al., 2019: 4). Over the last four years,

incidents of violence against Muslim-Americans have risen to alarming rates and the

administration has expanded its repressive strategies to curtail the flow of Muslim contingents

survey data aggregated Afghanistan’s high illiteracy rate among women (87%), high maternal mortality, and high rates of forced marriages. See Trust Law (2011) https://news.trust.org/item/?map=factsheet-the-worlds-most- dangerous-countries-for-women/ and Bohn (2018) https://time.com/5472411/afghanistan-women-justice-war/ 4 Narratives of Motherwork, Agency, and Resilience: An Oral History of Afghan Immigrant Mothers in the Pacific Northwest

into the United States through travel bans, asylee and refugee restrictions, and open support for

anti-Muslim groups.

Despite their increased integration into civil life, the economy, and politics in the post- conflict era, there continues to be a general lack of opportunity for Afghan women, at home and

in the diaspora, to share their stories and represent themselves. As Said Sattar Langary argues,

“little has been said to give Afghan women the agency and opportunity to speak out for

themselves and talk about their own rights and dilemmas” (2010: 7). The international media’s focus on the atrocities of war and displacement tended to objectify Afghan women as silent, passive victims. Images of fully-veiled Afghan women permeated the media in order

“communicate the barbarity of the Taliban,” reducing women “visual, not vocal” subjects

(Kearns 2017: 493). The archetype of the veiled, silenced Afghan woman became a powerful

“controlling image” (Hill Collins 2002) that spoke both for and about them. Such representational politics in contemporary media compounded the silencing effects of conflict and gendered oppression in Afghanistan. As Aria Fani argues, “the flood of images of abused and helpless women obscure the significant role women have played as agents of change in

Afghanistan” (2011). Indeed, as the forthcoming narratives reveal, Afghan women continued to possess agency and voice within their communities during and after conflict. However, Western

media coverage and its reliance on reductive tropes severely hindered the dissemination of their stories for years. These selective representations have meant that significant parts of Afghan women’s experience remained unexplored in recent scholarship.

Though photographic and storytelling projects, such as Maptia’s “Unveiled” and We Are

Afghan Women: Voices of Hope (2016) have offered windows into women’s lives, such works

continue to filter women’s voices through a Western lens for mostly Western audiences. This 5 Narratives of Motherwork, Agency, and Resilience: An Oral History of Afghan Immigrant Mothers in the Pacific Northwest

work aims to open space for women, specifically mothers, to share the recollections and insights

that construct the bridges between the stark dichotomies that constitute their lives: war and

peace, Afghanistan and the United States, home and the unknown, silence and voice, and past

and present/future. As Ayesha Ahmad argues, “women as storytellers of suffering are the

epitome for understanding the lived spaces of war” (2019). This work sees women’s stories as

window into the effects of war, migration, and mothering in the diaspora and as a powerful act of

reclaiming maternal agency and voice. In collaboration with those who generously shared their

stories with me, I aim to document and elevate the voices of Afghan women living on the “other

side of silence3” (Butalia 2003). The women at the center of this study reflect the words of

Afghan poet, Meena Keshwar Kamal (1956-1987), who declares: now my compatriot no longer think of me as a powerless victim I'm a woman awaken now I've found my path I will not return4

Narrator Profiles

The women at the center of this oral history project are four Afghan mothers of different age groups who recently immigrated to the United States and reside in a small city in the Pacific

Northwest. They all belong to a minority ethnic group in Afghanistan, known as Hazara, and

originally from Hazara-populated mountainous districts—historically and physically referred to

Hazarajat—in Ghazni Province in central Afghanistan. Learning about the past and lived

experience of my mother, a Hazara immigrant woman in Iran, who spend most of her life in

3 Here, I refer to an imposed silence and acknowledge that Afghan women were never silent. They suffered from others’ refusals to hear and listen. 4From “I’ll Never Return” translated by Aria Fani (1981). 6 Narratives of Motherwork, Agency, and Resilience: An Oral History of Afghan Immigrant Mothers in the Pacific Northwest

exile, and my own diasporic identity, informed my decision to focus on the mothering practice of this specific minority group in diaspora though in a relatively different context. Having access to the small community of Afghan families and the growing familiarity with a few number of women encouraged me to select them as the main participants of this study. The purpose of this small sample size was to have few snapshots of mothering experiences that provide narrative data on the local level that can connect to the broader issue of Afghan women’s experiences of diaspora. I first met these women at the Persian New Year event in March 2017. Given the established rapport at the very beginning, they generously invited me to their homes where I would spend most of the weekends. Such extension of invitation and hospitality to friends and strangers alike, is an expression of Mehman Nawazi (hospitality) that is highly valued as part of

Afghan culture and is cherished by all ethnic groups in Afghanistan (Emadi, 2005; Najib

& Afruz, 2013). Thanks to our shared identities, language, and experiences of diaspora, I

continuously interacted with these women and their families throughout the life of this project.

As will be explored, this work engages transnational feminist ethics of care in narrating the experiences that unfold in the intimate spaces of the family and the home. The Afghan women at the center of this oral history project share deeply personal stories of fear, grief, joy, resilience, and loss. As I bear witness to their recollections and stories, I am conscious that, despite our shared gender, cultural, and diasporic identities, I am still an outsider bearing witness. Following

Virginia Held’s methodological suggestion, I apply a feminist ethic of care in approaching these stories that attends to my relationships to the women and our mutual responsibilities to one another (2006: 13). Going further, feminist ethics of care flowed naturally from the friendships I shared with the women, creating interdependencies and reciprocity. We shared cultural traditions, food, language, laughter, and love. Although this work is oral history and not 7 Narratives of Motherwork, Agency, and Resilience: An Oral History of Afghan Immigrant Mothers in the Pacific Northwest

ethnography, I felt as if I experienced what feminist anthropologist Kamala Visweswaran calls

“homework.” She argues that “homework,” as opposed to “fieldwork,” involves a scholar

working from their own location and critically interrogating the power dynamics and

relationships in that context. From our shared location, I found myself, as Visweswaran urges,

“unlearning as much as learning” alongside the women I interviewed (1994: 101-103). Indeed, I

share many common attributes (age, ethnicity, gender) with the women, but I am not yet a

mother and quite different pathways brought us to the Pacific Northwest. In this work, I aimed to

practice “narrative humility” to position myself as a scholar in relation to the women and the stories they told me. This approach, according to Irvine, emphasizes “the sense of humility toward that which we do not know — the face of the Other, the face we cannot know but to which we are responsible” (Das Gupta 2008: 980).

The experiences of Afghan women, particularly mothers within the private space of home and family, and the ways they confront cultural and social displacement is rendered invisible within predominantly white communities. They are neither part of the host community or the community of local women due to their outsider status, yet their practice of mothering as intimate space is truly fundamental to the process of identity creation, cultural thriving, and community belonging.

By centering these women's voices and experiences, they have been provided with a platform to share their narratives from their own position within the intimate spaces of mothering

as an important site of research from which I learn about their dynamic lived experiences and identity. Brining these invisible and peripheral voices to the center, not only capture the monotheistic understanding of mothers ’lives and their motherwork, it offers a further expression on their unique self-identity and their complex social identity (Motapanyane et al., 2016). 8 Narratives of Motherwork, Agency, and Resilience: An Oral History of Afghan Immigrant Mothers in the Pacific Northwest

Similarly, the narratives of these women offers insights into the reconciliation of their sense of

self and identity with the dominant stereotyped conceptions about Afghan women in the host

community.

While engaging with the central theme of motherhood, this study additionally seeks to

explore how dynamic experiences and fluid ethnic identities are interconnected to the broader domaines of politics, militarism, and globalization in general. As Ahmed et al. argues, the very language of globalization fails to account for how the global village involves forms of domination rather than inclusion; and the construction of “the global” as the emancipation of space take place through the use, regulation, and control of bodies of Black or third world women (2005:114). This is particularly the case with Afghan women whose mothering experiences in diaspora are considerably influenced by oppression, constant displacements, and social disruption caused by politics, militarism and war over the last three decades (Ahmed-

Ghosh, 2015).

Theoretical Framework

This study seeks to shed light into different layers of maternal experiences in private sphere of Afghan households in which women are taught and expected to be the bearer of traditional religious and cultural values (Thapan 2005). It explores how mothering serves as the key site of identity formation through socialization of children into their values and history, and at the same time as the site of resistance and agency to teach children to navigate and survive within the systems of oppression. This exploration of motherhood resonates with Patricia Hill

Collins’ women of color feminist perspective on the black women’s standpoint on mothering.

She attempts to “shift the center” of motherhood by focusing on the dynamic and dialectical 9 Narratives of Motherwork, Agency, and Resilience: An Oral History of Afghan Immigrant Mothers in the Pacific Northwest

institution of motherhood as a site where women of color express the power of self-definition,

self-reliance while confronting gender and ethnic oppression (Collins 1994). Collins argues that

by centering women of color’s personal narratives, autobiographies, poetry, fiction, and other

personalized statements on mothering we disrupt the hegemony of white middle-class

conceptualizations of motherhood (1994: 374). The maternal narratives presented here “shift the

center” in three, critical ways. First, they shed light on the under-interrogated experiences and lives of Afghan mothers navigating identity, belonging, and the traumas of long-term war in the diaspora. Second, these maternal stories highlight these realities among Afghan families living in the Pacific Northwest region which lies outside the larger Afghan diasporic hubs in the United

States.5 Finally, these oral histories “shift the center” by moving the focus away from experiences of trauma and war which have been the conventional lenses through which Western scholars and media have understood Afghan women in the last four decades. Although

recollections from the time of conflict emerge in these women’s stories, mothering is the central

category of discussion. Readers will also note that excerpts of Afghan women’s poetry appears

throughout the thesis. This strategy reinforces Hill Collins’ charge to center voices from the

margins and poetic prose speaks to Afghan women’s agency, expression, and resilience which

are the core themes that animate this study.

In addition to responding to Hill Collins’ call to “shift the center” of motherhood studies,

this work relies on her conceptualization of “motherwork.” Motherwork, according to Hill

Collins, entails the nurturing labor necessary for survival, as well as deeper cultural and social

education. Her work discusses how mothers of color balance the need to meet their children’s

5 Sizeable populations of Afghans live in Fremont, California, the Virginia suburbs of Washington D. C., and New York City. See Baden (2017). 10 Narratives of Motherwork, Agency, and Resilience: An Oral History of Afghan Immigrant Mothers in the Pacific Northwest

basic needs while teaching them the cultural traditions, history, language of their ancestry in

order to resist assimilation. Training children to confront systems of oppression that threaten

them with discrimination and violence also falls under the broad category of “motherwork.” This concept is helpful for understanding the ways Afghan mothers manage their care responsibilities alongside their struggles to navigate dominant (white, western) culture in the United States.

Gathering with other families for shared celebrations and meals, dressing in traditional attire, speaking native languages, and religious practices are some of the ways Afghan mothers work to maintain their families’ ties to the homeland and forge a sense of identity in the United States.

Analyses of motherwork among diasporic Muslim women, and Afghan women specifically, remains scarce. This work hopes to partially fill that gap in the current scholarship.

Furthermore, in order to understand these mothers’ self-perceptions in relation to broader normative understanding of motherhood, this study draws upon theoretical concept of ‘new maternalism’ that is developed to highlight and dislodge ‘motherhood’ from the dominant socially-constructed maternal ideology (Motapanyane et al. 2016). New maternalism entails agency, strategies, perspectives, and resilience of marginalized women that is centered around the notion of ‘motherwork’ with multiple dimensions—mothering as practice, mother as identity, and motherhood as institution (Motapanyane et al. 2016: 3). Using the intersectional, matricentric feminist lens offered in the framework of “new maternalism,” this work sheds light on the ways Afghan mothers navigate the various aspects that define them as mothers and others in the United States. The narratives that comprise this thesis reveal the intersecting identities

Afghan women embody in the diaspora and how their roles as mothers inform each of these dimensions of their identity. Afghan diasporic mothers define their identities through the intersecting axes of ability, gender, class, culture, language, citizenship, religion, and sexuality. 11 Narratives of Motherwork, Agency, and Resilience: An Oral History of Afghan Immigrant Mothers in the Pacific Northwest

As their stories reveal, a central part of the invisible labor of motherwork involves navigating

and seeking belonging within these various identity categories, in addition to facing the

repercussions of being categorized and treated as “other” vis à vis dominant U.S. cultural norms.

One of the core questions of “new maternalist” inquiry is to understand how global discourses

shape local motherwork and how, in turn, local issues and frames shape global discourses around

motherwork (2016: 5). This work brings new insights into the ways Afghan mothers situate

themselves and their mothering at the nexus of these local and global discourses.

Finally, this thesis engages with Sara Ruddick’s notion of “maternal thinking” and Nancy

Scheper-Hughes’ descriptions of “maternal tactics.” Ruddick identifies “maternal thinking” as

the everyday thought processes that orient a mother’s actions and emphasize care and love. She

is careful to say that “maternal thinking” is not a singular or homogeneous process across all

cultures and contexts (1980: 347). Ruddick claims mothers constantly negotiate between the

demands placed on them by children, family, and society and their own interests (348). Oral

histories provide a unique window into the interior processes of “maternal thinking.” Afghan mothers display different forms of “maternal thinking” as a mode of agency as they situate themselves and their families within their new communities in the Pacific Northwest. Their stories show how they deliberate between the maternal practices they relied on back home and the demands of a new cultural and social environment. Looking into the “maternal thinking” of diasporic Afghan mothers, we find that they are disconnected from the more socialized, shared practices of mothering they knew at home. New modes of maternal thought emerge in response to new living situations that are often isolating due to language barriers and lack of a kin or social network (Langary 2010: 37-38). 12 Narratives of Motherwork, Agency, and Resilience: An Oral History of Afghan Immigrant Mothers in the Pacific Northwest

The mothers at the center of this study also practice what anthropologist Nancy Scheper-

Hughes calls “maternal tactics” (1992: 471-472). Looking at the case of poor mothers in Brazil,

she identifies the ways mothers, often without agency or power, make daily decisions about

childrearing and domestic life. Scheper-Hughes states that maternal “tactics” often respond to a

lack of choice or power and rely on quick solutions and making the best out of a difficult

situation (1992: 471-472). The circumscribed conditions she describes among poor Brazilian mothers resonate with the experiences of Afghan mothers in this study. Mothers reveal how they respond to unfamiliar circumstances, face alienation, and engage in decision-making that informs their everyday practices of mothering. Understanding their thoughts and actions, or tactics, as forms of maternal agency helps move away from characterizations of Afghan mothers as

“passive victims.” As will be revealed in their oral histories, they are in a constant state of action and deliberation in their maternal practices, moving between the cultures, languages, social norms, and traditions that defined their mothering back home and now in the diaspora.

Narratives Structure

The four participants’ oral histories and their perspectives are discussed in separate

chapters. While focusing on central concept of 'motherwork,’ each chapter addresses the

experiences of these women during wartime and during the aftermath of armed conflict. Their narratives yield new insights into their agency, resistance, and survival within this specific period of their lives which have had direct impact on their current experience of diaspora.

The first chapter presents the oral account of Mina's lived experience. A thirty-nine-year-old mother of three children, Mina moved to the United States in 2009. The second chapter discusses the story of Mahtab, a forty-two-year-old mother who left Afghanistan with her husband and 13 Narratives of Motherwork, Agency, and Resilience: An Oral History of Afghan Immigrant Mothers in the Pacific Northwest

three children in 2007. This is followed by the narratives of the eldest mother of this study,

eighty-year-old Habiba, who recently migrated to the United States to join her elder son’s family.

Finally, the last chapter of this series focuses on the youngest storyteller, twenty-seven-year-old

Tahera. Subsequently, the main themes and concepts which run through the mentioned chapters will be discussed in discussion section in the concluding chapter. As the stories and discussion will reveal, this study engages with three themes of motherwork — agency, home, and identity

— which emerge organically from the collected narratives.

14 Narratives of Motherwork, Agency, and Resilience: An Oral History of Afghan Immigrant Mothers in the Pacific Northwest

Background

Like an enervated man Gasping for air Like a wounded bird Searching for remedy Like a guilty conscience Seeking some virtue Like a hungry child Craving some sustenance Like a thirsty creature Yearning for some water I want some serenity I need some harmony I am waiting for some tranquility Come please Come Peace Peace Peace —from “Peace” by Fatana Jahangir Ahrary (1962)

Before proceeding with the findings of this study, I will first provide a summarized background of the contemporary history of war and conflict in Afghanistan and the status of

ethnic minority of Hazaras people and women in particular within this context. Learning this

background is particularly essential to realize the current diasporic experience of these women in

the United States, as their displacement results from political instability and armed conflict. The

role of outside powers, such as the United States, alongside the chaos of internal warfare is undeniable, as Nazif M. Shahrani asserts (2002: 716). The strategic location of Afghanistan within the wider geopolitical landscape of the Middle East has led to military interventions throughout the country’s history. Such conditions have left Afghanistan and its people not only with debris of war, both literal and psychological, but also with collateral economic, social, and cultural devastation (Nojumi, 2016). 15 Narratives of Motherwork, Agency, and Resilience: An Oral History of Afghan Immigrant Mothers in the Pacific Northwest

Figures I and II: Regional Location of Afghanistan and Hazarajat Region

In general, Afghan women experienced three phases of armed conflicts starting with

Soviet invasion (the former USSR army) in 1979 and the ‘Afghan resistance’ lasting until 1992

(Khattak, 2002). The lives of women in Hazarajat region, like those residing in other rural areas

during this period, felt the dramatic effects of conflict since more conservative parts of the

country tended to show more resistance compared to the urban areas (Khattak, 2002). From 1978

to 1990, Hazaras resisted against the invading Soviet army and the oppressive regime in Kabul in

two phases that resulted in large-scale massacre, persecution, and displacement (Mousavi 1998:

179-183). Hazara women experienced the second phase of armed conflict and instability when the Mujahedin controlled the area from 1992 to 1996, coinciding with the start of civil war. The ensuing tribal conflict imposed additional pressure on Hazara people during this period. The third phase started with the emergence of the Taliban in 1996. Backed by foreign powers, the

Taliban’s reign adversely affected women irrespective of their ethnicity, class, or religious sect

(Khattak, 2002). Finally, the failed U.S intervention in 2001 that aimed to eliminate the Taliban led to further displacement of women and children who were fleeing bombing zones and the

general militarized, high-security condition in the country. In the first few months of the U.S. 16 Narratives of Motherwork, Agency, and Resilience: An Oral History of Afghan Immigrant Mothers in the Pacific Northwest

occupation an estimated 4,000 people were killed and 2.2 million Afghans were internally

displaced (Rostami Povey and Poya 2007: 40).

