Quilt tells stories of sorrow, hope Afghan immigrants ease struggle

Oakland Tribune, Aug 7, 2006 by Jonathan Jones, STAFF WRITER

FREMONT -- Between the stitches in the Afghan Freedom Quilt are stories of three decades of war, struggle and survival, of hope and sorrow.

In 2004, Fatema Nerow, a 53-year-old Afghan widow from Hayward, helped sew the small pieces of cloth together.

When she looks at the quilt, she tries not to think about her escape from Afghanistan, or the fear she felt when her 11-year-old son was kidnapped by the Taliban. Instead, she sees the potential of a better future for Afghan women.

"When I look at the quilt, I see the many talents of Afghan women," Nerow said. "Afghan women have (so many) talents in arts and crafts. And I hope that someday these women can stand on their own feet and have their own businesses and have a good life for their children."

The 9-by-9-foot quilt now hangs on a wall in the home of Melanie Gadener, founder of the Foundation for Self-Reliance, which seeks to foster and support economic independence and self-improvement for Afghan war widows, Afghan immigrants in the Bay Area, and Afghan refugees in Pakistan.

She says the idea of creating a quilt came from Freedom Quilts, which people often hung on clotheslines to indicate safe houses and to send hidden messages to help African slaves escape to the North on the Underground Railroad.

In Afghanistan, widows were asked to contribute a square of cloth, and the squares then were sewn together by Afghans in the Bay Area.

The quilt, which took more than three years to assemble, will be used as a fundraising tool for the SEED program, a free 12-week life skills training and economic empowerment program in Fremont, as well as for a grant program in Afghanistan, Gadener said.

Woven into this quilt and its stitched images of Afghanistan, flowers, doves and words of peace are the stories of Afghan widows, whose short biographies are included in an accompanying booklet.

Before the U.S. bombing in 2001, the United Nations estimated that the number of widows in Afghanistan exceeded 2 million.

And in a culture where men typically are the sole providers and women are sometimes punished for appearing in public without a male relative, their struggles are many.

"There are few working opportunities for these women," said Shahla Arsala, an Afghan American and one of the founders of the Fremont-based Afghan Widows Project, a nonprofit organization that sets up a relationship between Afghan widows and Americans. "Sadly, when a woman cannot go to work, their eldest son has to go work to support their families. Many of these women have very low self- esteem and are very depressed because they're constantly thinking about how to survive."

For those women who have immigrated to the United States, the challenges are different, but they can still be daunting as the women struggle to speak English and make ends meet.

Bibigul Mehrzad, an Afghan woman now living in Fremont, looks at the quilt and sees the artistic potential of Afghan women. She's also reminded of her responsibility to help the country she's left behind.

"I was always looking for a way to give back and help," said Mehrzad, who came to this country in 2002 and helped stitch the small pieces of fabric together. "This is the least I could do."

Gadener said the concept began in 2003, when she was researching the needs of the Bay Area Afghan community as a student at the University of California, Berkeley. During her research, she sought out Afghan women to help her explore ways to address the needs of Afghan widows.

She met Shahla Arsala, an Afghan widow from Fremont, and Heba Tarzi, an Afghan who came to the United States as part of the Afghan Women Leadership Exchange Program.

Together, the women launched the Grants for Self Reliance program for war widows to help pay for basic education, vocational training, child care, transportation and supplies for home-based businesses.

Arsala also solicited the help of other Afghan widows, including Nerow, who returned to Afghanistan in May to set up a bank account in Kabul in order to expand the grant program. The visit also gave her an opportunity to be with her daughter and son, who had remained in Afghanistan.

Ask these women what direction they think Afghanistan is headed and you're likely to hear different answers.

Nerow said she's encouraged that girls are returning to school and that some women are starting home-based businesses.

Mehrzad said she worries that her country is returning to hard times, especially after reports that the ministry of Vice and Virtue, which was used by the Taliban to enforce harsh punishments against women for wearing western clothes or showing too much skin in public, is being re-established by the government.

"It's so hard for me to think that those times could come back," Mehrzad said. "I'm not very hopeful that peace and good times will come back to Afghanistan in my lifetime."

The Foundation for Self-Reliance and the new Life Skills Education Consortium, a joint project with SEMAH and Narika, two local nonprofit organizations that concentrate on domestic violence prevention, are presenting the fundraiser "Talks in the Garden" on Saturday, Aug. 12, for people to view the quilt and hear stories from the Afghan Diaspora. For more information, visit http://www.e- fsr.org or e-mail info@e-fsr.org.