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鈥淭wo years later, part of my satire became a reality: the Taliban issued a decree forbidding women from speaking in public. What kind of absurdity is this?鈥� 

Afghanistan's politics never leave you alone; they encroach upon your life, no matter how far you stray. In 2021, the laws that had shaped our lives since 2001 lay shattered and left me disoriented. It was as if a disruption had torn through order, rendering everything I knew unintelligible. 

With dizzying speed, the Taliban decree after decree, stripping away women's rights one after another: education bans, employment prohibitions, travel restrictions, exclusion from government, denied access to healthcare from male doctors, and even a ban on using smartphones in public. Each day brought a new absurdity. 

An absurd scene 

During these bewildering times, I discovered Samuel Beckett and the theater of the absurd. His work resonated with the surreal reality unfolding around me. The typical ways in which the mind constructs meaning鈥攖hrough language and logic鈥攄isintegrated when facing the Taliban鈥檚 rule.  

If madness had a physical form, it would surely resemble the Taliban. Nearly half of the population is , and the economy is in , yet they focus obsessively on eroding the fundamental rights of women鈥攔ights so basic I had thought them to be inalienable, like the right to speak publicly. 

In those times, I wrote a short satire to encapsulate what was going on in my mind. In this story, the Taliban, in their latest act of 鈥榙ivine comedy鈥�, has decreed that women should not speak in public but use sign language instead. They claim it鈥檚 a message from Allah鈥攁 divine strategy to prevent women from corrupting men by merely conversing. It鈥檚 their latest spiritual brainstorm, right up there with other hit singles like controlling what women should wear and how they should walk. 

To give this new rule some teeth, the Taliban cooked up a procedure straight out of a bureaucratic nightmare: catch a woman talking, tell her to zip it, hunt down her male guardian, and then throw him in the slammer鈥攂ecause obviously, it鈥檚 his fault. And just when you thought they couldn鈥檛 top themselves, the Ministry of Promoting Vice and Preventing Virtue (which sounds like something out of a dystopian sitcom) offered sign language courses for women. It鈥檚 considerate of them to ensure everyone鈥檚 on the same, silent page. 

The fictional Human Rights Watch chimed in too, tweeting their dismay and promising to keep a 鈥榗lose eye鈥� on the situation. Because, as we all know, tweets have always been the kryptonite to fundamentalism. So, in the grand scheme of things, where does this leave us?  

Well, according to the Taliban鈥檚 version of Albert Camus, worrying about the existential dread of whether a woman should speak or sign in public is the cornerstone of governance. Everything else is just child鈥檚 play. 

A reality check 

Two years later, part of my satire became a reality: the Taliban a decree forbidding women from speaking in public.  

What kind of absurdity is this? After the graveyard of empire, has Taliban-ruled Afghanistan become the new theater of the absurd? 

The views represented in this piece are those of the author and do not express the official position of the 浪花直播 Center.鈥