By the culmination of the final phase of armed conflict and violence, women in

Afghanistan faced the dire consequences of prolonged instability and war. More than two

decades of foreign military intervention and tribal warfare resulted in an estimated 1.7 million

human casualties (Prasad 2008: 65). As with most contexts of warfare, women and children bore

a disproportionate share of the devastation. Internally-displaced women who lost their husbands, families, and homes came to reside in temporary refugee settlements. Due to their “unprotected”

status, these women faced increased stigma and were often segregated from other refugees

(Rostami Povey and Poya 2007: 27). Maternal and infant health indicators demonstrate the staggering effects of protracted conflict and oppression. Afghanistan is one of only three

countries outside of Sub-Saharan Africa with the highest rates of maternal mortality at 356 per

100,000 live births (Mumtaz, et al. 2019: 2). According to UNICEF’s global mothers’ index, the country currently ranks 152 out of 179 countries (Save the Children 2015: 61). A 2018 Gallup

survey found that Afghans ranked their own state of well-being lower than any other population worldwide, reporting an average rating of 2.7 on a scale from 0 to 10, where 10 represents the

best life possible (Crabtree, 2018). As the UN’s Deputy Secretary-General, Amina Mohammed,

remarked in 2019, “Afghan women have paid a high price” over four decades of conflict (UN

Security Council 2019). Yet, despite these conditions, women, particularly mothers, continue to exert agency to protect and provide for their families. In spite of dominant Western narratives that characterize Afghan females as passive “victims” of both gender oppression and the violence of war, women, living in-country and abroad, have been critical actors in the process of post-conflict reconstruction and brokering peace. 17 Narratives of Motherwork, Agency, and Resilience: An Oral History of Afghan Immigrant Mothers in the Pacific Northwest

Who are Hazaras? As mentioned, the informants of this oral history project belong to the Hazara ethnicity,

the third largest of the ethnic groups after Pashtun and Tajik. The Hazaras mainly reside in a

mountainous region in the central highlands of Afghanistan, known as ‘Hazarajat’—one of the

most mono-ethnic areas in the country. Research suggests that Hazaras draw their lineage from invading Mongol warriors in the 13th century (Samreen 2009-2010: 821). Despite their long history in this region, in recent years many Hazaras have moved to major cities like Kabul,

Mazar, and Herat, as a result of Taliban persecution (Rostami-Povey 2012). The distinctiveness of the Hazara people lies in being Shi’a (their religious status in relation to Sunni majority), being Hazara (their ethnicity), and their status as a disported minority (being from a poor mountainous region), as Alessandro Monsutti argues (2005: 245). These ethnic, geographic, and religious distinctions have served as the root causes of discriminations against them. Under

Taliban rule, Hazaras, as well as Uzbeks and Tajiks, became the targets for kidnappings and mass executions. Due to this persecution, many Hazara fled to neighboring countries like Iran during the Taliban’s reign (Tober 2007: 267). For Hazara women, who are the subjects of this study, this identity-based discrimination was compounded due to the fact that their gender and rights have historically been among the most politicized issues and have been central to political debates and struggles in the country (Moghadam, 2002: 19).

The current configuration of ethnic identities in Afghanistan has been constructed and

reconstructed throughout the history as the consequence of localized conflict, as well as the

foreign colonial and imperialist interventions that remain ongoing (Rostami-Povey, 2012).

Additionally, the ethnicized policies by the central regimes reinforced the segregation and

oppression of this ethnic minority group (Monsutti, 2005). Since the dictatorial role of Abdul 18 Narratives of Motherwork, Agency, and Resilience: An Oral History of Afghan Immigrant Mothers in the Pacific Northwest

Rahman Khan (1880-1901), who atrociously enslaved and massacred the Hazaras through a series of campaigns marked by a sectarian, the rights of this ethnic group have systematically been violated (Monsutti, 2003). Furthermore, throughout the contemporary history, Hazaras have undergone an unprecedented suppression, systematic discrimination, and intimidation as second- class citizens and deprived from all sorts of legal rights and protection, as Sayed Askar Musavi, a

contemporary Hazara scholar (1998:160) noted.

Mousavi further reveals that until 1970s, killing of Hazaras was declared by Sunni

Pashtun extremist clerics as an accepted and sanctified means of securing a place in the Heaven

(162); they have been subject to the isolationist policies of successive regimes that left them with economic, social, and cultural under-development. Hazaras who were mostly small-land owning peasants, resorted to the ancient forms of economy through exchange system and based on their daily subsistence given the lack of access to cities, transportations or road networks (Mousavi,

1998). As mentioned, due to political upheaval and targeted persecution, many Hazaras were forced to leave their lands and crossed the border to take refuge in Iran and Pakistan, the neighboring countries. However, thanks to their dynamism, they could find solutions to cope with these oppressions and limitations by drawing on the social structures and maintaining solid social ties (Monsutti, 2005: 245).

To the present time, Hazaras are exposed to fear of ethnic and sectarian violence despite

the continued presence of the U.S army and the international forces. The operation of Taliban

and militias still threaten Hazara people in Ghazni—the homeland of the informants of this

study—and the rest of Hazarajat due to the negligence of Afghan government. Just recently in

2018, thousands of Hazara people fled Jaghori and Malistan districts in Ghazni province and

made the hazardous journey through to Kabul, the capital, and Ghazni city following a heavily 19 Narratives of Motherwork, Agency, and Resilience: An Oral History of Afghan Immigrant Mothers in the Pacific Northwest militant attacks by Taliban who seized large areas of the two districts (United Nations, 2018). As of this writing, the US announced a peace agreement with Taliban leadership and plans to remove 13,000 troops (US Department of State, 2020). However, the strength of this agreement remains to be seen, as well as Afghan state’s investment in long-term reconciliation and restoration efforts.

Afghan Women Representation: “Passive Sensational Victims”

As Ahmed-Ghosh agues, women’s bodies and lives have historically been seen as national markers to define status and the legitimacy of the nation-state. This argument is specifically visible in the case of Muslim women and Afghan women in particular, whose lives are constantly being constructed to justify military occupation through the discourse of freedom, democracy, and human rights. (2015: 2). During the U.S invasion, women in Afghanistan have played a hugely symbolic role universally. After the September 11 event in particular, Afghan women have widely been spoken for and represented by the Western discourse as sensational passive victim of the cultural practices and repressive religion (Moghadam, 2003; Ross-Sheriff,

2006). Such discourses and imagery have become what Patricia Hill Collins refers to as

“controlling images” of Afghan women, as well as Muslim and ‘Third World’ women more generally. As Hill Collins argues, these historically-embedded scripts are far more influential than superficial stereotypes; when wielded by those in power they reinforce structural oppression

(2000: 69-70).

The role of media should not be undermined in these depictions that reinforce the binary oppositions in which the non-west, Muslim, ‘Third World’ is represented as backward, uncivilized, and barbaric. These depictions are juxtaposed by the international communities and 20 Narratives of Motherwork, Agency, and Resilience: An Oral History of Afghan Immigrant Mothers in the Pacific Northwest

humanitarian agencies represented as the Western, white, and civilized “rescuers” of victimized,

non-western women. Such embedded scripts are the result not only of colonialism’s discursive

and knowledge-building legacies, but also of industrial practices that aim to produce

contemporary global media encouraging co-optation of feminist approaches and support in

attacking extremist cultural and religious institutions such as Islamic fundamentals and Taliban

in Afghanistan (Bacchetta et al., 2002). This framing by mainstream media in regard with the

war on terror in Afghanistan –– which was based on the President George W. Bush’s rhetorically

constructed ‘crises’ of terrorism –– had a profound role in shaping public perceptions of the facts

and events associated with the protracted conflict (Kuypers, 2006).

As Abu-Lughod notes, the historical record is overwhelmed with similar justifications,

including in the Middle East and the North Africa, that demonstrate a “colonial feminism” at work and a selective concern about the plight of Muslim women that merely focus on the veil as sign of oppression (2002: 784). She defines war in terrorism as “projects of saving” other women that depends on and reinforces a sense of superiority by Western that entails violence, a form of arrogance that deserved to be challenged (2002: 789). This selective representation, based on the cooptation of the discourses of Western superiority within the ideology of feminism, extracts the experiences of Muslim women from the political and historical context of oppression and occupation and place them exclusively in a cultural context in which women are victims of patriarchal practices (Abdulhadi et al. 2011).

As Chandra Talpade Mohanty argues, through the Western imperialist gaze, Afghan and

other so-called “Third World women” are reduced to a homogenous category that essentializes their experiences and erases their resistance (1984: 352). Afghan women in particular have often been held up as objects upon which Western feminists project a counter-image of extreme gender 21 Narratives of Motherwork, Agency, and Resilience: An Oral History of Afghan Immigrant Mothers in the Pacific Northwest

and sexual repression with which they construct their own identity as liberated and progressive

(Fernandes 2017: 664). This dynamic of power often translates into saviorism and imperialism in

the name of “saving brown women from brown men” (Spivak 1988: 297). Perhaps most

famously, US First Lady, Laura Bush, addressed the plight of Afghan women in a 2001 radio

address. Her speech and a full investigatory report that followed characterized Afghan women as

passive victims within the ‘war on terror’ that the US needed to rescue and protect. Speaking

from a US-based feminist standpoint, Bush remarked that “because of our recent military gains

in much of Afghanistan, women are no longer imprisoned in their homes; they can listen to

music and teach their daughters without fear of punishment... the brutal oppression of women is a central goal of the terrorist” and that “the fight against terrorism is also a fight for the rights and dignity of women” (Kumar 2012: 45). Bahramitash defines such simplistic and generalized

ways in which criticism of the status of Muslim women under culture and religion are formulated

as a campaign to rescue the ‘uncivilized’ world from ‘evil’––on the basis of a ‘feminist’ cause––

'feminist Orientalism' that uses the rhetoric of women’s rights as an excuse to legitimate the

West’s colonial presence in Muslim countries (2005: 221).

As an effect of Bush’s saviorist campaign and media coverage hyper-focused on displaced and veiled women, Afghan women became generalized as the archetypes of gendered oppression under Islam (Berry 2003: 153). While the last two decades of conflict brought increased gender-

based repression and violence — particularly under Taliban rule from 1996-2001— Afghan

women were far from passive “victims.” Rather, they employed a range of resistance and

survival strategies within their communities at home, in temporary refugee sites, and abroad in

diaspora. Some of those survival tactics traveled with women as they relocated and made new

homes across the world in the Afghan diaspora. 22 Narratives of Motherwork, Agency, and Resilience: An Oral History of Afghan Immigrant Mothers in the Pacific Northwest

The U.S invasion was not about democracy and Afghan women’s liberation, as they are

struggling with terrorism and death even on a scale greater than the September 11th terrorist

attack in 2001. Rostami-Povey argues that 9/11 was in fact the “motivating force” for

establishing a hegemonic alliance aimed to rationalize a system of government in Afghanistan to

facilitate the West’s control of Central Asia and the Middle East––a desire that is rooted in the

failure of neoliberalism and the emergence of neoconservatism (2007: 44-45). Undoubtedly, militarism, war, and civil unrest target and affect civilians, particularly women and children as

the most vulnerable groups. The US-led military invasions and its continuing military presence

in Afghanistan resulted in disastrous civilian causalities, massive destruction of houses, and

displacement of 2.2 million people. After more than a decade, powerful forces such as

International Security Assistance force (ISAF), United States, and NATO have failed to bring

about peace and security as more civilians have recently been killed in suicide-bombings and

vicious civil unrest (Rostami-Povey & Poya, 2007: 40-42).

The reality of women’s lives in Afghanistan beyond the dominant narrative is that they

are still facing precarious conditions of extreme poverty, violence, exclusion, epidemic diseases, and maternal mortality in daily basis. Since the U.S invasion, the women’s rights issues have been manipulated and depoliticized by both government and the international financed

institutions who are competing with each other for gender mainstreaming although nobody is

responsible for putting women’s interests and experiences of injustice on the political agenda, as

Rostami Povey and Poya (2007:138) argue. Hence, the current situation of Afghan women in the country is not only explained by the internal oppression of hyper-patriarchy, but also––even to a great extent––by the long history of colonial invasion, constant regional and civil conflicts started with Soviet Union occupation in late 1970s, savage civil war in 1980s, emergence of the 23 Narratives of Motherwork, Agency, and Resilience: An Oral History of Afghan Immigrant Mothers in the Pacific Northwest

oppressive regime of Taliban in 1990s backed by foreign powers, the military invasion of the

U.S army in 2001, followed by the coalition of over forty countries, including all NATO

members (Moghadam, 2003).

Migration Waves in Afghanistan

During the last decades of conflict and war, Afghanistan has witnessed massive displacement (see Appendix I). An estimated one in two Afghans have had at least one, sometimes multiple, displacement experiences and most families have both friends and relatives living abroad. As Schmeidl contends, these realities of displacement have created a “culture of migration” in Afghan society (2019). However, migratory experiences and patterns have been diverse based on the socio-economic backgrounds of people who left the country for different reasons in different periods of time (Fischer, 2016). While for some Afghans, migration was based on pull factors entailing an element of choice, for the other it was based on the push factors which involves cohesion (Ahmad-ghosh, 2015). Afghan refugees today represent one of the world’s largest protracted refugee population (United Nations, 2018). According to 2019

Amnesty International report, there are more than 2.6 million refugees registered throughout the world from Afghanistan, ranking second only to Syria (2019).

The first wave of migration occurred with the Soviet invasion in December 1979,

followed by second wave in 1992 when Mujahideen got into power with the assistance of the

USA (Appendix I). Apart from the minority groups of elites including Afghan political and

merchants who moved to Western countries (Europe, USA, Canada, and Australia), majority of

Afghan during this period experienced displacements either within the borders of Afghanistan or

forced immigration to Iran, Pakistan, and the neighboring countries (Dupree 2004; Ahmed- 24 Narratives of Motherwork, Agency, and Resilience: An Oral History of Afghan Immigrant Mothers in the Pacific Northwest

Ghosh 2015; Hanifi 2000). The third wave of migration occurred in 1996 when the country was ruled by the brutal group of Taliban. Eventually, the fourth wave of migration initiated in

October 2001 following the US bombing the country in response to the terrorist attacks of

September 11, 2001 (Ahmed-Ghosh 2015). Nonetheless, the migration of Afghans continues even despite the presence of the foreign occupying forces whose stated mission was to usher in democratic rule and peace. In the absence of these realities, the alarming and widespread insecurity across the country still pushes many Afghan families to flee.

The four women in this study, immigrated to the U.S recently through the Special

Immigrant Visa scheme, known as SIV. According to the Department of State (n.d), Special

Immigrant Visa (SIVs) is issued by the Department of State and grants those Afghan nationals who meet certain requirements, including being employed for a minimum of two years on behalf of the U.S. government or the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan.

This program that allocated a total of 14,500 visas since December 2014, mainly benefits the

Afghans working as translators and interpreters serving the US armed forces and personnel.

More importantly, performing activities in hazardous situations is the key component of SIVs’ requirement, as “[a]pplicants must also have experienced or be experiencing an ongoing serious threat as a consequence of their employment” (U.S. Department of States n.d.). The spouses of the women in this study were part of this large category who were granted SIVs to immigrate to the United States due to the hazardous nature of their assignment with the U.S and ISAF forces as interpreters. Recently, bureaucratic backlogs and travel restrictions have delayed SIV-eligible

Afghans in acquiring the visa and made it difficult to bring minor children to the United States with them (Carlson 2020 and Howe 2020).

25 Narratives of Motherwork, Agency, and Resilience: An Oral History of Afghan Immigrant Mothers in the Pacific Northwest

Methodology

“It's wrong what they say about the past, I've learned, about how you can bury it. Because the past claws its way out.” ― Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner (2003)

This chapter addresses the research methodology for this study. In addition to the research approach, the ethical consideration and my positionality in relation to the subjects are discussed in-depth in this section. This thesis is based on oral history approach with a small sample of

Afghan immigrant mothers living in a small city in the Pacific Northwest in an attempt to interrogate particularity of their maternal practices by taking into account their lived experience.

Since this inquiry aimed to encompass these women’s experience from a life course perspective, they were encouraged to reflect upon their personal experiences throughout their lives to unfold their continuities within the systems of oppression. The distinctive feature of oral history employed in this study, is the subjects’ account of details and nuances of their everyday life, their thoughts, and their feelings, rather than generalizations about these communities in traditional large-scale inquiries (Cvetkovich, 2011: 93).

Since the concepts of motherwork was the core of this study, my preliminary inquiry into the maternal experience of the informants was predicated upon following these questions: How these women experience motherhood in a cultural and socially different environment?; how do they negotiate their identity and position as Afghan mothers in the new context?; and, how they do practice motherwork strategies to protect themselves and their children given the inhospitable condition in the host country? However, new sites of inquiry emerged throughout this oral history project as the women’s accumulated narratives yielded insights into their lived experiences and perspectives beyond the diaspora and, therefore, beyond my primary assumptions. 26 Narratives of Motherwork, Agency, and Resilience: An Oral History of Afghan Immigrant Mothers in the Pacific Northwest

Oral History as Method

Women’s oral history, as Sherna Gluck (1997:5) argues, is a 'feminist encounter —

regardless of the interviewee’s affirmation of being a feminist — as it seeks to validate women’s

experiences and the development of a continuity which has been denied in traditional historical accounts. In her inquiry into the feminist nature of oral history, Susan Geiger (1990), made a similar argument. Although oral histories are not inherently feminist per se, Geiger asserts that it can be accounted as a 'feminist methodology' if the objective and systematized use are feminist.

She further remarks that a feminist objectives are characterized by: emphasizing understanding rather than controlling; generating the problematic from the study of women as embodying and creating historically and situationally specific realities; acknowledging women’s subjective interpretation of their identities and experiences central to revealing truths; and opposing generalization (1990: 170). Moreover, the power of feminist oral history, as Srigley, Zembrzycki and Iacovetta assert, is emancipating from the constrains through telling stories within

'decolonized feminist perspective' that is deeply contextual and attentive to varied stories

(2018:15).

In discussion of the nature of the approach adopted in this study of marginalized subjects, I

draw upon the notion of considering oral history as “fragments”—those individual accounts of

the past that do not fit in with the mainstream narrative; the term, originating from postcolonial studies, refers to perspectives of marginal communities that challenge the dominant (Loh, Koh &

Dobbs, 2013: 1). In this sense, the fragment—which is conceptualized as "a trace of a lost history" and a "fracture" within the dominant narrative—is of great significance in contesting the mainstream account (2013:4). Hence, these individualized oral histories are complimentary while challenging the mainstream narrative. 27 Narratives of Motherwork, Agency, and Resilience: An Oral History of Afghan Immigrant Mothers in the Pacific Northwest

Furthermore, though a rich and elaborated account of individual memories and narratives,

oral history make it possible to reveals the relation between personal histories and geopolitical

histories, and enable us to explore the connection between everyday life and events (Cvetkovich,

2011: 92). Exploring the construction of women’s historical memories, why and how they explain, rationalize and make sense of their past shed light into the social and material framework within which they operated, the perceived choices and cultural patterns they faced, and the complex relationship between individual consciousness and culture (Sangster, 1994: 6).

Additionally, the structural and ideological relations such as race, gender, ethnicity, class—

which shape people’s recollection and the construction of memories—should be taken into

account in collecting and analyzing these narratives (Sangster, 1994: 7).

