Review: "I Am a Bacha Posh" by Ukmina Manoori

I Am a Bacha Posh by Ukmina Manoori (with Stéphanie Lebrun)
Translated by Peter Chianchiano
English translation published 2014 via Skyhorse
★★★

The concept of bacha posh is fascinating to me: in Afghanistan, a substantial number of girls are raised—temporarily—as boys, filling in the gaps in families where there are no sons. As a stand-in son, a bacha posh can play with the boys, can run errands, can hold jobs and earn money and help support the family, can have a taste of freedom. But when she hits adolescence, the veil goes on, and she is expected to return to the restricted life of a woman. Marry, have children, obey her husband in all things, never leave the house without a chaperone.

Manoori was one of these children—raised as a boy but expected to give up her freedoms when she got older. But she refused: she had grown used to those freedoms and preferred to chart her own path. This would be no small thing in Afghanistan now, and it was no small thing then; although Manoori says that she knew numerous girls in her area who temporarily took on the role of “son”, it was certainly safer to be known as a boy than as a girl who has been asked to be a boy, and it was not socially acceptable to remain as a “son” beyond adolescence. Moreover, although Manoori sees no conflict with Islam, the Taliban’s rise to power made it clear that not everyone felt the same way.

I wondered early on whether the practice of bacha posh would have been able to continue after the Taliban’s takeover in 2021. This book was published in English in 2014, so of course it predates that series of events, but it’s still relevant—because the Taliban first came to power while Manoori was coming of age and, you know, trying to live her life.

As a book, it’s okay but not amazing (I’d recommend The Underground Girls of Kabul for a more comprehensive look); Manoori doesn’t always seem to grasp that other girls and women would be perfectly capable of doing the things that she does and has done with the freedoms afforded by being outside the strict box of “female”, and the focus is really on a chronological story rather than, e.g., scenes and characterization and broader picture. (Also, while I think the cover is striking, after reading the book it mostly just seems strikingly inaccurate.)

That said, it’s a short read into an experience I know very little about, and one that feels important to understand some of the complexities of being born a girl in Afghanistan.