by DEEYAH KHAN
Deeyah and her brother Adil Khan, an acclaimed theatre and screen actor, stand arm-in-arm together following Deeyah’s Emmy Award acceptance in Los Angeles for her film on honor violence, “Banaz: A Love Story” on October 4. 2013.
(On International Women’s Day Emmy award winning filmmaker and music producer Deeyah Khan shares her struggles and triumphs as a Pakistani Afghan woman from Norway who is on a quest to help women worldwide express their artistic freedom.)
Banaz A Love Story ©Fuuse Films by Deeyah Khan
My journey started in Norway.
My father grew up with his father and stepmother in Pakistan, before moving to Oslo in the 60s. My grandfather was well-known and respected as one of the founders of the Norwegian Muslim community, revered as a deeply religious and traditional man and uninterested in any world beyond his own traditions. His unwavering beliefs pushed my father to an opposite position: radical, liberal, open-minded; interested in philosophy, art, poetry and politics.
He was determined to raise his children within these expansive, deeply humanist principles.
“My mother was a quieter kind of rebel.”
For my grandfather, the only book worth reading was the Qur’an, but my father loved all kinds of books and music: cabinets bulged with vinyl LPs, bookshelves were crammed with works as diverse as histories of colonialism and the ancient civilizations of the Indus Valley, mythology, theatre and innumerable collections of Urdu poetry. From cramped student accommodation to a semi-detached house, this precious resource of human knowledge traveled with the family, growing ever larger. And this was not the only resource my father collected: our house was a gathering place for intellectuals and dissidents, often sharing their criticisms of General Zia a-Haq and his Islamization project for Pakistan in the 1980s.
For women this meant that the veil and the four walls of their homes were considered vital to the sanctity of the family and society at large. Conversations and cigarette smoke drifted in the air over countless cups of strong tea; my brother and I played on the carpet while serious matters of world politics, art and culture were debated above our heads.
Women News Network for more