A significant point to be considered in this approach is contextualizing oral history to

reveal women’s lived experiences. To this end, the researcher needs to scrutinize the dominant

ideologies which shaped their lives as Sangster (1994) suggests. She further points out that

listening to women’s narratives, in turn, help us to explore how they perceived, negotiated, and

challenged these dominant ideologies (1994:10). Likewise, in their reflection on the use of oral

history in feminist researches, Kathryn Anderson and Dana C. Jack (1991) noted that women’s

discussion of their lives often combines two conflicting perspectives: one framed in conventions

and values that reflects the dominant position in the culture, and the other informed by

immediate realities of their personal lives—which may not fit the former one. They also notes

that women, who try to describe their lives in familiar terms, may mute their thoughts and

feelings. For this reason, consideration of both the hegemonic and muted facets and

understanding the relationship between them are crucial to assure accurate listening to the

informants’ perspectives (1991: 11). Hence, uncovering these muted thoughts and perspectives is 28 Narratives of Motherwork, Agency, and Resilience: An Oral History of Afghan Immigrant Mothers in the Pacific Northwest critical to oral history approach which aims to challenge distortions of facts by the dominant narratives and conventional expectations which reduce the past to a 'homogenous set of experiences' (Loh, Koh & Dobbs 2013: 4).

Before proceeding with the next section, it should be noted that the oral history of this small sample of participants, though is representative of many, is not essentially representative of larger population of women’s narratives. Afghan women are not a hegemonic group since their lived experiences profoundly differ in relation to other factors such as status, class, and ethnicity

(Deepali, 2010). Rostami Povey also made a similar statement while emphasizing on ethnicity, as one of the most important elements which determines Afghan women’s life experiences. She asserts that ethnicity in Afghanistan—which is defined by many factors such as language, sect, descent, region, and profession—is central to understanding of gender, agency, and identity of women; besides, women’s identity are directly linked to socio-economic and political aspects of their lives (2012:147).

In-depth Interviews

The oral history interview process is a shift in methodology from data gathering, where the focus is on the right questions, to interaction, where the research is centered on the process and the dynamic unfolding of the informant’s perspectives (Anderson et al: 1991:23). Thanks to the interactive nature of the interview, the researcher can uncover the subject’s silenced perspectives—and even their non-verbal cues such as laughter, pauses, and sighing—through asking the interviewee’s clarification to ensure valuable information beyond the conventional answers (Anderson et al: 1991:23).

The findings of this study were largely sought from qualitative intensive interviews with this small sample of participants who are mothers of different age groups. In-depth interviewing 29 Narratives of Motherwork, Agency, and Resilience: An Oral History of Afghan Immigrant Mothers in the Pacific Northwest

approach—which seeks to achieve the active involvement of the subject—offers rich insights

into the women’s views of realities and facilitates discovery, description, and uncovering the

subjugated knowledge (Reinharz & Davidman, 1992; Hesse-Biber 2014). Another convenience

of this method, particularly for the female researcher, is the feminine nature of in-depth

interviewing as women are mostly socialized to develop the skills in “traditional feminine role”–

– “active, restive, open, and understanding”––to recognize and respond the others’ feelings while

being capable of talking about the sensitive issues without threatening the participants (Reinharz

& Davidian 1992: 20). This was particularly salient in interviewing Afghan women as they are

more willing to talk to a female interviewer who share the same understanding and experiences.

Similarly, the informants of this study seemed to be more encouraged to contribute to the

conversation as they ignored my primary position and treated me as person of same gender and cultural identity who is comforting.

Thanks to the already established rapport and trust prior to commence of the project, the distance and tension between me, as researcher, and these women, as researched, was notably minimized. Nevertheless, I predicted some level of power dynamic to be constantly negotiated and constructed in interview process. In order to balance the power differences, I applied the required strategies including self-disclosure––by sharing my own experience, expressing my feelings, or answering to the interviewees’ questions. It helped me to have more neutral dialogue with the subjects while facilitating their self-exploration. The other advantage of applying such strategy is that the feedback received from the participants in response to disclosure of the researcher’s knowledge and experience, enables the researcher to continuously correct the interview process to gain more meaningful information (Reinharz & Davidian, 1992).

Interview Process 30 Narratives of Motherwork, Agency, and Resilience: An Oral History of Afghan Immigrant Mothers in the Pacific Northwest

I found the participants very accommodating and responsible to contribute to the

objectives of this study. I was also highly privileged with a great amount of thoughtfulness as

they openly provided me with their hidden narratives and thoughts that have long been

unspoken. These women would generously accommodate me at their homes and did not neglect

any opportunities through which they could facilitate the process of data gathering. Such

cooperative participation in the research and the informants’ flexibility provided me with the

opportunity to conduct the interviews in verity of settings that was convenient for both sides.

What makes oral history interview distinctive from the traditional interviews is the variability of

recollecting styles adopted by the informants that requires the interviewer to respond to each

individually and sensitively (Gluck, 1977: 9). Likewise, recollecting style of the informants of

this study varied—driven from their specific life experiences—that consequently resulted in

different interview processes. As Gwendolyn Etter-Lewis argues, the categorizing of marginalized women’s narration style allows the researcher to “read between the lines”, where deep-seated feelings are hidden and disguised because the speech patterns inherent in oral narrative can reveal status, interpersonal relationships, perceptions of language, self, and the world (1991: 45-47).

Regardless of the informants’ style of narrative construction, however, I attempted to maintain a conversional flaw throughout recollecting process through low-structured interviews to inspire a more, in Sherna Gluck’s term, “ quasi-monologue” on the part the informants, stimulated by understanding comments and intelligent questions to help them to structure their narrative (1977: 9). These dialogue-like interviews, which were inspiring conversional flaw, entailed probing to seek for elaboration of the subjects’ assertions, thoughts, and perspectives to unpack the meaning behind any unclear points and to 'dive deeper' into specific topic (Hesse- 31 Narratives of Motherwork, Agency, and Resilience: An Oral History of Afghan Immigrant Mothers in the Pacific Northwest

Biber 2014:197). This conversational style embedded in narrative accounts of specific events, in particular, functions as a buffer to screen out uncomfortable emotions related to painful life experiences, as Gwendolyn Etter-Lewis observed in her inquiry into black women’s oral history

(1991: 47).

Another important point to be considered over the course of interview was listening, as the very active process that is definitely critical to the oral narrative process, as Martha Norkunas

(2011: 63) emphasized in “Teaching to listen” concerning the oral history approach. Listening attentively throughout interviewing process not only fostered a more genuine interaction with the narrators through establishment of an atmosphere of respect and "equality of self” as Norkunas suggests (2011:64), it was particularly deemed essential in interviewing the women of senior age in this study who needed more time and space to reveal her feelings, viewpoints, and personal experiences from a life course perspective that were critical to my investigation.

Observation

In addition to interviews, I made observations in variety of settings raging from the private realm of the informants' household, where I met them frequently, to public sphere through participating in different cultural and religious events and ceremonies. For instance, I had the privilege of traveling with their families to the nearby cities and neighborhoods, where the informants were interacting with other Afghan diaspora and Muslims from other backgrounds in events such as Eid-al-Fitr, Eid al-Adha, and Ashura. To this end, my role essentially turned to a ‘participant observer’ who observes and records targeted aspects of life around her (Bernard, 2006). The aim of such fieldwork was to elicit the women’ day-to-day experiences of navigating life in diaspora with a specific focus on their maternal practices.

Participant observation as a method aims to foster holistic understanding of the context and 32 Narratives of Motherwork, Agency, and Resilience: An Oral History of Afghan Immigrant Mothers in the Pacific Northwest

phenomenon under study, and enhances the quality of data obtained as well as interpretation of

data. Additionally, the knowledge gained from descriptive research questions through this

method encourages building theories, and test the hypotheses grounded on-the-scene observation

(DeWalt and DeWalt 2002: 93).

Oral History Data Analysis

All interviews were conducted in Dari, the informants’ native language. My fluency and

literacy in Dari significantly facilitated an effective communication with the participants. The

interviews were digitally recorded and each audio recorded interviews were separately

transcribed verbatim thereafter. Additionally, the main points that were raised over the course of

interviews as well as observations were jotted down in English for easier reflection. Although

transcription of the whole conversations along with the non-verbal elements was a time

consuming process, I found it effective to get involved with the key points of the narratives by

constant consulting with the detailed transcripts over the time.

In analysis of the narratives gained from interviews, an inductive approach was employed

in order to identify the main subjective themes and patterns. In doing so, the interviews were

reviewed first individually, and then collectively to highlight the important quotes, points of

views, stories, and to discover the similarities and/ or disparities. In addition, during rereading of

the transcriptions, the nonverbal communications such as repetitions, tone of voice, emotional

cues were reviewed through listening to the audio-recorded files to supplement the verbal communication. This is particularly needed in this study of subordinate groups who are not able to clearly articulate their feelings which may be expressed in non-verbal way (Reinhard &

Davidman, 1992). In order to further analyze the narratives, along with the core maternal theoretical framework, this study drew on relevant areas of theories and literature concerning 33 Narratives of Motherwork, Agency, and Resilience: An Oral History of Afghan Immigrant Mothers in the Pacific Northwest racial ethnic women in diaspora from an intersectional, matricentric feminist perspective to reflect on particularity of Afghan immigrant mothers’ experiences which were explored in this project.

Ethical Consideration

The ethics issue remained a top priority throughout this study to protect dignity and privacy of the informants. To comply with ethical considerations, before commencing the study, the participants were informed of the project’s purpose, its process, and understanding their rights to withdraw from the study at any point. They were further provided with consent forms to sign—the content of which was elaborated to them in Dari. Additionally, to protect the confidentiality and anonymity, pseudonyms were used. Permission to record the interview was also obtained from the informants before beginning of each interview process. Also, to minimize any further risks associated with confidentiality, all recorded materials will be erased after successful completion of this study.

Study Author Positionality

During the research process, the increasing trust and rapport with the informants led us to perpetuate the relationship. The frequent visits of them in their homes and participating in shared cultural and religious events not only evoked a sense of community, there were many times when

I felt to be an absolute insider who was treated like a member of the informants’ families.

Nonetheless, I remained mindful of my standpoints throughout the study. In particular, I was aware that the narratives developed during such qualitative study were inevitably impacted by my positionality as researcher in relation to the researched. I believe that multiple facets of my identity (Afghan Hazara woman and feminist researcher) was an asset which provided me with intimate knowledge thanks to my prior understanding of the researched context’s culture, 34 Narratives of Motherwork, Agency, and Resilience: An Oral History of Afghan Immigrant Mothers in the Pacific Northwest

conventions, and assumptions, along with some shared personal experiences. Such aspects of the

researcher’s self and identity, which is aligned or shared with the researched, is defined as

'insider' positionality (Chavez 2008: 475). Hill Collins argues that ‘insiders' are enabled to gain

more nuanced understanding of the group because they have undergone similar experiences,

possess a common history, and share taken-as-granted-knowledge that characterizes “thinking as

usual” (1986: 26).

However, there are some counter-arguments to the notion that being insider can foster

better access to more accurate knowledge. Gill Valentine asserts that the shared commonalities, which are assumed as privilege, are sometimes undermines by other differences as the boundary between the researcher and the research is highly dynamic and unstable (2002: 118-119). She further maintains that a fixed 'dualisms' of insider/ outsiders does not led to a complex and multi- faceted identities and experiences of researchers because the relational character of identity within the complex and uncertain process of research is constantly produced through a particular

'performance of self' in interaction (2002:120). Greene (2014) also made a similar assertion that the boundaries of insider/ outsider is not lucid and having commonalities does not necessarily indicate one’s membership in the researched community. Moreover, it is argued that sameness in some aspects of identity such as gender or race and the like does not essentially assure common experiences or interest; in other words, how gender works depends of the individual’s class and ethnicity/race; and similarly the functionality of ethnicity/race varies across different combination of class and gender, and so on (Sprague 2005: 76-77).

Despite the general commonalities in respect of my social identity (gender, race, and

national origin) with the informants, I acknowledge the differences and some level of detachment

from the informants in terms of their experiences. We shared a same understanding of Afghan 35 Narratives of Motherwork, Agency, and Resilience: An Oral History of Afghan Immigrant Mothers in the Pacific Northwest

culture, values, and norms which blurred the distance between us. Yet, I lacked shared

experienced of motherhood as all the informants were mother and I was not. Additionally, I did

not had their experiences of suffering and living in the context of conflict since my parents—

originally from Daykundi province of Hazarajat—fled the violence of war more than four

decades ago. As the second generation of migrants, I was born and raised in Tehran, the capital

city of Iran to a Hazara refugee family who are still living there. I left Iran and my family in

2012 and moved to Kabul, Afghanistan to work voluntarily. During those years, I was traveling between two countries. And more recently, I moved to the United State to pursue my higher education that entailed even more different experience of diaspora. Such shifts of locality and status have inevitably contributed to my fluid identity and therefore, the constant process of negotiation across different times and spaces—which both resonate with and differ from the informants’ negotiation of their identity and their experience of living in diasporic spaces.

While acknowledging the constrains concerning the shared understanding in relation to some

aspects of the informants’ lived experiences, I believe that my insider positionality, to a great

extent, reduced the social distance and equipped me to comprehend the narratives’ nuances in a

way that an outsider researcher was not able to grasp. Moreover, such prior knowledge and

familiarity with the context empowered me in understanding and analysis of the cognitive and

emotional precepts of the subjects, and possessing more profound knowledge of the historical

and practical happenings of the field which is associated to insider positionality, as Chaves

asserts (2008: 481).

Nevertheless, I was aware of the ethical and methodological consequences of my status

as insider—associated with my pre-existing theoretical and cultural perspectives—which might

have jeopardized the validity of the research’s ultimate findings. The main reason for this 36 Narratives of Motherwork, Agency, and Resilience: An Oral History of Afghan Immigrant Mothers in the Pacific Northwest occurrence is that such pre-existing familiarly may led to the 'subjective involvement' of the insider researchers—as deterrent to objective perception and analysis—which increases the risk of making subjective assumptions (Aguiler, 1981: 15). Hence, to avoid any projection of my own viewpoints onto the research informants and data analysis, I remained mindful to keep some distance from the familiar and 'unlearn' the seemingly natural ways of my own behavior and that of the researched, as Greene suggests (2014: 11).

37 Narratives of Motherwork, Agency, and Resilience: An Oral History of Afghan Immigrant Mothers in the Pacific Northwest

Narratives

I have been silent too long, but I never forget the melody, Since every moment I whisper the songs from my heart, Reminding myself of the day I will break this cage, Fly from this solitude and sing like a melancholic. I am not a weak poplar tree to be shaken by any wind. I am an Afghan woman. —from “in vain” by Nadia Anjuman Mina

It was 1 pm, Saturday. I was ready and dressed up in my Afghani clothing, waiting for Mina. She picked me up in front of my building almost two hours later than our primary plan, as we confirmed it the day before when she invited me to house. Both of us were excited to see each other after a long time. I used to visit them regularly—at least every weekend—but she was recently busier than before because of nursing her mother-in-law who was sick and just arrived in the U.S to join her son’s family. She was wearing long-length embroidered dress in light blue, an elegant white headscarf, and no makeup [maintaining traditional Afghan dressing standards with subtle assimilation to Western clothing style]. As she started the engine while saying the name of ‘Allah’, I shortened my greeting so that she can be focused on driving. However, she was a confident driver and started asking about things with school and my family back home. When we reached her house, I found her two daughters very excited. They came to me by the door to shake hands and greeted me in Dari with a Hazaragi accent—they could barely speak it though. Their older brother sat playing game on his iPad appeared to be more introverted than his sisters. After exchanging greetings with their father, Mina called me to living room where the newly-arrived grandmother was sitting on the sofa. Then she left us to prepare lunch and apologized for not being able to join us. As we sat and talked, I could still hear her cooking and talking to her granddaughter who was asking for her help with homework. The brief description above details a visit to Mina’s house, one of the main participants

of this study. She is a thirty-nine-year-old mother of two daughters and a son. They moved to the

United States in 2009 through Special Immigrant Visas program for Afghans, the details of which was explained in the introductory chapter. Her husband gained employment as an interpreter by U.S. forces and ISAF (International Security Assistance Force) in Afghanistan.

The precarious nature of his job on military-based camps in high-risk provinces, where Taliban

and other opponents actively engaged in military operations, urged the family to move to the 38 Narratives of Motherwork, Agency, and Resilience: An Oral History of Afghan Immigrant Mothers in the Pacific Northwest

United States. From my first impression of her when we met at the Persian New Year event, I

found Mina a friendly, energetic, and generous-spirited woman. Thanks to the established

rapport at the very beginning, months before the start of the project, the family invited me to

their home where I would spend most of the weekends. As I mentioned earlier, this extension of

hospitality is a common practice that is highly valued in Afghan culture (Emadi, 2005; Najib &

Afroz, 2013). Yet, Mina and the rest of the informants were the only Afghan families in the town

with whom I maintained a friendly relationship that help me interacting with them in variety of

settings over the life of this research. My recollections of Mina’s home and family open up a

window into the intimate space where her story unfolds. These details, the rhythms, and textures

of her everyday life, provide an entryway into her unique experience of “doing home” in

diasporic context. As Bowlby et al. describe, the process of “doing home” categorizes the

collective everyday gendered experiences of domestic tasks, caregiving, and social relations that materialize in the home (1997: 346). By examining these facets of Mina’s life, I argue, we develop a sense, albeit through my own interpretation, of where she grounds her identity as a diasporic Afghan woman. Sharing the details of her home and family also asserts the distinctiveness of Mina’s story and counter reductive categorization of ‘Muslim women’ that have served to homogenize their experiences, particularly in the US and other Western contexts

(Abu-Lughod 2002: 783-784).

Mina was born in a traditional household in 1981 in the highlands of Jaghori District of

Ghazni province (see the map, Figure III). The district which lies in the southern fringes of

Hazarajat region has historically been inhabited by Hazara people. This region endured the

Soviet invasion beginning in 1979 that was followed by a savage civil war between the two opposing sides of Marxist-modernizing and Islamic-traditional in 1980s. With the increasing 39 Narratives of Motherwork, Agency, and Resilience: An Oral History of Afghan Immigrant Mothers in the Pacific Northwest

insecurity in the country, like thousands of Afghans, Mina’s family fled the country and took

refuge in Quetta, Pakistan. The family returned to Jaghori in 1992 when the county was

dominantly ruled by regime of Taliban who were specifically hostile toward women. As

Rosemarie Skaine (2009: 2) notes, the context for women in Afghanistan not only entails war,

impoverishment, geopolitical and regional power struggles, but also the entrenched

conservative cultural and religious norms which have mainly evolved during the gendered

apartheid regime of the Taliban and have enormously affected the social life of Afghan

women. Almost three decades of constant war and armed conflict have left Afghans with war-

torn social relations and structures, and a damaged social capital (Moser and Mcllwaine,

2001; Simpson, 1998). This journey through conflict, political turbulence, displacement, and

repression form an arc through which we can understand Mina’s experiences as a woman now

living in the Afghan diaspora. As Saba Kattak’s analysis of Afghan women refugee narratives reveals, forced migrations and dislocations forge multiple, sometimes competing representations of ‘home’ and ‘belonging’ (2002). Mina’s story speaks to these issues and localizes them in the Pacific Northwest of the United States.

