The mother and grandmother agree that a beardless man in a burkha could pass as a woman while a girl in a costume and short hair could pass as a boy.  This reasoning supports the women's idea to turn the girl into a young boy by cutting her hair and letting her wear the father's old costume after alterations.  The idea is excellent as the young girl is forced to become the family's new breadwinner as it seems to be the only way they could survive.  However, the girl is innocently unaware about the world as she turns her head in all directions and stares at Taliban members with obvious fear in her face.  It becomes painfully obvious that she in not ready to undertake this assignment for the welfare of her family, but they have no other choice.

The girl turns into a boy, but remains a girl at heart as she returns home crying at night emotionally exhausted.  The girl always seems to fall asleep with her head in the lap of her grandmother who always tells the same story of a boy who wishes he was a girl.  The boy in grandmothers tale worked hard and he saw that the girls never worked as hard as he, which was the reason he wanted to be a girl.  The story becomes a source for how the girl perceives society as she believes that girls cannot work hard and that boys should work hard.  This reinforces the difficulty she has adapting to the Taliban society as a boy since she has been taught patriarchal values, which limits what she believes she can accomplish.  In a sense, it is a form of socially learned helplessness, which has been fostered through the tale from generation to generation.

The day comes when she is forced to go to school with the boys, which becomes an eye opening experience for the girl.  The education, which is only for boys, becomes an indoctrination of the Taliban faith and rule, which is emphasizes on head bobbing hymns of the Koran and weapons training.  The girl has entered the boys world and the grass is not greener on the other side as grandma's tale suggests.  Instead her socially learned feeble femininity intensifies among these boys who have been brought up like strong boys by their families.  An example of the girl's helpless and dependent manners are exposed when she is climbing a tree during recess and she requires the the help of another boy to get down as fear petrifies her from climbing down.

 The only knowledge the girl had when she entered the man's world was her what mother and grandmother have taught her, which is not much in regards to the world and Islamic gender issues.  In addition, it is apparent that her fatherless upbringing has sheltered her from having a male role model in the home, which influences her view of men.   However, she is forced to learn through trial and error in order to acquire the experience to stay alive in a world where the woman's life belongs to the husband.

Siddiq Barmak's story of Osama, which is the title of the film and the name a boy gives the girl, openly displays the patriarchal Taliban rule and the insignificance of womanhood.  The female insignificance is enhanced through the main character's namelessness as well as her constant covering with the burkha.  It is as if the identity of the woman has been erased and the Taliban laws of women helps to enforce the oppression of women through additional discriminating laws against women.  In the Taliban society a woman is what the man is, which means that if the woman is a widow she is not existent to the Taliban, which is the case with her family.  It should also be noted that the extremist Taliban rule is a narrow perspective and interpretation of the Koran and Islamic faith, which had dire consequences on the women of Afghanistan. 

Osama is a visually rich cinematic experience as it plays with visual symbolism.  One of the strongest shots of the girl is shot through prison bars while she is jumping ropes as the the camera pans across from left to right.  Jumping ropes is regarded as a girl activity in Afghanistan, but the powerful message is her happiness being a girl behind the bars where the bars symbolize the imprisonment of womanhood.  The film is full of similar symbolism and each moment is equally powerful.  When the girl gets stuck in the tree her feebleness might become overwhelming in a modern Western perspective, but it is a powerful depiction of the socially learned helplessness many girls acquire through childhood.  These intense scenes will bring about a distressing, yet marvelous, cinematic experience that must be pondered for sometime as women's rights must be considered throughout the whole world.

DIRECTED BY

Siddiq Barmak

COUNTRY

Afghanistan / Netherlands / Japan

Filmography links and data courtesy of