When Lucy Hannah decided to put together an anthology of short stories by Afghan women in 2019, it already seemed like a hugely ambitious project. Most of the authors involved had never had the opportunity to work with an editor before. One contributor submitted her story by taking photos of handwritten pages and sending them via WhatsApp. Another had previously published her work online, but not in print. “I have never come across a local publisher willing to publish a book without asking for money from the author,” she said. “And it’s impossible to find a foreign publisher who wants to read books about anything except the war.”
Then Covid-19 hit in 2020, followed by the Taliban’s return to power in 2021. “It was hard work,” admits Hannah, a former BBC employee who helped to set up the BBC Writersroom. The anthology, My Pen Is the Wing of a Bird, was published this week by MacLehose Press, but many of the team involved have never met. With the 18 writers based in Afghanistan (10 have since managed to leave), an editor in Sri Lanka and translators in the UK, all communication had to be done remotely. The fact that the book has now been published is the result of a team effort that “relied on everybody trusting each other”, says Hannah.
The project was run by the organisation Hannah set up to help amplify the work of marginalised writers, Untold Narratives. When working with scriptwriters in Afghanistan four years ago, Hannah spoke with some female writers who were able to get hired to work on a radio soap opera, but were finding it hard to get their prose fiction published. Wanting to help, Hannah came back to the UK to raise funds and the Write Afghanistan project was born.
After two open calls for submissions across Afghanistan, with the second call focused on isolated parts of the country, Untold Narratives read approximately 300 submissions before selecting the 18 writers who would contribute to My Pen Is the Wing of a Bird.
Several of the stories draw on the writers’ experience of living in the midst of violence. Zainab Akhlaqi’s Blossom, for example, draws on the real-life bombing of the Sayed ul-Shuhada high school in Kabul. The story ends on a note of defiant hope: its young narrator, Nekbakht, decides she wants to “show some spirit in the face of our struggles”, and goes back to school.
Akhlaqi found a similar sense of hope knowing that her work was going to reach a global audience. “In the worst days of my country’s history, [working with Untold] gave me the hope and spirit to write,” she says.
“These writers don’t have the support that those in the UK do when they’re starting out,” says Hannah. “So this is about encouraging the global gatekeepers to welcome in voices, in translation, who don’t necessarily have a local creative infrastructure to support them.”
Marie Bamyani, whose story The Black Crow of Winter is about a mother struggling to provide for her family, is passionate that the voices of Afghan women get heard. “My Pen Is the Wing of a Bird is the starting point of bringing Afghan writers together and sharing their voices and stories with the world,” she says. “The world must not let this light be turned off.”
• My Pen Is the Wing of a Bird is published by MacLehose Press (£12). To order a copy for £10.44 go to guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.