40 Narratives of Motherwork, Agency, and Resilience: An Oral History of Afghan Immigrant Mothers in the Pacific Northwest

Figure III: Jaghori District location within Ghazni Province (Wikipedia, n.d)

Any talk with Mina about her life in Jaghori not only entailed the struggles she faced in her

youth and later as an adult woman, but also it led to her critical reflections on the harmful

conservative traditions and norms that constrained the fulfillment of her aspirations. The

imposed restrictions on women’s progress by the Taliban regime, coupled with the prevailing

confining gender norms established by dominant fundamentals’ mindsets confined women and girls to their houses. During their five-year rule from 1996 to 2001, girls were almost completely

banned from school and from working outside of home. Under this misogynous regime, women were rigorously denied their most basic civil rights, including mobility, education, employment, public participation, and even their very visibility, being forced into a restrictive dress code, burqa – a traditional full-body garment. “The face of a woman is a source of corruption for men who are not related to them,” a Taliban representative explained the edict to journalists (Amnesty

International 1997: n.p.). Women were forbidden to appear in public unless accompanied by a close male relative and any kind of disobedience would result in harsh punishment, usually carried out in public (Human Rights Watch, 2001).

I was known as a good daughter and honor of my family in the village; a good daughter who is always at home, learning cooking and cleaning, a good daughter who do not laugh loudly and is always silent in public. I barely left the house; any time I wanted to go to bazaar (market), I was accompanied by my older brother or my father. Despite the forced confinement of women and its accompanied isolation and depression,

Mina cultivated her talents inside home. She recalls how she built her basic literacy skills with

support of her father, one of the few educated men in the village who used to teach at a primary

school in their neighborhood prior to Taliban rule. In addition, Mina learned how to sew

traditional clothes and make Hazaregi handicrafts professionally. Gradually these hobbies 41 Narratives of Motherwork, Agency, and Resilience: An Oral History of Afghan Immigrant Mothers in the Pacific Northwest

transformed into her profession and provided a source of income with which she could contribute

to her family’s livelihood.

I was happy to support my family at those hard times, but I never felt happy for myself, regardless of how talented I was in tailoring and embroidery. I still regret those years of my youth spending in isolation and being deprived from formal education and the growing opportunities. I found Mina busy all the time as she had always work to do for her home and family.

Having long discussions with her was almost impossible. I could not either have all her concentration to interviews as in most of circumstances there was something urgent that required

her attention. Many times our talks were interrupted by her children, phone calls, and the like.

Having said that, to capture her narratives and perspectives as much as possible, I took advantage of every moments I found her free to talk in different settings. This often entailed us chatting

while she was cooking, baking, cleaning the house and sometimes while we shared a meal or

when she drove me home.

Mina speaks English quite well and her fluency gives her the confidence to negotiate the

public world. Upon her arrival, she actively worked to integrate herself into the local community.

Besides taking an English course, she continued working using her skills in tailoring for two

years to support her husband who was, at that time, a part-time university student. Later, she

found a job in an Arab restaurant near their home where she used to work long hours, seven days

a week. She recalls,

I encouraged Ali to study full-time because I was able to take care of everything. He couldn’t trust me at the beginning, but then I proved it! I used to work diligently all days although I was a mother of two toddler. I was literally moving between home, kindergarten, workplace, and English course. Ali was also supporting me with household works and children. It seems to be hard, right? But believe me, I was deeply satisfied and proud because I had freedom to prove myself, to do what I like for my family. Now I am happy of the results and more optimistic about the future of my children. 42 Narratives of Motherwork, Agency, and Resilience: An Oral History of Afghan Immigrant Mothers in the Pacific Northwest

Mothering for Afghan women is not just limited to their children, but also their elder

relatives and family members (Ahmed-Ghosh, 2015: 135). Mina is currently working full-time in

catering service a major clinical facility in the town. Besides her employment, she is undertaking

other responsibilities in the family including nursing her aging mother-in-law who is living with

them, as care of elders is expected in Afghan culture. Furthermore, as I observed, Mina’ everyday life concerns fell between two settings—USA and Afghanistan—in her multiple positions as mother, wife, daughter, and sister. In addition to taking on her responsibilities to her family in the United States, she demonstrated strong sense of commitment and obligation toward her extended family in Jaghori in terms of both material and emotional supports, regardless of the physical distance.

I am trying my best to take on my tasks and responsibilities toward my family here in the U.S. as well as my parents and my siblings in Jaghori. I feel empowered enough now to help my relatives in homeland both emotionally and financially. They need me as I need them. It is a mutual dependency. Moreover, sustaining connections between homeland and the new country by immigrant

women like Mina is an indication of her strong sense of belonging to the war-torn insecure

'home' she left behind and her desire to bring two settings in ‘one imagined space’ regardless of

the spatial distance (Ahmed, 2005: 99). Similarly, her untiring persistence to transmit Afghan

cultural heritage and values to the next generation demonstrates her desire to retain this linkage

to the homeland.

Maintaining mother language, as part of cultural identity, was one of main concerns of

Mina as she emphasized several times over the course of interviews. The children’s interaction

with Dari speakers in the small city they resided was though limited to the parents who were

both employed. Despite this shortage, Mina was very determined to invest time and energy as

much as she could to work on her children’s language proficiency in Dari. Over my visits on the 43 Narratives of Motherwork, Agency, and Resilience: An Oral History of Afghan Immigrant Mothers in the Pacific Northwest

weekends, I observed her diligence in teaching Dari to her children through a weekly-based

curriculum and homework that were developed by her husband. However, not all her children

were enthusiastic enough to learn except Nargis, the oldest daughter, who was eagerly trying to

keep her mother satisfied. Such determination of Afghan mothers in diaspora to maintain and

develop their children’s competency in their origin language resonates with the concept of linguistic motherwork, defined by Martínez and Mesinas (2019). In an inquiry into language socialization practices of Zapoteca mothers, they introduced the concept of linguistic motherwork to learn about these mothers’ perspectives on their language maintenance. They noted the importance of maintaining the origin language, as part of the familial and cultural heritage, to facilitate communication with their family and community in the U.S. and in the country of origin (2019). Similarly, Mina and her husband’s sense of obligation and accountability to teach Dari to their children indicates the significance of sustaining their national language as important part of their identity and cultural heritage. Nonetheless, raising a bilingual child is a tough experience for most of the immigrant working mothers like Mina who could not invest enough time with their children. In one circumstance, when I was spending an afternoon with the family, I saw her crying, being frustrated, criticizing her husband for his ignorance about the children’s weak performance in acquiring their mother tongue.

I feel deeply sad seeing my son and daughters just watching American TV programs, listening western songs, and talking English all the time. They are getting reluctant to watch Dari language shows and programs with me. Sometimes, I feel that their father is not concerned enough about it. If we [the parents] do not make effort, they will gradually forget already limited knowledge of Dari and Afghan culture. Although Mina has already stablished a comfortable life in the new home as she dreamed,

her emotional attachment to her homeland and those left behind is undeniable. Despite her strong

motivation as an empowered mother, she sometimes experiences frustration when she needs the 44 Narratives of Motherwork, Agency, and Resilience: An Oral History of Afghan Immigrant Mothers in the Pacific Northwest

support, presence, and sympathy of her extended family. Hence, home for Afghan immigrant

women like Mina is not just about the physical aspect and a geographical location, rather it is

about family, kinship, and culture, and a sense of familiarity (Ahmad-Ghosh, 2011).

Furthermore, socialization of the children into Afghan etiquette, was one of Mina’s priority that was salient in her mothering practices. Afghan etiquette which is common in all ethnolinguistics groups across the country as unwritten codes of conducts, govern interpersonal relations that are centered around the issues of morality, hospitality, respect, virtue, honor, and pride (Emadi, 2005: 136). Concerned about the children’s familiarity with Afghan culture, etiquettes, and most importantly their acquaintance with the extended family, Mina would allocate part of their small saving for traveling to Afghanistan, as she said. The last time, in May

2016, she had a trip to Jaghori with her children and they stayed for two month. Prioritizing visiting the homeland by Afghan refugees and immigrants—despite fragility of their economic situation—was also noted by Huma Ahmed Ghosh in her study of Afghan mothers in California.

As she admits, part of Afghan mothering practice is educating children about the culture of their country of origin and reminding them of their roots and heritage (2011).

I enjoyed staying with my family members in Jaghori where I missed it a lot, but the main reason for traveling to Afghanistan was making my daughters and son familiar with their elders, their aunts, uncles, and their roots. Of course, it was not easy to get accustomed to live in a disadvantaged place like Jaghori; they didn’t have the facilities they have here; but I did it for their own sake, one day in the future, they will question their background and identity… And as future parents, they are going to have children one day and they need to teach them our culture and values. Nevertheless, overseas traveling is not always feasible for immigrants given their limited budget in the host country. To further socialize the children to the homeland’s culture and traditions, the family would go to neighboring regions, where there are larger communities of

Afghans—to participate in different community-based activities from religion events to cultural 45 Narratives of Motherwork, Agency, and Resilience: An Oral History of Afghan Immigrant Mothers in the Pacific Northwest

festivals and celebrations. I had the opportunity of traveling with the family to Portland in Eid al-

Fitr event and Nauruz Afghan festival, where I positioned both as insider being familiar with the

rituals and at the same time, a researcher who is closely observing Afghan mothers and listening

their elaboration of the event’s origin to their children.

Besides the family’s interactions with US-based Afghan communities, Mina emphasizes

on the importance of maintaining frequent virtual communication with her extended family and in-laws in Afghanistan through Skype or phone calls. Every weekend with no exception, as far as

I observed, she would call her family back in Jaghori to exchange updates and news on different

concerns. Weekend was the best time for Mina to allocate sufficient time to spend for long call

with them, free from the hectic working days. Meanwhile, I noticed Mina encouraging her

daughters and son to get involved in conversation with their grandparents in Jaghori. Having

blurred memories of their relatives from their last visit to Afghanistan, the children would have

very short, polite though unfriendly talks—mainly limited to some Hazaregi greeting phrases, as

sign of respect in Afghan etiquette for the elderly, which they apparently learned from their

mother. I could see the smile of joy and satisfaction on Mina’s face looking at her children

getting connected with their grandparents, although just for few moments.

As Zeina Zaatari maintains, mothering practices and its meaning is not static as they are

constantly adjusting and shifting by women’s subjectivity in different socio-political and

economic moments (2006: 35). This statement resonates with Mina’s experience of mothering

which is evolving in view of the new social and material conditions of the new home. She is

constantly recreating and shifting mothering that entails perspectives, agency, and resilience.

Such practice of motherwork, as Porter and Kelso (2008) argues, is the outcome of these mothers’ thought, discussion, grounded understanding of the concept of ‘reality’, as well as their 46 Narratives of Motherwork, Agency, and Resilience: An Oral History of Afghan Immigrant Mothers in the Pacific Northwest adaptation to the unexpected changes physically, intellectually, emotionally, and socially (xi-xii).

The dramatic shift in gender roles beyond the domestic domain—dealing with matters outside of home, employment, her vital contribution to family livelihood, and investing for the future of her children—is an indication of recreation and adjustment of Mina’s mothering practices in diaspora.

47 Narratives of Motherwork, Agency, and Resilience: An Oral History of Afghan Immigrant Mothers in the Pacific Northwest

Mahtab

Like a desert flower waiting for rain, like a riverbank thirsting for the touch of pitchers, like the dawn longing for light; and like a house, like a house in ruins for want of a woman -- the exhausted ones of our times need a moment to breathe, need a moment to sleep, in the arms of peace, in the arms of peace. —untitled poem by Parween Faiz Zadah Malaal

Mahtab was born in Kakrak, a valley in the Jaghatu District of Ghazni province in central

Afghanistan (see Figure IV). The valley was essentially inhabited by Hazara minority in a

province that have predominately been populated by the Pashtun ethnicity. She grew up in the

midst of war in an area when the country was ravaged by armed conflict started with Soviet

invasion in 1979 and the ‘Afghan resistance’ that lasted to 1992 (Khattak, 2002; Mousavi, 1998).

Mahtab spent the earlier years of her life in war, poverty, violence, and constant sense of insecurity that consist significant part of her childhood memories. She relates,

Although I was a kid, I remember everything exactly. I remember bombardment by the Soviet troops; sometimes bombs and rockets dropped on the innocent people’s houses. I witness all members of two families in our neighborhood were killed as the bomb hit their houses. When the jets were approaching, our mother would take us inside the Samuch (man-made caves where they took shelter), or under threes to keep us safe. I remember whenever I was frightened of bombing sound, I used to hide my head under my mother’s long skirt [laughing]. I thought if I hide my head, no one can see and hurt me. Later, when I grow up, my father would hide us inside the Kando (the big bowl made of mud in which the cereal is stored) of the fear of the insurgents’ commanders. They would search the houses and took the girls and young women in the village with themselves.

48 Narratives of Motherwork, Agency, and Resilience: An Oral History of Afghan Immigrant Mothers in the Pacific Northwest

Figure IV: Kakrak Valley Location within Ghazni Province (Wikipedia, n.d)

Being concerned about the increasing chaos and insecurity in the village, Mahtab’s father

arranged her marriage at very young age when she was only thirteen. Through an arranged

marriage, Mahtab married fifteen-year-old Azim, the son of a close relative and, following

tradition, moved into the home of her new in-laws’ extended family. As a 2013 UN Woman report comprising oral histories of Afghan women reveals, the prevalence of early arranged marriages among girls during periods of war and lawlessness emerged as a common strategy among families to uphold their daughters’ 'honor' against the threat of armed invasion (2013: 39).

In other words, arranged marriages provided a presumed layer of protection against potential kidnapping and sexual violence during turbulent times. Mahtab’s experience reflects this honor- preserving strategy. Later her husband moved to Iran with his brothers to work and transmit

money to the extended families in the Kakrak Valley, since there were no income-generating

opportunities as the result of collapse of economic activities in Hazarajat. For eight years, he was

traveling between Iran and Afghanistan. During this time Mahtab was living with her in-laws in

one house. 49 Narratives of Motherwork, Agency, and Resilience: An Oral History of Afghan Immigrant Mothers in the Pacific Northwest

The prevailing conditions of lawlessness in Ghazni Province resulted from the

government’s instability following the withdrawal of Soviet military forces and the ongoing civil

war driven by ethnic conflict across the country. The Hazara people living in Ghazi, the ethnic

minority who were mainly residing in the smaller, peripheral villages, faced particularly intense

pressure. In order to prevent any potential uprisings within Hazara villages, armed groups cut off

access to food, fuel, and health resources to them. Kakrak, Mahtab’s village of origin, was

among those regions affected by this suppressive strategy. There was only one passage from the

village to the local bazaar in the center, Ghazni city (see Figure V) and it remained under close

surveillance by the armed groups. They exerted severe punishments on any Hazara person found

transporting food or fuel in the area. Although men are more vulnerable to the risk of being

arrested and persecuted in this context, women and children have been disproportionately

affected by such militaristic strategies. As the most vulnerable war-affected civilians, women and

children, as Imam (2010) notes, are facing with the extreme conditions of hardship given the

scarcity of services, foods, healthcare, and the very basic infrastructures. Yet, women in war time— the sole providers and protectors of their families as mothers, wives, and sisters— struggle to preserve their way of life and provide for and protect their children and families in the absence of resources that were once provided by the male heads of households (Carpenter 2005:

306-307).

50 Narratives of Motherwork, Agency, and Resilience: An Oral History of Afghan Immigrant Mothers in the Pacific Northwest

Figure V: City of Ghazni (the Centre of Ghazni Province) (Wikipedia, n.d)

Nevertheless, Afghan women have proved their agency and empowerment to meet the basic demands of their families and communities though different means from individual daily copying strategies to establishing networks of support (Rostami-Povey, 2012). For the survival of her extended family in time of shortage of resources, Mahtab and other women in their neighborhood would travel to the center (Ghazni city) to provide the basic items such as flour, wheat, salt, and oil fuel by carrying them secretly under their clothes and veils. Additionally, these women were responsible for the management of these limited resources in the families and sometimes within their communities.“we would either exchange the basic items like foods and fuel with our neighbors and relatives or help the families who were unable to provide for their households… for instance the women with little children whose husbands were sick or martyred or the elderly people who were living alone”, Mahtab recalls. Despite the potential violence and the fear of being identified at the armed checkpoints posted at the main roadway into the village,

Mahtab continued clandestinely transporting the essential items for her family livelihood for almost two years. This situation of rampant starvation was exacerbated by the brutal regime of 51 Narratives of Motherwork, Agency, and Resilience: An Oral History of Afghan Immigrant Mothers in the Pacific Northwest

Taliban who posed more restrictions on the women’s mobility. The emergence of the Taliban in

1996, supported by foreign powers, totality redefined political conditions of the country and the

ethnic and sectarian violence target the Hazarajat (Mousavi, 1998:200). Mahtab recalls,

My mother-in-law was always sick. She had a heart attack when Ghazni was under the Soviet's bombardment for the first time. Neither of my sisters-in-law could go to bazaar; they were too young. Later, when Taliban came to power, women had to be accompanied by Mahram (their husbands or blood male relatives). So I was accompanied by my father-in-law…I never forget the horror of being stopped and searched in the checkpoints; they would only search men though. That is why we (women) could hide the package of foods and flour under our clothes and our burqa. Some women would swaddle the packages or bottles inside a garment and pretending that they’re holding their infants… But if any of us (women) were found with something, they would beat us violently… I remember, the bottles of oil (fuel) was too heavy for me to carry and I have to hold them under my Burqa the whole way to home. One time, the bottles were leaking and I was worried about its smell. But thank Allah, they couldn’t realize it.

Such powerful and high-risk resistance against oppression among ethnic minority women

exhibit what Janice Nathanson labels 'activist mothering.’ Such acts, according to the author, aim to protect families and communities from threats and involve radical measures to ensure survival

that often risk punitive violence and bodily harm (2008: 246). Mahtab and other women might

not identify their contributions to family survival as activism. Yet, as Nathanson argues, the very

act of positioning themselves in the public domain, particularly in militarized zones, and their

clandestine subversion of patriarchal norms, demonstrate maternal agency that is simultaneously

self-empowering and destabilizes prevailing gender and power relations (2008: 246-253).

Although Mahtab and other Hazara women employed powerful survival strategies against

the rising tide of suppression, her experience of mothering during those demanding years was

devastating. She gave birth to a girl and a boy but the lack of health facilities and the basic

medical service in the village caused the death of both. Mahtab lost her two-year-old son who died of Measles which was easily prevented by vaccine, as she said. Similarly, her second 52 Narratives of Motherwork, Agency, and Resilience: An Oral History of Afghan Immigrant Mothers in the Pacific Northwest

pregnancy coincided with the rule of Taliban when women were forbidden from being treated by

male doctor. Very few female doctors in the center, who were allowed to work, were not

accessible in villages. This imposed restriction by Taliban, which had sever impacts on maternal

heath throughout Afghanistan (UN Woman, 2013), also caused the loss of Mahtab’s child at

birth.

