Two Lovers forbidden to marry by their families forced to date in secret. If you think this sounds familiar, that's not what we're talking about. We are talking about Ali and Zakia, an Afghan couple that risked everything for their love. And today, we're going to hear the real story behind the reported story. I'm Sarah Wendell.
I'm Alicia Rai. I welcome to lovestruck daily, where we bring a love story to your years, every single day. I'm in love with that I'm in love with you
know, I am a firm believer in the happiness and the general support of being in love with someone and how that can overcome a lot of problems and a lot of issues. But I think we also have to acknowledge that cultural differences can create big differences between people. Oh, yeah, Big time, big time. I mean, I experienced that because I converted to Judaism. So I am raising Jewish children, I have a Jewish household, I did not grow up with either of those things, I did not have a Jewish childhood. And I did not grow up in a Jewish home. So the way in which Adam and I approach being Jewish, is informed by both of us, it would be very easy, completely against my personality, but very easy to be like you're in charge of all of the Jewish stuff, I will just do whatever you say, again, not my personality
at all. So I am in an intercultural relationship as well. Kai is Liberian American, he was born here, but his parents are from Liberia. And I am Indian American. And so we're both your first generation Americans. And we do find that we have a lot more similarities than we have differences, like we, you know, grew up in very different places. And our parents are very different. But at the same time, a lot of our cultural contexts are the same, you know, the things that I struggled with in school he also struggled with in school because he was different, and I felt different. And you know, so it's, it's a little odd, because now we're in a different culture than the ones that our parents were raised in completely. And I wonder how things will be for our kids. Like, I don't know what, what it'll be like for them and what but but we do try very hard to incorporate both cultures. And as we're planning the wedding, we're trying very hard to incorporate both cultures. But yeah, it's it's interesting how sometimes you have more similarities and differences. It's really interesting.
Yeah. And that when you are when your foundational goal is I want to work this out with you together, you find a way to not just compromise, but to blend and merge and highlight and accentuate and reinvent things that are traditionally important to you. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. But it's all about figuring out the way forward, right?
Yeah. It's all about figuring it out for yourself, for your families for your culture. Yeah. We were recently brought a story from journalist rod Norland who reported from his western perspective, on a couple in Afghanistan, two people who fell deeply in love, but were forbidden to marry by their families and by their culture.
When we first read this story, we sort of took it at face value because hey, journalism, that's how it works. You read it and you think, oh, okay, but we were curious to learn the real story behind the headlines. So here to shed light on this romance is Dr. Bihar Jalali? Dr. Jalali is a professor of modern Middle Eastern history at Loyola University, her area of expertise is modernization and women's rights in the 20th century under the old regime. Please welcome Dr. Shefali.
Thank you so much for joining us. Dr. Jalali. We're very excited to have you. We we came across the story and we wanted to speak to somebody who, you know, might know a little bit more about it. Can you give us just a brief rundown of your academic areas?
Sure. So I have a PhD in Near Eastern Studies, and I focus specifically on the modern history of Afghanistan. And I worked at the American University of Afghanistan for about eight and a half years. From 2009 to 2017, I founded the first Gender Studies program in Afghanistan. So I do specialize a lot on women and gender in the Middle East. History of the modern Middle East, and specifically the history of Afghanistan.
Amazing. Wow, that's a quite a list of accomplishments. For listeners who may not have a lot of intimate knowledge about this story. Can you tell us the major parts of the story not through the Romeo and Juliet lens like just how how you might relate it to somebody?
