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New Delhi: Cricket has
not caught on to any major extent in Afghanistan even 11 years
after the Taliban was pushed out of Kabul in 2001. The sports-shy
Afghans are still too battle-scarred to laugh their angst away on
the pitch.
However, literary fiction explores unimaginable possibilities for
peace in Afghanistan and escape from the daily acts of subversion.
Cricket, the game of friendship, and the tyranny of the Taliban in
Afghanistan are pitted in a battle of wits and convey a powerful
message of freedom, human resilience and defiance in award-winning
writer, playwright and filmmaker Timeri N. Murari's new novel,
"The Taliban Cricket Club (Aleph Book Company)".
"The possibilities of putting two opposites together and exploring
their sheer contraction made me use cricket as a symbol of
democracy, freedom, discipline and harmony against the tyrannical
regime of the Taliban," Murari told IANS.
The writer said he had "read a small news clipping in 2000 that
the Taliban was trying to promote the game that was against
violence".
"The idea was bizarre. I started making notes and researched about
the Taliban-led Afghanistan. Cricket did not happen in Afghanistan
till 2002 - when Afghans began to play cricket a little more
seriously after the Taliban left," said Murari, whose movie,
"Square Circle", was chosen as one of the top 10 by the Time
Magazine.
Murari said "two-and-a-half million refugees in Pakistan had
started playing the game after leaving Afghanistan".
"So they brought the game back to Afghanistan. In 2000, no one
played the game in Afghanistan. The Taliban had even banned
traditional sport Buzkhasi, a team sport played on horse-back. I
decided on a cricket tournament and a formal team as my theme to
teach the Afghans to play the game," Murari said.
But cricket as a game could not really take off in Afghanistan,
the writer rued.
Murari steps in the shoes of an Afghan woman, Rukshana, who is
offered an escape route by the Taliban from her warring nation to
Pakistan when the local Taliban warlord Wahidi announces that the
winning team of a cricket tournament that he is organising will be
sent to Pakistan to train for an international-level match.
No one in Afghanistan knows how to play cricket except Rukshana.
She had learnt the game during her years in New Delhi as a student
of journalism.
Murari speaks through the voice of Rukshana - a pretty young
journalist forced to hide behind the "burqa" after a raid on her
office in Kabul. She prepares to play the game to escape.
Here the writer twists the tale. When Rukshana's team comprising
family wins the match, the Taliban warlord betrays Rukshana and
decides to send his newphew's state team - the loser - instead to
Pakistan.
The betrayal and the Taliban warlord's personal designs on
Rukshana - he wants to marry her - forces her to hatch a daring
escape plan to impersonate as the rival team to flee to Pakistan.
Cricket in Murari's book becomes a metaphor for freedom and a
symbol of a sub-continental romance between the protagonist
Rukshana and her friend's brother Veer, a young man from India.
For most part of it, the plot reads like a movie, gripping and
veering off unexpected bends.
"The idea of teaching cricket to Afghans did not feel strong
enough. So I thought if I had a woman to play the game and teach
it to her cousins and brothers to escape the Taliban, she would
become a symbol of rebellion through the game," Murari said.
Murari went to Afghanistan in 2010. "I had a contact who set up
meetings with a cross-sections of people. The women told me how
they lived in Afghanistan and survived the Taliban. The Afghan
people are the most hospitable and generous people, but they are
not a sporting country. They do play football and are sending few
athletes to London...," Murari said.
The writer said "women are discouraged from sports in Afghanistan
because it spells freedom and healthy life".
Murari said the socio-political milieu was slowly changing in
Afghanistan. "The women I spoke to were professionals and they
were not always accompanied by their mahram for menfolk. The
country had a growing tribe of women journalists - some of them
dating to the Taliban years who secretly couriered their
dispatches to organisations like Revolutionary Assn of Women in
Afghanistan (RAWA) located in Pakistan, who would run these
stories," Murari said.
The writer, who has also been an international journalist, said
"the condition of Afghanistan was fragile".
"I personally think the country could plunge into a civil war and
break into three autonomous regions after the pullout of US
troops," Murari said. He is planning to write another book on
Afghanistan.
(Madhusree Chatterjee can be contacted at madhu.c@ians.in)
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