In 1997, with the increasing pressure and constrains by Taliban, Mahtab left Ghazni in

company with her husband’s cousin family crossed the border to join Azim in Iran. However, moving to Iran did not guaranteed a more peaceful life for Afghan refugees who fled their country. Mahtab who was a mother of two boys by that time, was moving from one place to another along with her husband and two toddlers depending on where they would find work opportunities—gardening, construction, shoe mending, and tailoring. It was the most overwhelming time of her life, as she recalls. This was particularly because of the marginalized situation of Afghan women who immigrated to Iran. They have been systematically denied of

any citizenship rights as the result of Iranian government’s policies that confined them even

more to the margin; neither had they had their previous empowered roles back in Afghanistan, as

Hale Afshar noted (2007: 240). Hence, being separated from home, family and acquaintance on

one hand and the hardship of living in an unwelcoming country on the other hand gradually

pushed Mahtab in depression and more isolation.

As Monsutti (2007) observed in his ethnographic study of Afghan refugees in Iran, the

increasing limitations by the host government from strict regulations on labor permit to

restriction on welfare facilities such as education and health service were putting Afghan

refugees under intense pressure. They have to work in low-status jobs for wages considerably

below the average, without any social protection. This pressure increased following the 53 Narratives of Motherwork, Agency, and Resilience: An Oral History of Afghan Immigrant Mothers in the Pacific Northwest

withdrawal of Taliban in 2001, and the Iranian government’s assertion that peace had been

achieved in Afghanistan and refugees could return to their country (2007: 170). Eventually, like

hundreds of other Afghan refugees in Iran, Mahtab and her family returned to Afghanistan in

2004, three years after the fall of Taliban brought about by the U.S led intervention.

To make their living in war-torn Afghanistan, Azim who learned English in Iran, was hired as interpreter by the U.S army in Mazar province for nine years. Meanwhile, the family was living in a rented house shared by another Hazara family from Jaghori. Given the growing threats by Taliban forces against nationals working with U.S military, the U.S government provided the interpreters with the opportunity of living in the United States through a specialized visa program to ensure safety of their families. Having gone through years of war and instability, and the exacerbating security conditions in Afghanistan, the family decided to use the opportunity they were provided to start a peaceful life in away from war and insecurity. They eventually immigrated to the U.S. in 2014.

They chose a small city in the Pacific Northwest to settle as a convenient place to start a new life. Later though, Mahtab’s husband deployed to Afghanistan to resume his previous job as

interpreter with the US army to provide a more comfortable life for the family and to save for the future education of their children, as she said. Forty-two-year-old Mahtab—who is a mother of three children now—is taking care of her family in the U.S. without her husband. According to

Mahtab, they usually have family reunion every three months for two weeks, when Azim takes

leave from his work in Afghanistan to visit them.

Mahtab is a kind-hearted and calm woman, although the traumatic life she experienced

seems to have lasting impact on her. One can easily notes some level of tension and a chronic stress in her voice and behavior. She was usually speaking sporadically and hardly focused. War 54 Narratives of Motherwork, Agency, and Resilience: An Oral History of Afghan Immigrant Mothers in the Pacific Northwest

and conflict have not affected all Afghan women equally since it was more intense in some parts

of the country than the others. Mahtab, whose village of origin located in the vicinity of the

insurgent-controlled area, was directly exposed to the prolonged and extreme war trauma. The

mental health effects of armed conflict on the civilians, particularly women—who are more

vulnerable— are enormous and long-lasting ranging from stress disorder, anxiety, and

depression, as Golie G. Jansen observed in her study of the consequences of war on women’s

health (2006:142). During wartime and in the aftermath of war, Mahtab experienced wide range

of traumatic events from the fear of Soviet troops' bombing and violation of her rights and

dignity by the Taliban to loss of her children due to the breakdown in health service.

I still woke up from nightmares about bombings and rockets… every sudden loud sound still triggers my anxiety and stress. This constant fear has always been with me. I remember one time in Ghazni, our neighbor was pushing a heavy wardrobe from their bedroom to the yard. I screamed and ran out of the house because I presumed it as the sound of a missile that hit nearbyc.

Additionally, the recent stressful life events such as changes in social condition or

separation form family contribute to the intensity of general psychological symptoms that is

possibly resulted from reducing the feeling of social support (Klaric et al. 2010: 174). The

current distressful condition of Mahtab, that to some extend is due to displacement and her

disconnection form her family members, limited her access to the coping resources particularly

emotional and social supports.

In contrast to Mina whose story appears in the previous chapter, Mahtab have not completely integrated into the host society. She rarely ventured outside to interact with others, except when she goes to her English course or doing the outside matters. The language barrier is

also an obstacle for her as she still lacks enough confidence to speak English regularly in social

settings. In most circumstance, she prefers to rely on her daughter, Sahra, who has stronger 55 Narratives of Motherwork, Agency, and Resilience: An Oral History of Afghan Immigrant Mothers in the Pacific Northwest

connection with her, to negotiate with the outside world. Additionally, she does not have any

kind of distraction and opportunities like employment or community-based activities to spend

time outside of the home. She also lacks access to the present, yet small Afghan social network

in the local area with whom she can achieve a sense of community. Most of the time, she prefers

to spend time inside the house either with her children, or alone keeping herself busy with

routine household works.

I doesn’t matter where I am, I want to return home. I am more comfortable here (at home). I can’t enjoy things outside and nothing can make me happy, especially when I am going out alone. I feel that I don’t belong to this country and these people.

'Home' remains a major concern for Mahtab that, to some extent, is responsible for her

sense of alienation in the host society despite years of living in the U.S. Subsequently, this ‘loss

of the home' affected her ‘self of identify’ and ‘self-esteem’ (Bowlby et al., 1997: 348). As Saba

Gul Khattak analysis of Afghan refugees’ narrative confirms, home for these women represents a way of life, and a way of being that they are familiar and comfortable with; a concept that is intricately woven to sense of belonging to a place and a community. Thus, women immigrants and refugees are not quite at home in the host country because of the missing sense of belonging

(2002: 106). Moreover, Mahtab is noticeably dependent on the nostalgia of the home she left behind. When I first visited Mahtab at her house, it immediately gave me a sense of being in a traditional house in Afghanistan.

To recreate some part of the homeland inside her house in the U.S, she turned it to a familiar place though traditional decorative artefacts, Afghan hand-made carpet, traditional floor seating, Dari calligraphies, and many other elements of her home back in Afghanistan. Nilufar

Ahmed, who observed same recreation of homeland by Bangladeshi immigrant women, points out that defining space in such a strong way is not only a copping strategy by migrant women to 56 Narratives of Motherwork, Agency, and Resilience: An Oral History of Afghan Immigrant Mothers in the Pacific Northwest

face isolation, it is also an attempt to "define their own selves" and "validate their own set of

believes” (2005: 103). This is specially the case with Mahtab who still holds to traditional

lifestyle she had in her country of origin. As I observed, she still observes the standards of

Afghan clothing, cooks Afghan foods, and adheres to the rituals the same way as she did in

Afghanistan. She also resorts to watching Afghan TV programs, with which she can make

connection, as she mentioned.

Mahtab disconnected from her extended family long time ago, when they immigrated to

Iran, as her first experience of disconnection. Despite multiple displacements, she maintains

strong sense of belonging and attachment to her county of origin and kinship. Like other Afghan

immigrant women, she longs traveling to the homeland very frequently to visit her parents and

relatives. Eventually she made her first trip to Afghanistan with her children in summer in 2018.

During the last days of their stay in Kabul, I could manage to meet Mahtab and children in her

brother-in-law home in a suburb area of the capital city. She had just returned from Ghazni the

day before I met her. It was a period of time when the province was surrounded by opponent

groups. Being intimidated about the insecurity on the road, Mahtab traveled to Ghazni without

her children to meet her parents and kin in her origin village.

I was said not to take the children with me because the Taliban had checkpoints on the road. If they stopped us and ask any of my children questions, they (Taliban) would immediately recognize their American accent. It was good if they (children) could see their grandparents, aunts and uncles, but I didn't want to endanger their lives.

The main reason of their immigration to the U.S was ensuring a comfortable and safe life for the children, as Mahtab emphasized; however, rearrangement of family dynamics in the new

domain has put extra burden on her mothering practice as she should navigate a life in an alien culture. Mahtab still observes the Afghan cultural expectations despite the limited resources and 57 Narratives of Motherwork, Agency, and Resilience: An Oral History of Afghan Immigrant Mothers in the Pacific Northwest

almost non-excitant support from the extended family. Although her previous experience of

migration, to some extent, helped her settle in the new country without any source of support,

she has seen a dramatic changes in her mothering experience in the U.S that has required her to

redefine and recreate her roles. In addition to her mothering responsibilities, she is concerned

about extra tasks in the absence of his husband who used to handle them before. Hence, to take

on these new tasks, she should learn new skills that had not previously expected or needed.

Despite the lack of educational qualification and language competency, Mahtab managed to get her driving license two year ago, after several attempts. She called this achievement as a 'demand to meet’ for her children’s comfort in the absence of their father. Additionally, she gradually made herself familiar with handling the matters relating to outside from doing banking to

attending the parent-teacher meetings.

I should take care of everything by myself when Azim is away. I don’t want my children feel any shortage in the absence of their father. The two weeks that Azim is back home, is the only time that I feel free and relaxed. In fact, we are scarifying for the welfare of our children. Nothing is more important than my family’s happiness for me.

Alongside her husband, who is working outside the U.S, Mahtab is attempting to

maintain the family’s integrity as a mother of children who are raising in a considerably different social and cultural context. Collins calls this practices of mothering as ‘motherwork' that challenge the social construction of family and work as separate spheres, arguing that women’s reproductive labor—from feeding and clothing to nurturing and socializing the next generation— as labor on behalf of the family as a whole rather than work benefiting men, in particular (1994:

47). Furthermore, such flexible and transformative practice of motherwork, which resists the myths of motherhood in dominant ideology, requires mothers’ agentive skills to meet different situations, as Porter argues (2008: 189). Nonetheless, the negative sides of father absence is 58 Narratives of Motherwork, Agency, and Resilience: An Oral History of Afghan Immigrant Mothers in the Pacific Northwest undeniable in immigrant families, particularly traditional Afghan households in which father plays a crucial role. Despite Mahtab’s attempt to maintain a balance in parenting, she is facing challenge in children upbringing that requires both parents’ effort, as she said.

Afghan mothers bring up their children with hardship. It is not like being a mother here; Mothering in midst of war, in migration…we have never had a stable life. I have not ever talk with the children about the terrible things that we experienced in the war. I don’t want to give them a horrible image of Afghanistan. What happened to us and is happening in Afghanistan is the politics in which ordinary people like us were not involved. But children can’t understand it. The only thing that I really wish they (children) know about Afghanistan is our real culture and values, importance of good morality, and respect for the elders. Additionally, we’re teaching them the religious rituals like praying and fasting, which is parents’ responsibility.

Despite Mahtab’s effort to transmit the cultural and religious values to her children, she notes that this traditional practice of parenting is not the same as her mother’s experience back in

Afghanistan. As she said, in contrast to children in Afghanistan who take the religion and faith as granted, the children growing up in the U.S. are constantly questioning the faith and the religious values that are culturally interpreted, looking for reason and logic. As Ahmed admits, the experience of conflation of culture and religion for the second generation of Muslim immigrant is different from their preceding generation. In contrast to their parents who were taught to perceive the faith as integral part of their fixed identity, they are involved with a ‘self-conscious’ exploration of the faith (2005: 124). In addition to this difference, socialization of children to these values in a white-dominant context entails tension and the children’s resistance to their parent’s attempt to install the cultural values of a homeland which is “otherized" in the hegemonic discourse.

While being actively involved with fostering her children' development and functionality in a white-dominated society, Mahtab is attempting to teach them to deal with the existing discrimination and stereotyping which led to great level of pressure on her mothering practice 59 Narratives of Motherwork, Agency, and Resilience: An Oral History of Afghan Immigrant Mothers in the Pacific Northwest

particularly in respect of the children’s identity formation. This tension particularly arises in case

of her elder son, Mahdi, who is already grown-up. He left Afghanistan when he was thirteen

years old. Despite his attempt to meet his mother’s expectations, Mahdi keeps away from his

Afghan identity and instead integrated himself fully in American society. Being affected by the dominant propaganda about Afghans and Muslims in general, he is notably reluctant to be identified as Afghan while simultaneously being conscious about his outsider status in American society.

Whenever we (the parents) encouraged them to get familiar with their root, Mahdi would say: “why are you so proud of Afghanistan and being Afghan? A country that is symbol of terrorism and war”. Similarly, Sahra, was once called ‘terrorist’ by her fellows at school. Since that time, she is always questioning about her identity. She is too young to cope with this stereotyping.

As Sirin and Fine (2007) observed in their research on immigrant minority youth, adolescence is a critical period during which young individuals form and reform their cultural identities; hence, they experience higher level of tension and frustration, given the complex historical moments, in which their racial, ethnic, and religious, and national origins are contested in the hegemonic discourse (151). They further noted that Muslim youth men, in particular, tend to perceive “Muslim” and “American” as two almost contradictory parts of their “hyphened" selves and they feel split between immersing in the culture of their parents’ place of origin and integrating in both culture (2007: 159). Likewise, Collins maintains that there is a “dialectical relationship” between systems of racial oppression—designed to strip subordinated groups of a sense of personal identity— and a sense of collective peoplehood and the cultures of resistance extant in various racial ethnic groups that resist the oppression; thus, motherwork for identity occurs at this critical juncture (1994: 57).

60 Narratives of Motherwork, Agency, and Resilience: An Oral History of Afghan Immigrant Mothers in the Pacific Northwest

Habiba

This chapter addresses the narratives of eighty-year-old Habiba, the oldest participant of

this study. She arrived in the U.S. in December 2018 to join her elder son’s family in Oregon.

We first met in the home of her daughter-in-law, Mina, a few weeks after Habiba arrived in the

U.S. She was very gentle in nature, but I was struck by her pallor, which I later learned was the physical manifestation of pain caused by a hip fracture she suffered six months prior. She shared

that her injury caused discomfort that prevented her from sleeping well. Upon our first meeting,

her face bore exactly this combination of pain and exhaustion.

Habiba spent most of her life in the remote highlands of Jaghori District in central

Afghanistan. She was born in 1940 when Hazara people were the target of tribal conflict and

strict political, financial, and cultural restrictions resulted from political upheavals and the

prolonged state of instability in Afghanistan (Mousavi 1998: 160-170). As Mousavi notes, until

the 1970s, Hazara people as second-class citizens were the victims of targeted killing and it was

declared by Sunni extremists as a mean to secure the heaven (160-162). Despite the crucial role

Hazara people in Jaghori and the rest of Hazarajat played to resist against the invading Soviet

army between 1978 to 1990 (Mousavi 1998:179), they soon after faced the brutality of the

militants who took the control over the central part of Afghanistan through savage coercion and a campaign of persecution of this minority ethnic group (Shikhani & Bezhan, 2018).

We lived every day with the fear of being killed. Hazara were massacred in different parts of the country. Many men in our neighborhood were persecuted and went missing by the armed groups. Later, the Soviet forces dropped bombs and rocket on our village. The traces of bombing still remain in the mountains. We were so frightened when the jets and tanks were approaching. I would take all my four children with me and run to Samuch, or under bridges, we have to stay there the whole night in the midst of freezing winter. 61 Narratives of Motherwork, Agency, and Resilience: An Oral History of Afghan Immigrant Mothers in the Pacific Northwest

As Hale Afshar articulates, the mythology of war tends to confine these women to

becoming the 'wife and mothers of heroes' and make the celebration of death and martyrdom the

feature of their suffering and achievement; yet, Afghan women counter these expectations by

creating 'embattled identities’ to save their children, escaping across maintains and borders

(2007: 238). Compared to other women studied in previous chapters, Habiba had quite more

challenging experience of mothering during periods of intense conflict in Afghanistan. She raised all her children in the midst of war and armed conflict in the absence of any positive changes. As a mother, whose main concern was the survival and well-being of her children,

Habiba worked hard to ensure their nurturing and sustainment, she recalls,

My oldest son was at the 8th grade when all schools in the village were destroyed during the Soviet bombing. After that, the armed groups and Taliban forbidden education for children. So, we would use our homes and mosques to train the children the basic literacy skills and keep them motivated although it was not enough for their thriving…otherwise, they would remain illiterate and hopeless about the future.

In contrast to the dominant portrayal of Afghan women as victims of war and violence,

they have proven their empowerment through making significant contribution to the survival and solidarity of their communities while challenging conservative norms and the imposed

restrictions (Rostami Povery & Poya 2003). In addition to mothering practice within the private

sphere of household, Hazara women in Jaghori played significant roles in sustaining their

community’s integrity throughout long years of brutality and chaos. Hayat Imam’s work on the

impacts of war on Afghan women also reveals their essential roles in ensuring the survival of their families and communities under conditions of extreme hardship and oppression when the male members of their communities were imprisoned, tortured, and killed (2010: 117). This form of displaying agency and resistance to create network of cooperation echoes in narrative of

Habiba. She recalls, 62 Narratives of Motherwork, Agency, and Resilience: An Oral History of Afghan Immigrant Mothers in the Pacific Northwest

Like other women in the village, I would support the women in our neighborhood and in my relative whose husbands and sons were missing or killed either by the armed group or the Taliban. We would share the limited food that we had with those families to survive. We did not leave them alone… they also needed our condolence for their loss.

Through practicing mothering beyond the domestic sphere, women in the context of war

have significantly proved their agency and subjectivity in the public domain through the

discourse and praxis of ‘the culture of motherhood’ (Zaatari 2006: 34). This sentiment resonates

with Collins’s definition for the dynamic institution of mothering for the racial women that is

served as a site of resistance and involves constant renegotiated relationships that not only occurs

in household, but also with the networks of extended family, and their community institutions

(1990: 152). One of the outstanding mechanisms of support Hazara women would provide each

other in the face of increasing threats and violence in Jaghori was creating networks of solidarity

by resorting to their religious rituals. Emphasizing the importance of this practice, Habiba

relates:

We (women) would gather in each other houses in tern to cook and distribute ‘Nazr’6 for the well-being and safety of our people in time of hardship. We were particularly worried about the men who were in danger of persecution by the unknown armed groups who would regularly search for them in the village. We (women) would pray in group in ‘Hussainiya’7 to ask Allah to keep them safe.

The increasing restrictions and isolation coupled with frequent years of draught threaten

Hazara people with danger of starvation. On the other hand, they were obsoletely defenseless against Kuchis (Pashtun nomad) who would intrude forcibly into Hazaras' lands for grazing their

animals. Such sort of suppression that was also noted by Mousavi (1998) in the rest of Hazarajat

6 Nazr is considered a serious commitment in Islam. Failure to fulfill a vow is seen as a grievous offense for which expiation must be made, for example, by feeding or clothing the poor or fasting. Most common vows are those that are conditional upon the occurrence of an event, such as “If God heals my mother, I will prepare a feast for fifty people.” 7 Hosayniya is a building specifically designed to serve as venues for Moḥarram ceremonies commemorating the martyrdom of Ḥosayn b. ʿAli (q.v.), and to accommodate visiting participants. 63 Narratives of Motherwork, Agency, and Resilience: An Oral History of Afghan Immigrant Mothers in the Pacific Northwest

region, though had never been prosecuted since they had the support of the dominant regimes.

