🌹🧡"I'm a posh bacha, girl raised as a boy"...

🌹🧡"I'm a posh bacha,

girl raised as a boy"... 

In Afghanistan, 

femininity is denied.

It is nothing new that sometimes in paradoxical situations they force the female universe to renounce their sexual identity

to wear masculine clothes: 

just take a look at the biocips that have arrived on the big screen, 

to get an idea: 

in Yenti Barbara Streisand is a young Jewish girl determined to study the sacred texts, 

but she will have to disguise herself as a man to cross the threshold of a religious school Jewish, 

as forbidden to women.

It's the list she could go on for a long time.

Not far from us, 

reality today manages to overcome any version of the forced rejection of femininity, 

revived in cinemas.

Countries where little girls simply... 

cease to exist.

This is the true story of bacha posh, told in the pages of a book by Ukimina Manoori entitled

"Little girls don't exist".

Born on the border with Pakistan,

Ukimina Manoori was raised as a bacha posh, 

or as a child to ward off the shame of not having fathered sons.

This is how Manoori, 

in a distorted way, 

managed to acquire the right to have a voice.

The portrait of the conditions to which millions of invisible women are subjected

in Taliban Afghanistan.

I don't know my date of birth writes Manoori.

We do not celebrate birthdays.

On my identity card it says that I was born in 1346, 

according to the Iranian solar calendar that we Pashtuns use.

It's a hypothesis, 

a random date, 

I have no birth certificate, 

no official declaration certifying my coming into the world.

When I had to ask for ID my mother did the math: 

you must have been born around 1346, 

she told me.

I have at most a couple of years before or after.

It was a spring day, 

of that she was sure.

Above all, 

she remembered that, 

when I came out of her womb,

she and my father wondered if I would survive.

They had already lost ten children, 

says Manoori, 

eleventh after 7 girls and three boys who died in cots.

When I was born, 

my father knew immediately that I would live.

He waited a month and then seeing me grow and gain weight in such an unusual way in this poor land,

he uttered a sentence that changed the course of my life: 

You will be a boy, 

my daughter.

My mother didn't object, she too needed a son.

My older brother was already ten years old, my parents needed another boy to help in the family, 

go shopping, 

look after the animals, 

work the land and do everything a man has the right to do.

We are Muslims and Pashtuns, 

there are rules: 

a woman cannot appear in public alone,

which considerably limits the scope of her activities.

From that moment on and solely at the behest of my parents, 

my family and my neighbors were to regard me as a brother, 

forget that I was born a girl, 

call me Ukomkhan,

"the man who gives orders" 

and no longer with the name I was given at birth, 

Ukimina.

If acquaintances passed by our house bringing gifts as a child, 

my father would refuse them saying: 

This is my son, 

not my daughter.

So I became Ukomkhan."

Ukimina savors freedom and when she hits puberty she is not willing to give it up.

She says she's too late.

I've seen girls my age disappear on the streets

For me it is no longer possible to go back.

At 16 she rebels, 

she refuses marriage, 

she continues to wear men's clothes hiding her breasts and part of her joins the mujaheddin in the mountains to bring down the enemy, 

the Soviet invader.

We are in the eighties.

Ukimina will fight for six years, 

a brave guerrilla who will earn the respect of the community, 

strengthened by the pilgrimage to Mecca.

She is now past middle age, 

esteemed by women and men, 

she is an activist for Women's Rights.

In Afghanistan, as in neighboring Pakistan and other Muslim-majority countries, 

being born a girl is a curse.

A child is seen as a burden to society and a cost to the state.

Not working, 

not earning and not producing, 

the only function of women is to procreate and, 

within the limits of what is permitted.

Particularly in many poor families, 

the birth of a girl is seen as a problem.

This explains the very high number of abortions (in the case of female fetuses) and the death of newborns in many Islamic countries.

Unless the girl becomes a posh bacha: 

for many families it is the only solution to make ends meet; 

however,

 often these "cross-dressing" girls are bullied and marginalized.

Eventually, now teenagers, 

they no longer want to live as women and remain "broken" people... for the rest of their existence... 

💖💗💕💓💘💞💝