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Popular Culture Review
violence (violence employed on the pretext of restoring a particular social
order). The Soviet Union’s collusion with the Kabul-based government during
the 1970s initiated Afghanistan’s modem malaise. The impending civil war
post-Soviet withdrawal in 1989 which saw the ascendancy of the Taleban
heralded another fonn of redemptive violence assuaged in religious edict. The
destmction of the famous Bamiyan Buddhas in March 2001 by the Taleban is
typical of the trauma to which the Afghan people and land have been subjected.
The Taleban’s rule typifies Arendt’s discourse on totalitarianism: that which did
not comply to the religious hegemony had to be eradicated.
Afghan women were particularly victimised by two decades of war.
Many Afghan women found themselves struggling to support their families due
to the death of male family members. Unable to support themselves, many
women turned to beggary or entered into marriages of convenience in order to
escape penury. Furthermore, under the Taleban, women were placed under strict
control by men. Their movements were restricted to the household domain. Girls
were no longer allowed to enter schools, nor were female school teachers
permitted to teach. Moreover, the subordination of the female body under the
puritanical logos of the Taleban reflected global styles of transgression against
the female ethos.^"^ That the majority of Afghan landmine victims were children
and women underpinned the hatred of the feminine. Gittoes states that of the
twenty-five mine victims he saw in a Kabul hospital, only one was a soldier.
WhaVsLem (Pakistan 1999)
Gittoes’ painting What's Left typifies the plight of Afghan women in
general. The painting is highly abstract and denotes the traumatised ordeal of
Ghuncha, a young widow with five children from the Bajaur province in
Afghanistan.^^ Ghuncha’s husband had previously died by stepping on a land
mine. He had survived three weeks in hospital. Consequently, the medical bills
had placed Ghuncha in so much debt that she was forced to sell “her small piece
of land to cred ito rs.F earin g starvation, Ghuncha and her family travelled to
an “unfamiliar place.” While working in a field Ghuncha stepped on a landmine
and sustained multiple injuries: the loss of both her legs, paralysis to one ami,
the loss of one eye, damage to the remaining eye, and hearing impairment.
Ghuncha’s environment conveys the recurring leitmotifs of Afghan society—
poverty and war. Piles of rotting vegetables made the air thick and hard to
breathe. An arsenal of rifles and handguns hung from the wall, as well as much
larger heavy weapon on the bench beside her.
In What's Left Ghuncha’s body is compressed, her two stubs protrude
from the enlarged face. The expression of the face is forlorn by its
disfigurement. Gittoes draws the viewer’s attention to the open amplified eye
which is embellished by a crescent moon, relating to Ghuncha’s determination
to live. As Gittoes states: “1 feel Ghuncha’s pull also* and have prolonged the
drawing process—reading such a strong need for something to relieve the
almost hysterical hopelessness in the quiet darkness of her remaining eye.”^^