Under this condition of hardship and with the increasing brutality and restrictions imposed by the

Taliban in 1996, Habiba decided to send her adult sons to Iran and Pakistan. She hoped to keep them away from the prevailing violence in the region and to ensure that they achieve some level of independency by earning wages to remit back to the family in Jaghori. Her decision-making reflects what Joy Damousi terms “responsible mothering,” a set of agentic strategies mothers employ to protect their children and families during times of war (2017: 120). Damousi argues that emphasizing such protective practices helps shift the characterization of women, particularly mothers, from passive victims of conflict to “active agents negotiating violent contexts” (2017:

121). Habiba’s case represents a clear example of such maternal agency that, though it entailed the fragmentation of her family, ultimately intended to protect them from violence. As a result of her decision-making, Habiba’s sons spent years away from home working and sending home remittances. They would occasionally return back to Afghanistan to visit their family, forced to make the hazardous road journey within the Taliban-controlled areas and around the borders of

Afghanistan. Monsutti also admits this back and forth traveling of young Hazara men to the

neighboring countries as a survival and livelihood strategy that would diversify the family economy while spreading the risk (2007: 182). Habiba’s story, then, reveals the intertwining of

survival strategies, employed by mothers and adult children that demonstrate how families act as

active protagonists shaping their realities and maintaining their bonds in times of war.

Furthermore, Hazara women in this context, have always been the main agents of maintaining social ties having considerable influence over the social life which involves decision-making (Monsutti 2007:184). Back in her village of origin, Habiba, would be treated with high esteem both within the extended family and by her relatives, neighbors, and 64 Narratives of Motherwork, Agency, and Resilience: An Oral History of Afghan Immigrant Mothers in the Pacific Northwest

acquaintances. She was actively involved both in the management of the domestic matters and

community activities from arranging marital engagements and funerals to participation in

resolving the community’s problems. Her obligations and roles to her kin group and community

reflect the wider, longstanding gendered traditions in Afghan culture in which respected elder

women control such social matters. Habiba’s roles also included crucial caregiving for children

in the immediate and extended family and perpetuation of cultural values and Afghan etiquettes

to the next generations. As she said, her grandchildren would spend more time with her than their

mothers who were busy most of the days with household chores and activities related to animal

husbandry, a common practice Dupree also reinforces (2004: 312). Habiba’s grandchildren in

Jaghori already acquired important Afghan values — ranging from respecting parents and elders

to hospitality — from their grandmothers with whom they were so connected, as Habiba said.

These deep-seated cultural traditions that shape family dynamics also play a role in

Habiba’s migration to the United States. As Dupree observes, the elders expect reciprocal care

for the lifetime of parental affections and support they provide their children and grandchildren.

For young children are expected to take care and protect their parents in their old age. In turn,

among Afghan families, it is expected that children, as adults, fulfill their “filial duty” by taking

care of parents and elders in old age (2004: 312). Habiba’s case follows this pattern and, in 2018, her eldest son invited her, now aged eighty to move in with his family in Oregon.

However, as a recent migrant to the United States, Habiba soon found a number of challenges that prevented her from providing the same level of care to her son and his family as

she had back home in Jaghori. For example, Habiba informed me that she rarely left the home unaccompanied, as she felt unfamiliarity with her new surroundings in a small town in Oregon.

As Haddad and Smith noted, disconnection from family relation is particularly painful for the 65 Narratives of Motherwork, Agency, and Resilience: An Oral History of Afghan Immigrant Mothers in the Pacific Northwest

elderly women immigrant community that make them isolated and often being unable and

unwilling to leave the home. It also puts extra pressures on younger members of the family

particularly women who must take care of both children and their elders (2003: 50). Such limited

interactions with the outside and intense dependency represented a sharp role reversal for Habiba

who, for much of her life, maintained a robust social life in the community. This form of

sociocultural isolation among diasporic mothers echoes in the work of Huma Ahmed-Ghosh. In

her study of Afghan mothers living abroad, Ahmed-Ghosh notes that older women who

immigrated to live with their adult children often feel totally dependent on them due to language

and cultural barriers, as well as the challenge of navigating new domestic dynamics (2015: 140).

In Habiba’s case, such strong reliance on her son and daughter-in-law also stemmed from her

physical suffering that, as she describes, made her feel like a burden to the family.

Back in ‘Watan’, I would never stay at home. I had always something to keep myself busy with such as storing forage, feeding the cattle and goats, or helping my daughters-in-law in household works and babysitting their children. But I am now feeling ashamed because not only can I not support them, but also they should do all my works.

One of the main themes that emerged from interviewing Habiba was ‘Watan’ (Dari term

for homeland) that she would use in parallel with the concept of ‘home’. Such interchangeable

use of ‘home’ and ‘Watan’ indicates an undeniable relationship between home and the sense of belonging to a place and a community from which these women derive their sense of self, as

Khattak asserts (2002: 106). She further deducts that displacement from ‘home’ and leaving behind the ‘familial metaphor’—represented by nation, culture, history, and identity—for these women entails a deep psychological insecurity as they move to an unfamiliar and unknown environment for which they are not trained (2002:107). Habiba echoes this sentiment and shares: 66 Narratives of Motherwork, Agency, and Resilience: An Oral History of Afghan Immigrant Mothers in the Pacific Northwest

I brought with myself my clothes that I used to wear in Jaghori but I cannot wear them here. My son says those cloths are too Afghani and people here wear simple cloths. So, my daughter-in-law sewed three dresses for me the first days I arrived.

Hence, displacement from home is not only about physically leaving a country of residence. Rather it entails a deeper kind of separation from the moorings of maternal identity, such a culture, language, and social roles. As Alexander Freund (2015: 62) argues, nation-state are never the only points of reference for making home as family, kin, neighborhood, food, community, and other spaces and places “below “the national level shaped the meaning of home for these communities. Beyond a physical structure, home as an emotional space, is a complex concept in women’s lives (Rubenstein 2001:1). Therefore, the physical departure for home through migration brings about a distance from home as “a site of familiarity” and belonging

(Nititham 2017: 39).

Furthermore, as her first experience living abroad, Habiba expresses her difficulty in adapting to the new physical and emotional settings. In contrast to her home in Afghanistan, where she was surrounded by the members of her extended family, in Oregon she suffered from social and emotional isolation in a totally unfamiliar environment, bound to the home her family busies themselves at work and school. She was not only unable to communicate with the outside world, making connection with her U.S.-raised grandchildren presented other kinds of emotional challenges. Longing to spend time with them, Habiba found it problematic to communicate with them in her own language. In addition, from her perspective, the children growing up in the West lack the knowledge of traditional Afghan etiquette regarding proper treatment of the elders. To her, the cultural, generation, and linguistic gaps presented daily challenges, taking a toll on her relationships and her own emotional well-being. Her experiences resonate well with Ahmed-

Ghosh’s descriptions of how elder immigrant women’s tenuous engagement with their 67 Narratives of Motherwork, Agency, and Resilience: An Oral History of Afghan Immigrant Mothers in the Pacific Northwest

grandchildren raised in the West. Such tensions, she argues, deprive grandmothers of their

expected maternal role that, back home, intrinsically defined their status within Afghan society

(2015: 138-139). For example, Habiba told me:

I love them like my other grandchildren in Jaghori but they are very different from them. They don’t know much about Afghan culture and language. I am feeling sad because I cannot understand a single word of what they’re talking. Neither can they understand what I am saying.

Facing increasing isolation, she resorts to regular daily phone calls to Jaghori in an

attempt to reconnect with her children, grandchildren, neighbors, and relatives. Motherhood for

Habiba is not only about being concerned about her own children, rather it is about maintaining

the integrity of the kinship relation and the social relation in the community she left behind. As I

observed, she would not only talk with her sons and grandchildren one by one in turn, she was

very kin to learn about the everyday life in Jaghori in details from the harvest issues and the

weather to health condition and livelihood of the neighbors and acquaintances whom she care about too much. As Dupree (2004: 310) noted, such social interactions between related families and the community is considered to function as the focal point for expressions of solidarity, and

that sustaining this interaction and social relation by the elders is deeply embedded in Afghan

culture.

Given the lack of previous status along with deep sense of alienation in the host country,

Habiba was constantly thinking of returning to Afghanistan. During the course of interviews, she would always recall “the good days back home” where she would spend most of her free time outside communicating with relatives, neighbors and other people. She would elaborate their customs and family gatherings cerebrating the first day of spring in Nauruz, visiting friends and relatives in different Eids, and so on. Khattak argues that this recollection and depiction of home 68 Narratives of Motherwork, Agency, and Resilience: An Oral History of Afghan Immigrant Mothers in the Pacific Northwest

as an ‘ideal place’ is a common practice which is considered a significant coping mechanism that

Afghan women in exile resort to, as they hope that these memories can repeat in the future

(2002: 106). Likewise, Ahmed-Ghosh, asserts that this copying strategy through which “back

home” is remembered as “golden era” by Afghan refugee women is an attempt to maintain one’s

culture and group identity in an alien environment (2015: 130).

I want to die in my Watan, not here. This is certainly the will of any old woman like me, I don’t like to be buried in Gorbat (Dari term for exile). I have another son and a daughter who are in Jaghori and Kabul. I missed my grandchildren so much… I am really worried about my daughter too, she’s giving birth to her first child next month. Only God knows how she’s feeling now, she needs me but I’m here. Who will take care of her? I’m just praying for her, what else can I do when I’m so far away? Nothing [sigh].

Habiba’s experience provides key insights into the ways in which Afghan mothers navigate several new diasporic landscapes within and beyond the parameters of home and family. She expressed her sense of alienation and disidentification with her surroundings and

even in her familial relationships in Oregon. Yet, as Khattak argues, such feelings of

(un)belonging are not always tempered with nostalgic longing for home (2002: 106-107). Many women, she finds, express reluctance to accept their move to new locales as definitive or final and prefer to frame them as “temporary” homes (Khattak 2002: 106-109).

69 Narratives of Motherwork, Agency, and Resilience: An Oral History of Afghan Immigrant Mothers in the Pacific Northwest

Tahera

Tormented-bodied, girls brought up on pain Joy departed from their faces Hearts old and lined with cracks No smile appears on the bleak oceans of their lips Not a tear springs from the dry riverbeds of their eyes O God! Might I not know if their voiceless cries reach the clouds, the vaulted heavens? The sound of green footsteps is the rain —from “A Voiceless Cry” by Nadia Anjuman

This chapter addresses the oral narrative of 27-year-old Tahera, the youngest mother interviewed in this project. Tahera was born in Jaghori District of Ghazni province in 1993, three years after Taliban came to power. Her homeland which is located in the highlands of southeastern part of Afghanistan is still one of the most deprived parts of the country. Although she was too young, she still remembers the brutality of the regime of Taliban and the hardship her family had gone through during that time. Tahera was the oldest child in the family with seven siblings, four sisters and three brothers. This crowded family though was supervised within an extended family by the oldest paternal uncle who was the head of the household. Such traditional patriarchal structure within the extended family in most parts of Afghanistan is also observed by Dupree (2004). As she pointed out, the traditional structure requires all members of the extended family to conform the prescribed forms of acceptable behavior and decisions made by the senior male members who are the “ultimate arbiters” (312).

Tahera spent her childhood in absence of her father who was traveling between

Afghanistan and Iran, the neighboring country, to work for remittance of enough capital to the

family. The absence of the male members of Hazara households and their dispersion to secure income in neighboring country—brought about significant social and cultural changes concerning the gendered division of labor for these families, as Monsutti (2007: 185) observed. 70 Narratives of Motherwork, Agency, and Resilience: An Oral History of Afghan Immigrant Mothers in the Pacific Northwest

Childhood for Tahera and the other girls in the village in general was often part time jobs in

family farms and gardens with their mothers to ensure secure livelihood for their families. Such

contributions of mother and their children to family economy, which is historically been shaped

by racial ethnic women’s motherwork for survival, as Collins asserts, is also observed to be

made by women of color to ensure their individual and community economic well-being through

family-based labor (1994: 50-51). She further admits that this form of motherwork for physical

survival make the children aware of the importance of the work they are doing for the family

continuity that is not isolated from the society (1994: 51).

As Tahera grew up, she took more responsibilities and her contribution shifted from family

agricultural labor to domestic tasks and child bearing. She used to spend most of her times in

helping her mother in household chores and caring the younger siblings, in particular. As

Ahmed-Ghosh noted, such co-mothering the younger siblings by the oldest daughter is a

common practice in Afghanistan and most part of the Asian countries, which is earlier provided

by other female members of the extended family (2015: 133). The co-mothering duties put

additional burden on Tahera though. She had just learned about a newly-opened school in the village that was built by the community after the withdrawal of Taliban in 2001. Almost all of the children in the village, by that time, were acquiring literacy at Madrasa (unofficial schools in mosques where literacy was limited to reading Quran, usually taught by a religious figure called

‘Mulla ’or ‘Akhond’). Tahera relates,

I had not heard about Maktab (school) by that time, neither had seen it before. I was really enthusiastic to be enrolled there. I asked my mother to enroll me in there though she didn’t have any authority to make that decision. She was so ambitious about my aspiration but she told me that I had to ask my oldest paternal uncle’s permission as he was the head of our family when my father was in Iran…And fortunately he agreed to send me to Maktab. I had to work hard to help my mother who was working all the time…there was not any other choice, the farm and livestock required lots of works. 71 Narratives of Motherwork, Agency, and Resilience: An Oral History of Afghan Immigrant Mothers in the Pacific Northwest

Beside household tasks, I had to take care of my younger siblings by feeding them, showering them, and washing their clothes.

Tahera was one of the ten girls in the neighborhood who enrolled in the new school

although she was the only one who continued and the rest quitted due to lack of transportation

facilities to the school—which was 40 minute walk away— and the possibility of insecurity on

the road that was more hostile towards girls. Despite these challenges, household duties, and co-

mothering tasks, she managed to complete the primary school with outstanding grades.

I don’t forget walking lonely the long distance to the school in the heat of summers that was really though. I walked that road for six years. There was not any transportation means available for us. But I remained resilient, hoping to become someone in the future

Tahera pursued her dreams by advancing into the secondary school. Her father, who

temporarily returned to home, left Afghanistan to work in Iran again, when the sixteen-year-old

Tahera was under pressure to quit education as a grown-up girl. This prevailing conservative norm in the village that restricted adult girls from further education, echoes the Human Rights

Watch report noting that girls’ education in most Afghan rural communities has been seen as

generally undesirable or acceptable only before the age of puberty (Barr, 2017). Influenced by

patriarchal attitudes, Tahera’s father prioritized boys’ education over girls’ education.

In my father’s opinion, basic literacy for writing and reading was sufficient for girls. In contrast, he was encouraging my brothers to receive higher education. During the school break times, two of my brothers were sent to Kabul where to participate in preparation courses for university entry exam.

In addition to such conservative attitudes, lack of security and potential violence

stemming from lawlessness such as attacks on schools and abduction by the Taliban and other

armed groups were the critical barriers which have negatively impacted females’ advancement

into education in the country—particularly in the rural areas (Barr, 2017; Human Rights Watch,

2017). Despite all these tensions, Tahera managed to successfully complete the secondary 72 Narratives of Motherwork, Agency, and Resilience: An Oral History of Afghan Immigrant Mothers in the Pacific Northwest

school—the highest education level which was available in Jaghori at that time—through

persistence and hard working. She could finally convince her father to let her pursue higher

education. After six months of preparation, Tahera was admitted in an institute in the capital city

to study midwifery.

After two semesters of studying in Kabul, she met Amir, a passionate young man from

Jaghori, and soon after a short period of knowing each other, they decided to marry. The

couple’s decision did not conform the expected ‘arranged marriage’ tradition in their homeland

(when the potential bride is selected by the man’s parents and family members). Yet, they

followed the marriage rituals to show their respect towards their families. Soon after the wedding

ceremonies, the couple returned to Kabul where they started a modest life in a rented small house in Dashte-Barch district—a Hazara neighborhood in west of Kabul. Tahera was still determined to become more empowered and successful to support her family in Jaghori. She recalls,

I wanted to prove my ability to support my family, especially my father who allowed me follow my dream despite of the family elders’ objection. They always blamed my father for sending me to Kabul saying that education for a girl is useless because she eventually ends up a housewife, working at her husband’s home.

Tahera’s account of appreciation of her parents’ support and her sense of moral obligation to repay this support indicates that she acknowledges her success to follow her aspiration as the

result of both her individual efforts and a moral responsibility to succeed in response to her

family investment for her education. As Jyothsna Belliappa noted in her study of successful

Indian women within the same context, women’s subjective motivations such as the need to forge an independent identity and gaining achievement are not separated from the motivation of their parents towards whom they feel a strong sense of moral obligation to reciprocate their support and investment (2012: 64-65). 73 Narratives of Motherwork, Agency, and Resilience: An Oral History of Afghan Immigrant Mothers in the Pacific Northwest

Furthermore, resilience and courage Tahera demonstrated as one of the few girls in the village who follow her ambitions mobilized gradual changes in their small community. Her courage to transcend the patriarchal restrictions have gradually persuaded other girls and families in their homeland to think beyond the restrictive traditional norms. As she emphasized, children education, particularly for girls is now highly valued Jaghori society, in general. One of the interesting photos that I saw in Tahera’s photo album was the picture of her father standing with smile by a car decorated with flowers and velvet ribbons to pick his daughter and his niece in front of the school’s entrance to celebrate their achievements as Awal Numra (certificate given yearly to the top ranked student in each grade).

In fact, I was among the few ones who paved the way for other girls in our neighborhood to receive quality education. I've gone through many hardships but fortunately my younger sisters are now advantaged in many ways. My father gives them rewards if they do well at school. Last year, he bought a brand new bicycle to reward my youngest sister. He even doesn’t allow them do the household works! Their homework and studying is now prioritized.

In addition to this graduate change to value girls’ education, Tahera is satisfied with positive cultural changes in her homeland that would have not been possible without the resistance of new generation of women against the harmful norms and practices. Her way of marriage—choosing her life partner which was not conventional in their extended family—for instance, gradually gave the other girls in the extended family and her relatives the courage and confidence to stand against arranged and early marriage.

My elder nephews could not pursue their education due to their father's—my oldest uncle—opposition who marry them against their will. One of them had not even seen her future husband until she got married. The groom was absent in the engagement ceremony because he was working in Dubai at that time. Nowadays though, the girls in our relative have freedom to choose whether they get married, and whom they marry.