Sure. So this is a love story between, you know, a man and a woman and rural Afghanistan in the central part of Afghanistan. Zakia the woman and a lead the man and they come from different ethnic groups as a Tajik Elisa, Hazara, and Hazara are an ethnic group in Afghanistan that have historically been marginalized. They face a lot of oppression and discrimination by the Afghan government historically, but also, these to this couple, who fall in love. They don't just happen to come from different ethnic groups. They come from two different sects of Islam has auras are overwhelmingly a Shia Muslims, which is the minority sect of Islam. And Zakia is a Sunni Muslim, which is the majority sect of Islam. So the reason why rod Norland the writer chose to dubbed as as a Romeo and Juliet is because, you know, they come from different ethnic groups, they come to different sects of Islam, but it's a lot more complicated than how it's presented in the sense that they're from a rural community where ethnic divides, sectarian divides are a lot more pronounced than you would have in a town or city setting. So that's something that really, you know, is not captured in this story. It's also important to remember that Afghanistan is a country at war for 44 years. So you've had a lot of social disruptions, the overwhelming majority of the urbanites have fled the country in waves and waves of migrations. And in the cities when Zach yet and Ali fall in love, their parents forbid it, and they have to run off, you know, it's an illicit love affair. And in broad Norrland story, there's a lot of almost all the emphasis placed on their ethnic and religious backgrounds, when in fact, in Afghanistan, falling in love or wanting to marry for love has historically been something taboo for all ethnic groups. Wow, typically, yeah. Like having a love marriage. Consider that an anomaly. Yeah. So you know, Zack en le, of our living in central Afghanistan, they're young Dec encountered each other, you know, they cast eyes on each other on a farm. And you know, the way that courtship works in Afghanistan is that you don't date and you don't go to the movies, you know, sometimes you just happen to see somebody and you you become physically attracted to them. And the only way to really express your interest in someone is maybe to write them a letter or to you know, you secretly pass a note or two. And I think that in this case, I Lee wrote his phone number on a piece of paper and slipped it to Zach. Yeah, and she was smitten. But dating in the Afghan context is very different from what it is and you know, how we see it in the US it's dating might be exchanging letters secretly trying to maybe sneak in a phone call conversation, and I do believe that they started talking, they started talking on the phone. So in addition to all of the other restrictions on dating, you know, wanting to marry somebody outside of your community is really much, much harder. And with a li being Hazara, you know, a group, a community that has historically been really, really marginalized. There's oftentimes there was not always a lot of intermarriage with other ethnic groups. So it's not so much of a Romeo and Juliet story in that they're their families want to kill each other and they're warring with each other. That's really not what's going on. ethnic identity is fluid. And people have multiple identities. It's this really that in this rural context, in this rural community. Falling in love can be dangerous, because families typically want to choose the partners, you know, they want to choose their children's spouses. And that's what not that's at least This couple has something else in mind. They they want to fall in love. So they would not be getting any support from their communities. much at all, if they do decide none. And then they decide to elope and run away. Right? That's hard. It is hard because this couple is dealing with a lot of obstacles. One, they're in a rural environment, which is much more conservative than the cities. And the fact that they happen to come from different ethnicities and different religious sects further multiplies that those those obstacles and forth, they're falling in love. Right? Right. You're not supposed to fall in love. If it wasn't your dad or mom picks out your husband or wife that just you know, there's a lot you know, there's a lot of against them.
But it's not really a Romeo and Juliet story because it's the focus isn't the fact that they're, you know, their communities want to kill each other. It's that each community is targeting this one individual member for really going outside of what the community wants for them. And that context is really not I captured in the story presented by Rod Norland,
especially if you're if you're running away from from your family and you're in a rural setting, you're eliminating all of your support.
Absolutely. And community and this is this is not an individualistic society, right? Oh, not at all. This is a very collective society where honor a woman's honor. Right. I mean, you know, in Afghanistan, you have honor crimes like other parts of the Middle East and Muslim world, you know, sometimes even in the western societies, people from those areas, you know, they sometimes murder their daughters for very minor things with no evidence, even a flimsy accusation completely baseless, can really land the girl in trouble. Now, in 2015, I visited the women's prison in Kabul to interview girls who had run away from home, which is according to the Afghan penal code, not a crime. But the overwhelming majority of those girls who had run away from home, I wouldn't did it because they were resisting of the marriage of forced marriages that their parents had chosen for them. So the real story in this Zakia and Alia this Romeo and Juliet story is like, you know, the gender dynamics are lost. You know, Zakia is actually risking everything, as you mentioned, the support the, the, you know, the community support, or social standing, you know, basically protection, I mean, and so that's what this couple did, and they eloped. And now they have a daughter. And all of a sudden, it became a big story. And people wanted to come and help them the story of Zakia, and only a couple from rural Afghanistan is presented as a representative of the entire country. And, and that's something that's very problematic in the story. This is not a Romeo and Juliet story, and I think labeling it as Romeo and Juliet is in some way seems to kind of sensationalize it for what and make it appealing for Western audiences. Like this is something that oh, it's, you know, this would never happen. And let's try to save this couple, you know, he hears the West coming to rescue them. And it's extremely short sighted in a lot of ways. Oh, yeah. Did you? Did you see the press around this when it came out? I did it No, it got a lot of publicity. And unfortunately, not only is the story filled full of all kinds of inaccuracies, but it can really distort the image of Afghanistan as this backward isolated hermit kingdom, where love is dangerous. It's not Yeah, my parents did it before they got married. They fell in love there from they didn't their families didn't know each other. So for for those of us who come from a different kind of Afghanistan, it's very problematic for a story like this to be portrayed in the global media as really just a standard love story. And that's why context is very, very important. And you know, I really question rod Norland, Amina Gaul and wanting to portray this as Romeo and Juliet and even the book that he wrote about it, right. He keeps using the word backward all the time. Oh, god. Yeah, it's so it's like, it's full of Orientalist tropes. And, you know, but it's not. It's not the only one you did that writing. Right? It became quite standard. Just like any other country. There's not one Afghanistan. There's many.
