Naz’s PhD tells the sacred stories of others, encapsulating the pain experienced by the ordinary woman in Afghanistan, while exploring her own lived experience.
The title of her thesis; Scheherazade in the theatre of war: A study of everyday violence through the narratives of Afghanistani women, was inspired by One Thousand and One Nights—a collection of Middle Eastern folktales.
The tales are narrated by Scheherazade, an intelligent and clever storyteller who saves herself and the lives of many other women by telling captivating stories to a mad king.
Naz knew she wanted Scheherazade to be a symbol in her thesis before she even had a proposal idea in mind.
“I knew that I wanted to talk about the women who have stories to tell. Scheherazade was a woman in a troubled situation and the only way that she could survive was to share stories.
“The ordinary women of Afghanistan, they’re symbolised by Scheherazade. They tell stories, not to survive, but to make sense of their disrupted worlds and the uncertainty they face every day.”
On 15 August 2021, the Afghanistan Republic fell to the Taliban, but Naz, who was living in Kabul at the time, was already familiar with everyday violence.
“People were dying in the bomb blasts and still, we got up every morning to go to work and school and pursued a normal life as much as possible.”
Naz secured her doctoral place with Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic. New Zealand’s strict border measures during this time, along with the sudden collapse of the Afghanistan Republic, blocked her from entering New Zealand.
“Everything that I had worked for, not only for me, but for every other Afghanistani woman, had just disappeared,” she says.
In an attempt to make it out of the country, Naz said goodbye to her beloved sisters and mother and made her way to Kabul airport. There, she waited all night for a flight that never came, listening to the sounds of crying children.
“It was so crowded that you could hardly breathe,” she says.
In New Zealand, Naz’s supervisor, Professor Brigitte Bönisch-Brednich was working hard to get her out of the war-ravaged country.
“It took a lot of effort, and nerve-wrecking unsuccessful attempts to get her over the border into Pakistan.
“So many people helped—the whole university came together to help, despite others telling us that it was impossible,” says Professor Bönisch-Brednich.
“And now she is graduating.”
When Naz finally flew into Aotearoa’s capital city in late Spring 2021, she noticed how similar it seemed to her home in Afghanistan.
“I looked around and there were beautiful mountains and the water, and it looked like Panjshir, which is where I am originally from. I felt a sense of peace,” she says.
As she settled in New Zealand, Naz began to work with other Afghanistani women, to listen to their experiences and to tell their stories.
“I was interested in the violence that is routinised, normalised, and happens in everyday spaces, and how it becomes part of the everyday experience that most of the time, is unseen.”
Naz’s thesis is split into three sections, with each section representing a separate narrative.
“I realised that violence could take multiple forms and can be performed through institutions and systems. I found that fear is a form of violence, used to control people, and to control women. I also found that some forms of violence are embodied and carried with you wherever you go.
“In the final section of my thesis, I discuss how violence is unfolded and played out in a small village in Panjshir where people, not just woman, but men and children alike are pushed to extreme lengths.
“It resembles a dead world where they are living physically, but they do not have any rights. They are under threat, they are living, but it is a bare life.”
Naz notes that her thesis, layered with different voices and experiences, “comes together at points, but also unfolds separately,” revealing each woman and their personal story.
Although a huge amount of what she has shared is about violence, Naz realised that there are other parts of her work that deserve recognition.
“It was important for me to reflect on the experiences of women, especially ordinary women.
“I have emphasised ‘ordinary women’ very often in my thesis because their stories do not get reflected enough. They do not have the platforms that others do.
“And so that is the joy that even now, I thank God that I did this PhD.”