74 Narratives of Motherwork, Agency, and Resilience: An Oral History of Afghan Immigrant Mothers in the Pacific Northwest

Beyond these collective changes in the community, seeking education was transformative

for Tahera herself which empowered her to reach self-awareness she found critical in all aspects

of her life and particularly in her mothering practice, as she acknowledged. Escaping from social

exclusion and dependency allowed her to recognize her rights and develop her own identity away

from home. She believes that being empowered with education and critical thinking is the

starting point for any Afghan woman as mother to promote the life quality of her children, her

family, and ultimately benefit the wider community.

When you step out of home, you find different perspectives, you view everything differently. Before going to school, I was always complaining, blaming my father for all shortcomings in our life. Education and living independently gave me new understanding of myself and the world, especially for us (girls and women in the village), as the world was just limited to home and tiring domestic and agricultural works. My parents are now proud of me. They believe that education gave me the wisdom to know how to behave with others; it showed me the way of life. I respect and appreciate them more than before.

Gradually, the increasing insecurity and suicide attacks in Kabul on one hand, and

potential threats on the way to Jaghori on the other hand, triggered the couple’s anxiety about the

future, particularly the safety of the child they were expecting. Although the capital city of Kabul

is comparatively safer than Helmand, her husband’s working background with the U.S. army was

easily investigated by the Taliban who were actively present in the city’s borders. This risk

noticeably restricted the couple’s mobility. Despite their uncertainty to leave Afghanistan, they

decided to apply for Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) to migrate to the United States. Their visa

application took two and half years to be processed and Tahera was a mother of a one-year-old girl by that time. They eventually left Afghanistan in early June 2015. Tahera said, her husband could not even visit his parents in their homeland before their departure due to the potential risk in borders of Kabul and Ghazni province. 75 Narratives of Motherwork, Agency, and Resilience: An Oral History of Afghan Immigrant Mothers in the Pacific Northwest

They chose a small city in the Pacific Northwest of the United States to have the support of

Amir’s elder brother and his family who moved to the United States two years earlier. Tahera

lived with her brother-in-law’s family for one month until they moved to their new home. As

days passed, she was getting overwhelmed with isolation and homesickness that was exacerbated

with trip of her brother-in-law’s family to Afghanistan during the school break which left Tahera with more sense of loneliness.

The first weeks was better as I had my sister-in-law’s companionship, but suddenly I was alone. Amir was at work and Elina and I were alone at home the whole days. I've never experienced that much level of loneliness and homesickness. I was overwhelmed with depression. No friends and acquaintance… I didn’t know the city, and going outside of home was not interesting anymore because I couldn’t fully understand the language of people outside, I didn’t know anybody.

Gradually Tahera decided to overcome the devastating sense of isolation by looking for

coping strategies. Soon after she became familiar with two public communities in their

neighborhood: Multicultural Center and Mama-baby Group which offered free resources,

English classes, citizenship training, and cultural events. Participating in these communal groups

was beneficial in different ways. In addition to daily interactions with other women and mothers

from different backgrounds which fostered a sense of community, this opportunity enabled her to

improve her English that was one step towards integration into the host society. Tahera later

developed her social network by meeting new people in different events, gatherings, festivals or

through mutual friends. Not long after, some of these new friends become like her family

members in the US, as she said.

Care support system in extended households in Afghanistan which was absent in the U.S.

was one of the gap in the new country which Tahera knew significant to advance in the new

country as she planned. Her husband, the only bread-winner in the family, was full-time 76 Narratives of Motherwork, Agency, and Resilience: An Oral History of Afghan Immigrant Mothers in the Pacific Northwest

employed. Beside his full-time job, he was working on Uber over the weekends to save money.

She neither could rely on the support of her sister-in-law who had to manage her own hectic life

as a working mother. Nonetheless, she was enjoying spending time with her daughter. The

connection between Tahera with her child was noticeably different from what she had with her

mother back in Jaghori, as she recalled. Yet, she acknowledged the generational differences in

terms of identity and culture, and the tension which may arise from such conflict in an alien

context that makes her mothering practice notably different from her own mother and at the same

time different from that of Western parents. She shares,

I know I will be different from a grown-up Elina, two individuals from two different worlds. But I do not let any distance between us. My mother was so kind, but she could not understand me because she couldn’t spend time with us. I want to enhance connection with Elina not only as her mom, but also as her friend.

Tahera’s awareness of her rights as a woman and her capacities as a mother encouraged her to demand for her child better treatments than she received within the family and the society,

as a whole. She prioritized building self-esteem and dignity of her daughter to turn her into an empowered person in the future. She believes that internalizing these values in her child is not

feasible in isolation from the culture of the host country. Sarah Maiter and Usha George (2003)

observed the same strong sense of responsibility in parenting approach of immigrant Sought

Asian mothers to prioritized character development of their children that indicate their awareness

of the influence of the dominant’s social context on the children and the demand for adopting a

parenting style that is responsive to this context (424). Having admitted the reality of American

culture which values individualities, Tahera is expecting her daughter’s tendency to autonomy

and independence in the future—for which she had fought for years ago, back in Afghanistan. 77 Narratives of Motherwork, Agency, and Resilience: An Oral History of Afghan Immigrant Mothers in the Pacific Northwest

While providing guidance and advice on the familial values to set boundaries to protect her daughter, Tahera acknowledges her right to make decision for her future:

She (Elina) most probably will adopt an American identity and lifestyle which is natural, because she is growing up in this country. She may get independence at eighteen, like other Americans… and she may face many challenges in her way. I believe this is my responsibility to teach her how to live a productive and happy life despite the exciting discriminations and obstacles around her. She will always have my support and guidance, as her mother who resisted many of them.

As part of maternal responsibility in Muslim households is transmitting the religious values and the rituals which are the expression of faith such as praying and fasting, mothers are presumed to have the main responsibility for bringing up the children according to Islamic guidance, as Ahmed-Ghosh (2015) notes. Since these values are deeply imbedded in Afghan culture, educating children about these values is expected from Afghan mothers too.

Nevertheless, Tahera does not aim to adhere to restrict traditional mothering practice or repressive parental control. Rather, she desires to raise her daughter in a way that she appreciates both her parents' culture of origin and that of the host society:

Of course, I desire Elina learn and respect her parents ‘values and traditions. But as her mother, I would not compel her to follow them. When she get mature enough, she is the one who decide to be religious or not. Though I prefer she observe the sensitivity of our culture about dating issue and modesty particularly in behaviors and dress when she reach adolescent age… she probably do not choose to wear hijab, and I hope she would neither choose immodest clothing.

While accepting the changes in the new context, Tahera is considering the respect for some core values of her homeland’s culture and its transition to her child. Such selective approach to socialization was also observed by Wakil, Siddique, and Wakil in their study of socialization of immigrants’ children in western Canada. They noted that Muslim and some of racial ethnic immigrant mothers are accepting changes in more “pragmatic values” while resisting alternations in their 'back homes' core values, particularity those associated with 78 Narratives of Motherwork, Agency, and Resilience: An Oral History of Afghan Immigrant Mothers in the Pacific Northwest

“sensitive issues” such as dating and marriage practice in socialization of their children (1981:

934-939).

Figure VI: Traditional Attire

Like other Afghan mothers in this study, Tahera maintained her original identity through practicing the cultural and ethnic values of her place of origin and her desire for its continuity.

Such maintenance of cultural integrity in the face of hospitality from outsiders, is the role played by women—both symbolically and materially—that is considered essential in everyday lives of individuals, as example of what Claire Dwyer defines the ‘predicament’ of diaspora (2000: 477).

Practice of wearing hijab was one of the instances of these values Tahera discussed about in particular. She did not assume it merely as an assertion of religious values or being identifies as

Muslim, but rather as an indication of agency to demonstrate self, her culture, and identity, as she admits:

I am wearing head scarf here… My husband, is though very liberal in many instances. He encourages me to give up wearing head scarf but I prefer to wear it. It gives me confidence. I get used to it and without wearing scarf, I feel lost as if I am missing something… although it comes with a cost of being discriminated and being seemed different from others.

79 Narratives of Motherwork, Agency, and Resilience: An Oral History of Afghan Immigrant Mothers in the Pacific Northwest

As Leila Ahmed argues, hijab to Western eyes, is the 'most visible marker' of the

differences and inferiority of Muslim communities, and particularly women as backward and

oppressed (1992: 152). In contrast to such limited and ethnocentric image of hijab, it is in fact a

deeply entrenched cultural value which is significant in the discussion of women’s rights (Clyne

2002: 34). Tahera’s account of experiencing suspicious gaze in host country implicitly indicates

her awareness of her deferring embodied position as Muslim, racial woman which renders her

visible as “other" in diasporic public spaces.

When I am going out with my sister-in-law’s children who raised here, for instances, I notice their gaze and that the reaction of people is different toward me. I have never seen people asking these kids where they are from. But I was asked many times. Although we look similar in facial characteristics, but I am easily distinguished as different from my appearance (clothing), and my accent.

Moghissi points out that identity is about the relations with ‘others' with whom we share

our values and experiences and with those from whom we are differentiated because of their

different values and experiences (2006: xv). This definition of identity resonates with the

experience of Tahera’s awareness of self within the diasporic spaces that entails a sense of

cultural marginality and constant rethinking her visibility.

The material condition have significantly changes for Tahera by immigration to a safe

place they chose to rebuild their lives and ensure a promising future for their child, as she said.

Nonetheless, the new country is not considered as ‘home’ for Tahera. She is missing the very

unsafe home she left behind to protect her new family. Yearning about the past, she was talking

about the happiness, kinship, and familiar things in Afghanistan with great sense of loss and

resentment. She recalled those years of living in Kabul as "the best days of her life"—where the couple developed a network of friends and acquaintances with whom she shared commonality.

While narrating her memories, Tahera showed me many photos of her engagement and marriage 80 Narratives of Motherwork, Agency, and Resilience: An Oral History of Afghan Immigrant Mothers in the Pacific Northwest

parties which were archived in separated albums in her smartphone. The colorful photos were

depicting her in stunning traditional Afghan dress, with Hazaragi handcrafted silver jewelries,

which she brought with her in the United States with the rest of her cherished belongings, as she

said.

Back home, we used to see friends and relatives at least two to three times in month in different occasions like parties, gatherings, and so on. All the time, I was surrounded by family members, friends, and loved ones. Whenever I remember those memories, I feel deeply alone. By coming to the US, I get deprived from all of them…I missed the colorful stylish Afghani clothes a lot. I missed going to parties, wearing makeup, dancing, and communicating with my friends in Kabul… I can’t wear my favorite cloths here. They look very different from clothes people are wearing in the West. There is no place to wear them at all. I mean there is not any Afghan wedding and engagement party, or any kind of celebration and gathering like those in Afghanistan. No relative and friends to have fun with them.

Tahera’s remembering of home resonates with Khattak’s statement on Afghan women’s

account of home. She confirms that the home—Afghanistan—for these women is remembered as

a place where they were happy and experienced the joy of familial support, togetherness, and

interpersonal relation (2002: 12). Likewise, Diane Sabenacio Nititham asserts that moving from

considering home as a 'physical place' to an 'active and fluid space' recognizes that feeling at

home is not exclusively about settlement and integration, but also about 'familiarity' and

'belonging' that is achieved through relationships (2017: 39). She further argues that an

individual’s perception of home in the host country is profoundly affected by the interpersonal

discrimination and politics of exclusion which create a sense of liminality (2017: 40).

Considering the emotional and social connotations of home in the context of migration, hence, feeling at homes is defined the opposite site of feeling excluded or like an outsider (Castañeda

2018: 6).

81 Narratives of Motherwork, Agency, and Resilience: An Oral History of Afghan Immigrant Mothers in the Pacific Northwest

Figure VII: Henna patterns [On night before Eid-al- Fitr at the end of Ramadan, Tahera applied henna to her hands and her daughter’s hands, painting flowers, as Afghan tradition.]

Furthermore, absence of home, separation from the familiar not only make the entry to the host country uncomfortable, Tahera should remain flexible particularly within the family unit as mother and wife in the midst of the transition’s challenges and dramatic shifting, as Ahmed

Ghosh (2015) observed in her study of Afghan immigrant mothers in the West. Hence, her experience of mothering is not only centered around raising and nurturing her child, it also involves negotiation of her identity as well as reconstruction of her roles in the new domain.

82 Narratives of Motherwork, Agency, and Resilience: An Oral History of Afghan Immigrant Mothers in the Pacific Northwest

Discussion

The purpose of this oral history project was to interrogate the lived experience of four

Afghan immigrants while focusing on their motherwork from a life-course perspective. The

informants’ accounts of their lived experiences shed light into their powerful expression of

agency, resilience, and resistance—within varied conditions in which they have been

embedded—that at the same time contests the master narrative concerning Afghan women in

general. As Mona Saleh (2019) argues, marginalized mothers’ accounts of their lived experience challenge the single stories which depict them as ‘victims’, for re-telling stories brings the

agency and creativity of these women into visibility. More significantly, these women’s unique

and individualized maternal experience and their mortherwork illuminate a matricentric understanding of motherhood beyond the dominant ideology.

In this chapter the thematic aspects of the informants’ account of their lived history are discussed. It specifically includes a discussion of their maternal experience that entails agency, strategies, and resistance. These women’s narratives revealed their struggle within the hegemonic systems of oppression which is not merely those they have gone through in exile;

they had been exposed to prolonged years of oppression and marginalization in Afghanistan that

significantly circumscribed and influenced their lives. Hence, the themes which emerged throughout the collective narratives of the women in both contexts are addressed in following

parts.

As Andrea O’Reilly argues, the practice of mothering is empowering for women when

they live their lives from a position of authenticity, and autonomy: to this end, the maternal

authority and agency are valued as it defines motherhood as a political site wherein these women

evoke social changes both within their families and their societies—as a form of activism (2008: 83 Narratives of Motherwork, Agency, and Resilience: An Oral History of Afghan Immigrant Mothers in the Pacific Northwest

7). The practice of mothering hence is not limited to the practices related to doing mothering,

rather it is also about the broader range of everyday practices and the formal, economic, political

practices which shape the institution of motherhood and the lives of those living in relation with

it, as Patricia Short asserts in her reflection on motherhood (2005: 285). This statement is also in

line with the principle of women of color motherhood that is served as a site where women

express the power of self-reliance, independency, and belief in their empowerment (Hill, 2008:

108).

The informants’ narratives in the context of war and armed conflict, in particular,

provided us with unique insights into their strong collective consciousness and self-defined

standpoint which empowered them. While conforming to confinement and the expectations of

the oppressive regimes, they navigated through the oppression to ensure the integrity and

survival of their communities. As Collins asserts, behind the behavioral conformity of the ethnic

racial women to the oppressing situation, there are acts of resistance, both enormous and

organized, which derives from their strong sense of self-esteem that enable them to resist any attacks and harms on their dignity and selfhood (1990: 97). Mahtab’s account of wearing burqa and being accompanied by male member of her family was in line with the imposed rules by the

Taliban who banned her community's access to food resources; yet, she demonstrated powerful resistance to such oppressive power through the very act of hiding the packages of foods under her burqa to save her family and community from danger of starvation.

As Ahmed-Ghosh asserts, Afghan women’s mothering experience are constantly shifting,

adjusting, and morphing given the social-cultural and socioeconomic environment (2015:128).

Zeina Zaatari made a similar claim about the dynamic nature of motherhood within conflict-

affected setting. In her inquiry into experience of Muslim women in the context of war, she noted 84 Narratives of Motherwork, Agency, and Resilience: An Oral History of Afghan Immigrant Mothers in the Pacific Northwest

that motherhood is not statistic for these women who constantly redefine their mothering

practices through their subjectivity in different sociopolitical context and beyond the domains of

the family (2006: 35). This statement resonates with the narratives of the women in this study

who extended their roles into their communities through the praxis of motherhood.

Agency, Resilience, and Strategy

The dominant depictions of the Muslim women in diaspora as passive and backward,

which are defined based on the politization of their bodies, have denied these women’s agency

and resilience, as Ahmed Ghosh (2015) argues. The women in this study opposed this dominate

ideology through displaying agency and autonomy in variety of life conditions both in their

homeland and diaspora. The stories told by these women echo the collective history of Afghan

women, who proved to play active and crucial roles in shaping their destinies and subverting

political directives, rather than be a ‘passive recipients’ of political and ideological constructions,

as Afshar asserts (2007: 237).

The actions, or “maternal tactics” (Scheper-Hughes 1994) taken by the informants of this study during lasting years of instability and displacement are not those of victims but of the empowered. Their narratives demonstrate the active and vital roles they have played throughout their lives whether in the wake of violence and calamities being under extreme forms of oppression, or under the harsh reality of exile maintaining their families' integrity and well- being. While transcending the intersecting oppression of race, gender, and religion, they have been the creative agents of changes and transformation. Yet, their contributions remained unacknowledged and invisible in the dominant discourse.

Taking on a new gender roles and remaining flexible to develop new skills is one of the

unique demonstration of agency and resilience by the informants of this study. Gender roles in 85 Narratives of Motherwork, Agency, and Resilience: An Oral History of Afghan Immigrant Mothers in the Pacific Northwest

Afghan households are generally formed along with the traditional Afghan lines, yet Afghan

women maternal standpoint have not been restricted to such prescribed norms. Hazara women, in

particular, have shown their ability to mobilize their social and cultural resources to response to

the most demanding situations while adjusting the notion of female roles and gender relation as

Alessandro Monsutti (2007:184) observed in his ethnographic study of this community through

constant state of instability, conflict, and displacement.

Moreover, migration and its entailed demands in the new condition, in particular, have required these women to redefine their position by taking on new tasks and responsibilities that may have not conformed to their traditional-defined gender roles. In turn, Afghan men who realized the significance of gender solidarity in survival of their communities, would oppose women’s marginalization and the patriarchal ideologies of male superiority and dominance which have traditionally defined men as decision-maker, providers, and the head of households

(Rostami-Povey, 2012). This sentiments resonates with the narratives of the women in this study who have constantly confronted subordination and constrains concerting gender roles—either those rooted in the expected traditional norms or those imposed to them—that mobilized positive changes. Mina’s dynamic practice of mothering beyond the domestic realm is a salient example of this gender roles negotiation. In contrast to the traditional motherhood, she has redefined her roles beyond the private sphere of household by combining motherhood with paid employment that has come with the recognition and support of her husband, as she related.

Furthermore, Afghan women have displayed their ability to strategize within the limitations

and constrains through reconstruction of notions of self and reflection on different facets of their adopted identities to function effectively within verity of personal, economic, and sociocultural settings, without losing their sense of self, as Afshar observed (2012:1-2). Likewise, the 86 Narratives of Motherwork, Agency, and Resilience: An Oral History of Afghan Immigrant Mothers in the Pacific Northwest

narratives told by the informants revealed their potency to take creative actions in times of

enduring hardship through redefining and reassigning new tasks and commitments for the

interest of their families and their communities. Inventing different coping strategies and

mechanisms, such as establishing networks of solidarity for the survival of their community

members in response to conflict and persecution is a tangible example of the essential roles they

played beyond the conservative traditional norms.