In India, we have certain Bollywood movies that are extremely popular, been running for 20 years in theaters. And those are like cultural touchstones of romance. You know, for a lot of us who grew up with them. Is there anything like that held up as an ideal for Afghans as as sort of a shared language almost things that maybe they grew up with that it formed into their conscious culture?
It's interesting, you happen to mention Bollywood because Afghans love Bollywood. I think those types of stories that you found in the 1970s so many Afghans do have arranged marriages that I think those Bollywood films were kind of like their you know, escape from reality. Yeah, like similar to see land
right. Similar cultures, but but same similar fantasies, probably as well. Yeah,
right. Right. Having a love marriage was like a fantasy. So for a lot of people, it may not have been filmed but you know, a lot of people like rod Norland sand who did end up marrying somebody that their family chose and, and they didn't choose they would spend the rest of their lives dreaming about their long lost love.
It's It's so interesting. You say that because of popular Bollywood conceit is a courtyard romance where two people are on opposite balconies, and they talk across the courtyard. And when I moved into my condo in Los Angeles, I have a courtyard. You know, and there's balconies. And my mom, her immediate first thought was, oh, maybe you'll go out on the balcony and you'll lock eyes with some undergrads.
We don't have to do that anymore. We can just I can just go talk to them. as we as we close up, I'm just curious, how would you suggest listeners view this story? You know, is
it? Is it a rum? Is there any? Is there any hint of romance in this? Or is it to people who just made a choice, a risky choice,
there's absolutely romance in it. But I think that, you know, romance in the African context often is kind of like love at first sight. You know, like, if you look at somebody and you become physically attracted to them, and then that's kind of interpreted as, like love and genuine love, because people don't have the opportunity to date. And courtship in Afghanistan is very different from how it's seen in the West, people don't really have time to spend lots of time together, travel together, live together, and really get to know each other as human beings. And romance has really become something limited to just physical attraction, and also the excitement of, you know, violating the social boundaries of of being able to talk to someone you normally wouldn't be able to talk to. So that context is very, very important. But yes, I mean, romance is something universal and human. And of course, there's an element of that in it. But I think that Afghan couples, because there's such a, you know, it's not there's so many restrictions on dating and courtship, it's important to look at romance as such a society as something unique to that particular society. Yeah. And unique to that particular couple of maybe, yes. And unique to that particular couple. Yeah,
yeah, it Yeah, everybody is different. But thank you so much, Doctor, for coming on and talking to us. This has been enlightening and really educational. And thank you for coming on and speaking with us.
My pleasure. Thank you for having me.
Last year that was so educational and informative.
I just want to talk to Dr. Jalali about everything. I'd like to audit that class. I would like to hear her opinions on literally everything is
so good. What is your love to go for today?
Love has nuance. Hmm. It's very easy. I think especially with a steady diet of romance from Western media to think happily ever after wedding. Boom, you're done. But love and relationships have nuanced and it's okay to explore and talk about the nuance beyond the headlines of what is generally treated as the love story. And I'm really really pleased that through Jesse's work finding Dr. Jalali and connecting us we were able to find out more than the initial story. I feel really honored to have learned all about this today.
Yeah, cultural nuance, individual nuance. It's all in there. Yeah, for sure.
listeners. We have big news, don't we, Alicia?
We do. Well, it's big news for me.
All right. I'm a little excited to hear
your like favorite but we have coming up on the show. Danielle from season two of love is blind and we're really excited about it. We would love to know what you would like us to ask her. If you have any burning questions for a cast member of love is blind. Please send them our way.
If you've got questions, we want to add them to our show because we are so excited to talk to Daniel. Our researcher is Jesse Epstein. Our editor is Jen Jacobs. We are produced by Abigail steckler and little Scorpion studios with executive producer frolic media. This is an iHeartRadio podcast.
We wish you a very happily ever after with Nuance. I'm in love with love with you. I'm in love with you
