http://www.harpersbazaar.com/ukPHOTOGRAPHS: HOWARD J DAVIS FROM THE SET OF THE FILM ‘RED SNOW’, FREDERIC MECHICHE/ANDREAS VON EINSIEDEL. SEE STOCKISTS FOR DETAILS154 | HARPER’S BAZAAR | December 2019COUR AGE &
CON V ICTION
BOOKS
Mozhdah Jamalzadah has overcome violence
and controversy to become a beacon ofoptimism for oppressed Afghan women
By ERICA WAGNER
in Voice of Rebellion, a new biography written by the Canadian jour-
nalist Roberta Staley, in close collaboration with Mozhdah herself.
Born in Kabul, she was a little girl when her family fled the violence
i n A f g h a n i s t a n i n t h e l a t e 1 9 8 0 s , fi r s t t o P a k i s t a n a n d t h e n t o C a n a d a ,
where they were given asylum. Undeterred by the hardship she and
her relatives had faced, she went on to study broadcast journalism
and began to dream of returning to her home country, where she
would show the power of music to bring hope and renewal. ‘I always
wanted to go back to Afghanistan,’ she says, ‘and my parents said,
“You have to do something for your country. You have to give
back to those people in need.”’ After graduating from college, she
began to make and release music videos, which took a political
turn following the terrible acid attack on a group of Kandahar
schoolgirls in 2008. Her 2009 song ‘Dokhtare Afghan’ (Afghan
Girl), about the heroines of Afghanistan’s history, was a huge hit,
giving her the national profile that would lead to The Mozhdah Show.
Now settled back in Canada, Mozhdah has moved into film:
earlier this year, she appeared in Red Snow, the project of Marie
Clements, a renowned Canadian playwright, director and producer.
It tells the story of Dylan, a Gwich’in soldier from the Canadian
Arctic, who is captured in Afghanistan; Mozhdah plays Khatira,
the educated daughter of Dylan’s Afghan translator Aman. ‘Marie
showed up with this tough role: the character takes matters into
her own hands, chops off her hair and goes to save her family,’ she
recalls. ‘I said, “That’s exactly what I would do, that’s me!”’
Mozhdah regularly goes back to Kabul – ‘a magical place’ – espe-
cially for holidays such as Eid and Persian New Year. Because of the
dangers, anything from Kabul that appears on her Instagram
account has to be posted after she is safely out of the country.
‘Recently, I feel the situation is getting much worse,’ she says. ‘The
last time I went, I had a very uneasy feeling. It’s difficult not
to be able to go freely to a place that you love so much.’ She is by
nature an optimist (‘Whatever the obstacles in my life, I’ve tried to
look for the good and not think about the bad’), but admits it is hard
to r e m a i n p o sit i ve i n t he f a c e of s o muc h de s t r uc t ion. ‘ T he s e p e ople
deserve a break,’ she says. ‘It’s been more than four decades of war
and no end in sight. Sometimes you think a situation is so bad that it
ca n’t get worse, so you just have to hope it gets bet ter.’
Her music is joyous, her presence powerful, but there is some-
thing restless about Mozhdah – perhaps because she knows that her
power and joy are not available to all. ‘What I want more than any-
thing is for young Afghan women to one day be free and to feel
empowered,’ she tells me. ‘And for Afghan men to see women
as their equals, for all Afghan women and girls to have a place in
schools, the workplace and society. I want that to be the norm – just
a s it is now in most ot her places in t he world. That is my hope.’
‘Voice of Rebellion: How Mozhdah Jamalzadah Brought Hope to
Afghanistan’ by Roberta Staley (£18.99, Greystone Books) is out now.
Mozhdah will be speaking at the Bazaar At Work Summit (www.
bazaarsummit.co.uk) on 13 November.he singer and broadcaster Mozhdah Jamalzadah had
been hosting her own television programme in Kabul for
two years when the attack came. The Mozhdah Show,
based on the format pioneered by Oprah Winfrey, broke
new ground in Afghanistan when it premiered in 2010. Broadcast
twice a week in prime time, it tackled subjects that were often taboo
in this war-torn country – family abuse, violence against women,
children’s mental health – and made Mozhdah a star: Barack and
Michelle Obama invited her to sing for them on International
Women’s Day in 2010, and she finally got to meet her heroine Oprah.
But so publicly challenging cultural norms in a country where
girls had been killed simply for trying to attend school was a dan-
gerous undertaking. In 2011, Mozhdah broached the subject of
divorce on the show; bomb threats to the station followed and, not
long afterwards, she was assaulted by a male colleague she had beli-
eved was an ally. He threatened to rape her, insinuating that if she
acceded to his demands he would quash rumours that she had a boy-
friend – unthinkable in Afghanistan. She managed to escape, thanks
to her knowledge of tae kwon do, shoving him away, but it was a
shocking awakening. ‘I thought I knew my enemies,’ she tells me.
‘This came out of nowhere. For me to have been around someone I
trusted – you begin to think there is no one you can go to.’ It was not
long after this that Mozhdah left to join her family in Vancouver,
advised to do so for her safety by the Canadian embassy in Kabul.
Now, for the first time, she has shared her story with the worldMozhdah
Jamalzadah
in the film
‘Red Snow’T