These women proven to be the main actors in retaining and nurturing of their families'

integrity both financially and emotionally, what Hale Afshar calls the "moral economy of

kin"(2012: 2). While the older women like Habiba played crucial role in functioning and well-

being of her extended family through her leadership position, younger women like Mina

contributed to accommodate the needs of her family through income-generating works—either

by the skills she had once excelled like embroidery and tailoring in the time of war, or being full-

time employed in the host county. Similarly, Tahera’s contribution to her family’s livelihood by

working in familial farms in the face of economic adversity, or Mahtab’s commitment to take on

extra responsibilities in the absence of her husband, indicate their nurturing capacity to

contribute to the moral economy of their families.

Co-mothering

One of the outstanding feature of Afghan women’s motherhood is the importance of co-

mothering practice in shaping women’s maternal experience. Back in their home country, these

women would raise their children with the co-mothering support of their extended family ties as women’s responsibilities go beyond the full-time intensive child-bearing that patriarchal norms demand. This cooperation among Afghan women for childcare support is not only a matter of

Afghan cultural values, but also as a strategy to deal with their economically-disadvantaged 87 Narratives of Motherwork, Agency, and Resilience: An Oral History of Afghan Immigrant Mothers in the Pacific Northwest status that demanded younger women’s labor outside of home, as the informants related.

Habiba’s contribution to caregiving of her grandchildren while her daughters-in-law were involved in outside chores, demonstrates the crucial role she played in co-mothering practice in this context. Nonetheless, co-mothering is not limited to childcare provided by the elderly women of the extended family. Tahera’s contribution in taking care of her younger siblings in

Afghanistan, for instance, is an example of co-mothering support provided by the oldest daughter and other members of Afghan family households.

O’Reilly argues that involving family members in co-mothering is one of the features of the empowered mothers who are not considering child-care as the sole responsibility of the biological mothers (2008, 7). In this sense, motherhood is conceptualized as a collective rather than individual enterprise (Hill 2008: 115). Similarly, such cooperative child bearing has traditionally been central to the institution of Black motherhood that is evolved beyond the cross- culturally definition of mothering as a privatized practice (Collins 1990; Hill 2008). Had these women lived in Afghanistan, they would be still provided with support from their extended families in child bearing. Nonetheless, they maintain connection with their family members back home to benefit from their support in the children’s socialization to the culture and values of their place of origin, regardless of the physical distance and the rearrangement of family dynamics. Additionally, retaining transnational family ties by the ethics racial mothers in this context is served to exchange emotional and psychological resources rather than material assistance, according to Hill (2008).

Motherwork in Exile

The informants shared a common reason to immigrate to the United States: to secure a promising future of their children and to ensure their safety. This is because the devastation of 88 Narratives of Motherwork, Agency, and Resilience: An Oral History of Afghan Immigrant Mothers in the Pacific Northwest

insecurity and the ongoing state of instability in Afghanistan left these women and their families

with little prospects of a secure future for their children in the country. However, migration put

extra burden on these women themselves who are expected to navigate a life in their critical

position as mother in an alien culture. Their experience of mothering in diaspora is obviously

different from the maternal experience of their mothers in Afghanistan. In addition to being

deprived from co-mothering support of their extended family, they are pressured with more

responsibilities and concerns given the increasing inhospitable condition in the host country.

Stability and continuity of their cultural identity and heritage of place of origin is common desire

held by the mothers in this study that is reflected in their practice of children upbringing—which

to a great extent is rooted in their traditional roles as the bearer of traditional and cultural values

(Thapan, 2005; Benn & Jawad, 2003). However, fostering a meaningful racial identity in the

next generation within a society that disparage non-white people, entailed an undeniable tension, as Collins notes (1994: 57). This inter-generational tension is particularly a complicated

dimension of mothering for women like Mahtab whose children are transcending to adolescent

who resist to their parents’ attempt to install Afghan cultural values and norms.

Their children’s knowledge of Afghan culture is mainly a constructed image of homeland based

on the second-hand recollection of their parents’ narratives and their frequent distance

connections with the relatives and extended families back in Afghanistan, as I observed. Yet,

their ‘hybrid identities’, which is the result of transitional and trans-generational trauma, expose

them to complex cultural politics that require them to represent a country that is completely

unfamiliar to them, as Ann Cvetkovich observed in her research on Afghan American diaspora

(2011: 96). For the children of the informants through, this situation is even more complicated

due to the stereotypes and the predetermined discourses which make them conscious about their 89 Narratives of Motherwork, Agency, and Resilience: An Oral History of Afghan Immigrant Mothers in the Pacific Northwest

outsider status as Afghan and Muslim. Although these mothers’ children are experiencing the

integration and assimilation relatively much less difficult than that of their parents, they are

experiencing a great amount of uncertainty in negotiating their identities. In the present discourse

of hate in which ethnic minorities and Muslims are labelled and otherized as ‘terrorist, backward,

and savage’ (Afshar, 2007; Kumar; 2012; Saleh, 2019; Benn & Jawad, 2003), the second

generation of Afghan immigrants find it difficult to navigate between the parents' cultural values

and expectations and those of the host community.

Nonetheless, oppression does not equate mothers’ powerlessness since their undeniable

power is embedded in their motherwork, as Porter argues (2008:192). Motherwork is this sense

is a means of transformative power through which women seek to preserve, grow, and empower

their children (Porter, 2008:193). In addition to investing in their children’s upbringing and their

thriving in spite of their disadvantaged status given the social, cultural, and economic

boundaries, the women in this study are resisting the oppression and stereotypical perceptions

concerning their identity. As Collins notes, the functioning of the ethnic and racial mothers

within the systems of oppression indicates a dialectical nature of activism and oppression (1990:

101). While the hegemonic discourse, ranging from mainstream media to governmental bodies

are producing stereotypical misleading portrayal of Muslims and Afghans in particular, these

mothers contest them through their everyday motherwork to protect their children and prepare

them to navigate within the oppressive system.

Home

One of the main themes that emerged from women’s narratives was the concept of

‘home’ the implications of which goes beyond a physical location. As Ahmed-Ghosh argues, the

concept of ‘home' for Afghan immigrant women is both complicated and nuanced in its 90 Narratives of Motherwork, Agency, and Resilience: An Oral History of Afghan Immigrant Mothers in the Pacific Northwest understanding due to the dilemmas in terms of “what is left behind” created by geopolitical shifts, and “how to grapple with a sense of home,” through multiple dislocations (2011:239). In contract to the white, western ideology of the home that prioritizes a physical entity along with a set of social, economic, and sexual relations (Bowlby, Gregory & Mckie, 1997: 343), ‘home’ for the women in this study have different implications, both physically and symbolically. Despite their settlement in the new country, the informants’ sense of belonging remained in highlands of

Ghazni, where they were born and spent most of their lives.

Their interchangeable use of ‘home’ and ‘Waten’ (Dari term for homeland) indicates their sense of belonging to their community and the county they left behind. Therefore, separation from home means leaving behind a sense of identity, a culture, and a personal and collective history (Khattak 2002, 105). The home, which these women related through their life narratives, was a land where they experienced dramatic hardship, war, threat, violence, and oppression. Yet, they are longing to return to this very unsafe ‘home ’as disconnection from it brought about them a great sense of loss and despair. Such contradictory interpretation and representation of home

‘coexist’ in Afghan women’s discourse of home and displacement which is widely observed in their narratives, as Khattak noted (2002: 106).

While most of the informants adopt a common strategy of reproducing the politics of home by maintaining a transnational kinship network thorough constant reconnection with their homeland, they represent their attachment to the ‘home’ left behind differently yet in strong ways. While some women like Habiba resorts to depiction of ‘home’ as an ideal place through recollecting the cherished memories of togetherness in Jaghori, others like Mahtab recreates some part of homelands in her house in the U.S. by turning it to a familiar place through material objects and cherished items such as traditional furniture and decorations; or through adhering to 91 Narratives of Motherwork, Agency, and Resilience: An Oral History of Afghan Immigrant Mothers in the Pacific Northwest

traditional life style, cooking the traditional foods, and watching Afghan TV programs. Such

practice of reconstruction of the familiar space, As Ahmed notes, is not only an attempt to define

self, it is considered as psychological means of coping with separation from home and its

entailed sense of loss in the new country (2005:106).

In case of the elder women, Habiba, who came to the U.S. as elderly, the sense of home and belonging is absolutely missing and unattainable in diaspora where she found herself in an unknown and insecure space. Hence, absence of 'home' has brought about her a deep sense of

resentment and insecurity that provokes constant thoughts of return to her ‘Waten’. Despite the

constant pain and suffering she experienced in 'home', it is seen as what Khattak calls a ‘positive

lotus of identity’ rather than home as the primary site of oppression; this is because these women

can find a reflection of themselves in the space of the home which is familiar (2002).

Additionally, separation form ‘home' for her means losing her status as mother, and leaving

behind her children, the familial relationships, and her community for whom she fought all her

life during prolonged years of hardship.

Identity Negotiation

To investigate the diasporic identity, first we should recognize identity as ‘positioning’ and situational—constructed in relation to the given context—rather than a fixed essence (Hall,

1990: 226). As it has been noted, “those in diaspora are neither inside nor outside of the collectivity…they transcend beyond the many opposing paradigms of culture, identity, striving to enter into a new phase of identity ... a meeting point of different cultures and identities’

(Orlando 1999: 59, 110)” (Rostami-Povey 2012). Hence, identity is both unifying and separating; it is shaped through the individuals’ relations with others who share the same values 92 Narratives of Motherwork, Agency, and Resilience: An Oral History of Afghan Immigrant Mothers in the Pacific Northwest

and experiences and with those from whom they are differentiated due to their different values

and experiences (Moghissi 2006: xv).

Migration inevitably demands the fluidity of identities as the very process of moving

‘otherizes’ the migrants which is particularly the case with the transnational migrants whose

political, cultural, and economic aspects of their citizenship have been scattered, as Afshar asserts (2007:240). She further argues that the process of recreating identity, which is gendered, is even more complex for women immigrants who are considered the 'guardian of culture, home, and heart’ while the new condition requires them to play far more active roles in the new condition (2007: 240). The informants’ adjustment of their identity confirms this argument as they constantly attempt to retain the heritage of their place of origin while remaining flexible to adapt and conform to the cultural expectations of the new place in which they are positioned. In fact, identity negotiation of the informants of this study within the social, cultural, and local context of their everyday life in the host community is an expected gender role which requires them to preserve their cultural and religious integrity. Their sense of responsibility for transmitting Afghan heritage and religious values to their children particularity their daughters— as future mothers—indicate the gendered implication of diaspora identifications.

These cultural expectations from Muslim mothers through the gendered process of identification seems to be a common practice among Muslim households where women are taught and expected to be the bearer of cultural and religious values and traditions (Thapan,

2005). Claire Dwyer, in her study of the young generation of Muslim women, for instance, noted that they recognize reproducing and upholding their 'parental culture' as gendered parental expectation that they assume as part of their motherhood practice in the future; however, their responses to this expectation varies. (2000:477-478). 93 Narratives of Motherwork, Agency, and Resilience: An Oral History of Afghan Immigrant Mothers in the Pacific Northwest

'Otherized' Status in Diaspora

Undoubtedly, the integration and assimilation of the immigrant women, to a great extent,

depends on the quality of reception in the host community. For some of the women in this study,

there have been constant rethinking their visibility in public spaces that has significantly affected

their sense of ease and belonging to their host community. The feelings of surveillance, cultural

suspicious, and fear of violence and profiling in public spaces, experienced by these women, are

also familiar to many Muslim and ethnic women—perceived to be Muslim— in their host

communities. Tahera and Mahtab amounts of their encounter with the suspicious gaze of people which is mainly driven from their distinctive 'otherized’ visibility—is a salient example of such feeling of insecurity and alien-ness Muslim women face within the diasporic public spaces.

The current climate of Islamophobia in Western countries emerging in response to the

recent terrorist attacks and the entailing cultural and political rhetoric have burdened Muslim

women with additional discriminations (Jasperse et al., 2012). As Hale Afshar notes, on the light

of this inhospitable condition that portrayed Muslim women as ‘other’, the ethnic minorities,

particularly the covered Muslim women are facing with additional problems in terms of their

politics, their lived experiences and life chances as they are symbolized as the living example of

backwardness and fearful subordination since Islam is perceived to have defined itself ‘through

disgust for women’s bodies (Afshar 2008: 411-420).

Barbara Perry, in her study of hate crime against Muslim women, emphasizes on the

intersectionality of gender, religion, and race that makes these women more vulnerable to bias

and violence in diasporic spaces which is motivated by the multiple subject positions they

occupy (2013: 74). This argument explains the positionality of the women in this study who

found themselves alienated because of their ethnicity, faith, and gender. In fact, they are facing 94 Narratives of Motherwork, Agency, and Resilience: An Oral History of Afghan Immigrant Mothers in the Pacific Northwest

‘ethno-violence’ that once targeted them in their country of origin because of their multi-faceted

minority status—being women, Hazara, and Shi’a. Being once considered as 'others’ in their

homeland, they still continue living with their status of outsiders in the host country.

All four women maintain their religious identity as Muslim though adhering to the Islamic norms

including wearing head-scarf in public spaces. In contrast to the dominant ideology which

accounts wearing hijab as women’s lack of agency (Saleh, 2019), they consider it as a matter of

personal choice and liberating to retain their ‘self’ and their desired way of being. While teaching

such Islam religions values and rituals to their children, these mothers maintained this opinion

that religious practices should not be compelled to women, and that their children—particularly

their daughters—should be given the same freedom to adopt their way of life and believe

themselves. In this sense, resorting to religious practices may not essentially indicate their

strengthened adherence to Islam as a religion, rather as an ideology and form of resistance to

challenge the global power structures and the hostility of the dominant system (Moghissi, 2006).

In her study of Afghan women is diaspora, Rostami-Povey confirmed that adhering to the

religions values is not only an expression of these women’s cultural and religious identity driven

from their learned and internalized traditions and beliefs, it is also an expression of collective

Muslim identity to express solidarity in the face of the increasing backlash against their Islamic

culture and identity.

Conclusion

In sum, this oral history project aimed to ‘de-center’ the hegemonic discourse and shift

the discursive center through interrogating the personalized and nuanced accounts of maternal experience of these Afghan immigrant women in the Pacific Northwest diaspora. The willingness of these mothers to contribute to this oral history project with great level of openness 95 Narratives of Motherwork, Agency, and Resilience: An Oral History of Afghan Immigrant Mothers in the Pacific Northwest and honesty, indicate their recognition of the importance of oral history as an inherently feminist de-centering act that brings the realities of their lives into visibility. Across different times and locales, their oral histories offer counter-narratives to the essentialist assumptions about Afghan women in general. More specifically, their stories provide illuminating insight into their experiences of negotiation and subversion of intersecting forms of oppression through their adaptive maternal praxes.

Drawing upon Patricia Hill Collins feminist perspective on black women’s maternal agency and experience, this study sought to explore how mothering for these racialized immigrant mothers serves as the key site of identity formation through socialization of children into the values and history of their place of origin. At the same time, this study aimed to highlight mothering as a site of resistance to prepare the children to navigate and survive, both physically and culturally, in the diaspora. Collins’s call for “shifting the center” informed the analysis of maternal experience of these diasporic mothers within a Western, white-dominated context. The maternal narratives and personalized statements of the mothers at the center of this study encourage us to decontextualize the practice of mothering and turn the focus from the white middle-class ideology of motherhood through a discussion of their agency, empowerment, and self-reliance. These women’s various mothering practices, which shift and adjust as their families move through different social-cultural and socioeconomic environments, center around the notion of ‘motherwork’ with multiple dimensions: mothering as practice, mothering as identity, and motherhood as institution.

In particular, the maternal narratives in this oral history project “shift the center” in three critical ways. Firstly, they shed light on the hidden layers of experiences and lives of Afghan mothers navigating identity, belonging, and the traumas of long-term war in the diaspora. Such 96 Narratives of Motherwork, Agency, and Resilience: An Oral History of Afghan Immigrant Mothers in the Pacific Northwest subjugated knowledge on Afghan women’s maternal agency, shift the center of interrogation of

Afghan women’s experience from the selective and victimized representation in the hegemonic discourse to women as agents of change and narrators of their own lives. Second, these realities are highlighted in the stories of the Afghan women living in the Pacific Northwest region which lies outside the larger Afghan diasporic hubs in the United States. Finally, these oral histories

“shift the center” by moving the focus away from experiences of war, violence, and gendered oppression which have been the conventional lenses through which Western scholars and media have understood Afghan women in the last four decades.

Yet, the analysis of these diasporic maternal narratives complicate the idea of “shifting the center” articulated by Hill Collins. These mothers’ oral account of their everyday lives in diaspora shed light into different layers of their mothering practice in private sphere of their household in which they, as mothers, are expected to be guardians of Afghan traditions and cultural values. Nonetheless, despite their attempts to maintain their cultural identity and resisting 'controlling image’ concerning their otherized subjectivity, some aspects of the “center”

(white, middle-class, citizen, Christian norms) remain intact. While mothers like Mina and

Mahtab resist to fulfill the traditional mothering expectations in the host country in response to the dominant ideology and the stereotypical perceptions, the younger mothers like Tahera find that she is still contending with the hegemony of the dominant discursive and representational center. Specifically, Tahera’ s account of mothering in American society and her prediction that she will need to modify her maternal expectations and practices to fit into the host culture demonstrates the presence and power of the ‘center.’ Tahera recognizes that her relationship to her daughter and her daughter’s upbringing will necessarily diverge from her own and stray from the norms of social life in Afghanistan. Her insights expose the complex ways diasporic mothers 97 Narratives of Motherwork, Agency, and Resilience: An Oral History of Afghan Immigrant Mothers in the Pacific Northwest may position themselves and their maternal praxes vis à vis the hegemonic ‘center’ of mothering.

Tahera shares how she negotiates with the ‘center’— rather than directly ‘shifting’ it — using a mix of resignation and agency. She simultaneously laments how the exigencies of being accepted in American society will change her daughter’s adolescence and approaches these realities with hope. Her story, in particular, complicates the ways we understand how diasporic mothers contend with the hegemonic ‘center.’ Returning to Hill Collins’ charge, these mothers demonstrate the importance of attending to small shifts and negotiations with the ‘center’ and the ways these contribute to the eventual displacement of the ‘center.’

Rethinking the idea of "shifting the center” is essential in order to unpack the diverse forms that motherhood and “motherwork” may take for the racialized women in the United

States and, more specifically, in the white-majority Pacific Northwest. In doing so, a historically and politically informed feminist scholarship is required to examine the effects of power dynamics in shaping the maternal experience of these women in diasporic context. This is particularly essential in interrogating the lived experience of Afghan immigrant mothers whose motherwork strategies and maternal agency are derived from theses hegemonic dynamics.

Exploring these women’s maternal experience with consideration of the nuances not only enhanced a better understanding of the Afghan diaspora and their collective history, but also underscore the complicated dimensions of their motherhood which make it distinctive from the dominant discourse.

98 Narratives of Motherwork, Agency, and Resilience: An Oral History of Afghan Immigrant Mothers in the Pacific Northwest

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Appendices

Appendix A: Overview of Afghan Displacement Numbers (Waves)