princess and feminist on France 5

This is a film about Afghanistan that, for once, begins with scenes of joy: a woman in a bikini on a beach, a couple kissing… and a declaration of love in the first person: that of Élisabeth Naïm Ziai. From the first seconds, we dive with her, through her words (it is mainly her writings and those of her husband that feed the film’s commentary), into this “tale of the Thousand and One Nights”, both a woman’s destiny and a historical story. It all begins when Naïm enters a small family pharmacy in Saint-Malo. Élisabeth, who helps her parents there, falls under the spell of this Afghan student. From the first glance, “It’s love at first sight ” she assures.

Naïm is not a student like any other: he is also a cousin of the King of Afghanistan. In 1927, the young secretary marries an Afghan prince, despite the gossips. In her entourage, that of the provincial petty bourgeoisie, she is constantly told that “a woman like her “can’t be happy with”a man like him “That a marriage is done”at church, with a Catholic “Whatever: the two lovers dance in front of his stunned parents, then fly off to the other side of the world.

Long journey from France

The story is only just beginning. Elisabeth, by marrying Naïm, will also take up the cause of Afghan women. The young, well-behaved girl will become a figure of feminism on the other side of the world. While at the end of a long journey from France, the couple is preparing to cross the Afghan border from India, they find it closed: a civil war has just broken out between King Amanullah Khan, Naïm’s cousin, a progressive, and traditionalist rebels. The king went too fast, too far, in his reforms, imposing morals perceived as Western in a country that is predominantly conservative. So, it is a return to obscurantism.

In her notebooks, interweaving the political and the personal, Elisabeth records for fifty years what would have been forgotten without her: the daily lives of women in Kabul. Through her words and a very fine production, the documentary makes us experience, through Elisabeth’s destiny, that of a country whose political torments are invariably linked to the future of women.For women, more work, more walks, more shows, newspapers and books »: the dark, even gloomy picture («Women sleep fully clothed. They are not haunted by the desire to escape from their closed lives, and that is unfortunate.“), first recalls scenes that are once again visible today in the country, under the yoke of the Taliban.

Lingerie in the window

Then life gradually became easier. Having become a schoolteacher, Elisabeth Naïm Ziai was the first woman to remove her veil. She founded a workshop that allowed women to earn a salary, as well as a Women’s Institute. She managed to impose major reforms on the government, and even opened the first beauty salon and the first women’s clothing store, going so far as to put lingerie in the window. Over the decades, the values ​​imposed or permitted on Afghan women – on a certain category of Kabulites, in any case – were far from immutable.

At a time when obscurantism is once again enveloping Afghanistan and its women, making them invisible and inaudible, this beautiful film, which offers unpublished archives, shows that the fight of Afghan women is far from new, but also far from being in vain.