I am the Beggar of the World by Eliza Grizwold

War & Peace

Book Review on I am the Beggar of the World by Eliza Grizwold (London: FHC. 2014)

Abstract
An anomalous post both, in terms of the topic and the format as a book review, but if You have one or two hours to read Grizwold’s collection of Afghan landays, I highly recommend to do so. By this review I would like to raise the awareness on the issue, how warship and security is gendered, and therefore how women stay out of the spotlight, always. War itself is always more important and threatening in the Western eyes than those, who suffer behind, see this through the case study of Afghanistan. This is not a highly academic book, therefore a review either, but it could and can emphasize the reality behind the news we read and hear, and do not care about as it is far away from our peaceful life. You know may think, one reader cannot do much, but if one person reads it and discusses with others, and those do the same, eventually many people will realise the issue of Afghan women and then, there can be something done about it.

Here I will introduce the structure, content and core focus of Grizwold`s collection of Afghan landays, then first, I will demonstrate how it is relevant and helpful in understanding the new aspects of `new wars` what we could not experience in `old wars`. Second, I will discover how the book is a good political tool for catching attention on the issue in Afghanistan, then last but not least I will discuss why it may still stay ineffective in International relations to solve the problem as it only has the power to emotionally influence individuals but not politically those who could step in and interact for the better.

Although, the book has no clear core argument as it is a collection of landays from all across Afghanistan in 2014, it focuses on Pushto women and their poetry, as this is their only way to express their feelings. The poems have a short explanation and a story of their origin, also they are illustrated with touching pictures. It has three main parts based on the three main topic of landays: love, grief/separation, and war/homeland. In the first section, we can find landays about painful, suffering love during the war, women cannot express their feelings, therefore they communicated with their loved man in landays (Griswold and Murphy, 2014: 11-58). It also shows, how war is gendered, women cannot leave their homes, not even allowed to work (Griswold and Murphy, 2014: 58), while men are fighting (Goldstein 2012: 207, Hale 2012: 705), landays are usually spoken from a woman’s voice, but also supports the postcolonial theory (Columba Peoples, 2010: 47-61), as some landays are modernised, Western platforms – such as Facebook – has replaced the original poem-trading by the river bank, where women used to collected their water. On the other hand, this section shows how women still have some power (Griswold and Murphy, 2014: 47-48), they are not shy to mock men.  Women live in fear, in case they have to leave the house, they have to wear burka to hide themselves, even their guests, to not to make the neighbours and the Taliban think about any suspicious potential spy visitors (Griswold and Murphy, 2014: 58)

In the second part, it comes through how women are so subordinated they almost lost their entire identity, when their husband is dying they are desperate, lost and do not know what will happen to them, they usually do not even know their own age due to the lack of identity (Griswold and Murphy, 2014: 59-102).

The last part paints the most brutal picture, as it is about the war itself, fought for the homeland, where men give their lives, women become widowed and live in fear, hiding (Griswold and Murphy, 2014: 103-139).

            All this comes to politics and war by showing the reality of the situation on Afghanistan what otherwise we might only hear about from scholar articles or the news. This is a real picture, about real women’s experiences, which makes it more emotionally touching, what might be more influential than simple news, as nowadays our society is neutral to news and brutality what does not affect them and their freedom, their comfortable life directly (Bacevich, 2018). Also, the poetry-form makes people think more, it requires more intelligence and deeper focus and knowledge to understand a poem than simple news what are written in a way to make understandable to everyone regardless their educational background. Therefore, it is more effective in the sense that people think more about the issue than they would through simple, easily understandable studies or news. In addition, also the pictures affect the emotions of the reader, but also, as the topics and words are greatly, intimate and honest (love, sex, farting, etc.) it all makes it even more realistic and closer to the reader.

            On the other hand, these kind of writings may stay ineffective to those (UN politicians, the Government of Afghanistan) who could interact in changing the situation of these women, as this is not a study, this is not a report, this is ‘just’ a collection of heard poems from those women. The focus remains rather on the war itself, what is – as illustrated before – about men, it is more clamant to stop a war than to change the structure of the state what women suffer of. Also, women’s situation is now so integrated in the Afghan system that it would be a long and costly process to change the ideology of a whole state. Here, we can have the question, why would we want to change one state’s identity and value? Would not that be a postcolonial enforcement of Western democratic values? We cannot answer that question unless we understand Afghan women, and for now, we have little focus on them in World politics, as this book confirms, there would be no such pictures and poems if there was help for these women.

            In a conclusion, the book gives a more real picture, therefore a more touching, closer-to-the reader image of the situation of women in the Afghan war. The book can be influential on those, who read it, but it does not have the power of a report, treaty, proposal, or any kind of legal/political impact, what makes it weak in roots.

Bibliography

Bacevich, A. (2018). How We Learned Not To Care About America's Wars. [online] Common Dreams. Available at: https://www.commondreams.org/views/2017/10/09/how-we-learned-not-care-about-americas-wars [Accessed 9 Nov. 2018].

Goldstein in Ware, V. (2014). Military migrants. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Griswold, E. and Murphy, S. (2014). I am the beggar of the world. 1st ed. United States of America: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Hale, H. (2011). The Role of Practice in the Development of Military Masculinities. Gender, Work & Organization, 19(6), pp.699-722

Peoples, C. and Vaughan-Williams, N. (2010). Critical security studies. 1st ed. Abingdon: Routledge, pp.47-61.