Kabul’s mannequins, hooded and masked beneath Taliban guidelines



KABUL: Below the Taliban, the mannequins in girls’s costume retailers throughout the Afghan capital of Kabul are a haunting sight, their heads cloaked in fabric sacks or wrapped in black plastic luggage.
The hooded mannequins are one image of the Taliban’s puritanical rule over Afghanistan. However in a manner, they’re additionally a small present of resistance and creativity by Kabul’s costume retailers.
Initially, the Taliban wished the mannequins to be outright beheaded.
Not lengthy after they seized energy in August 2021, the Taliban Ministry of Vice and Advantage decreed that each one mannequins should be faraway from store home windows or their heads taken off, in keeping with native media. They primarily based the order on a strict interpretation of Islamic regulation that forbids statues and pictures of the human type since they could possibly be worshipped as idols — although it additionally meshes with the Taliban’s marketing campaign to pressure girls out of the general public eye.
Some garments sellers complied. However others pushed again.
They complained they’d be unable to show their garments correctly or must injury beneficial mannequins. The Taliban needed to amend their order and allowed the store house owners to cowl the mannequins’ heads as an alternative.
Store house owners then needed to steadiness between obeying the Taliban and making an attempt to draw prospects. The number of options they got here up with are on show on Lycee Maryam Road, a middle-class business avenue lined with costume retailers in a northern a part of Kabul. The shop home windows and showrooms are lined with mannequins in night robes and attire bursting with shade and ornament — and all in numerous varieties of head coverings.
In a single store, the mannequins’ heads have been cloaked in tailor-made sacks made out of the identical materials as the standard attire they modeled. One, in a purple costume beaded with cowrie shells, had an identical purple hood. One other, in a purple robe elaborately embroidered in gold, was virtually elegant in a masks of purple velvet with a gold crown on her head.
“I can’t cowl the mannequins’ heads with plastic or ugly issues as a result of it will make my window and store look ugly,” stated Bashir, the proprietor. Like different house owners, he spoke to The Related Press on situation he be recognized solely by his first title for concern of reprisals.
Store house owners want hold issues engaging — the economic system has collapsed for the reason that Taliban takeover and the following cutoff of worldwide financing, throwing virtually the whole inhabitants into poverty.
Elaborate attire have all the time been standard in Afghanistan for weddings, which even earlier than the Taliban have been normally gender-segregated, giving girls an opportunity to decorate of their best within the nation’s conservative society. Below the Taliban, weddings are one of many few remaining alternatives for social gatherings. However with incomes so strained, they’ve grow to be much less elaborate.
Bashir stated his gross sales are half what they was.
“Shopping for marriage ceremony, night and conventional attire is not a precedence for individuals,” he stated. “Folks assume extra about getting meals and surviving.”
One other store proprietor, Hakim, formed aluminum foil over his mannequins’ heads. It provides a sure flash to his merchandise, he determined.
“I made a chance out of this menace and ban and did it so the mannequins are much more engaging than earlier than,” he stated.
Not all might be so elaborate. In a single store, the mannequins in sleeveless robes all had black plastic sacks over their heads. The proprietor stated he could not afford extra.
One other store proprietor, Aziz, stated brokers of the Ministry of Vice and Advantage commonly patrol retailers and malls to ensure the mannequins are beheaded or lined. He was dismissive of the Taliban’s justification for the principles. “Everybody is aware of mannequins aren’t idols, and nobody’s going to worship them. In all Muslim nations, mannequins are used to show garments.”
A small variety of male mannequins might be seen in show home windows, additionally with their heads lined, suggesting that the authorities are making use of the ban uniformly.
The Taliban initially stated they might not impose the identical harsh guidelines over society as they did throughout their first rule within the late Nineteen Nineties. However they’ve progressively imposed extra restrictions, significantly on girls. They’ve banned girls and women from education past the sixth grade, barred them from most jobs and demanded they cowl their faces when exterior.
On a latest day, a girl purchasing on Lycee Maryam Road appeared on the hooded mannequins.
“After I see them, I really feel that these mannequins are additionally captured and trapped, and I get a way of concern,” stated the lady, who gave solely her first title, Rahima.
“I really feel like I see myself behind these store home windows, an Afghan lady who has been disadvantaged of all her rights.”



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