Kickass Women in History: Malalai of Maiwand

Many of us today know of Malala Yousafzai, the Pakastani activist for women’s education. This month’s Kickass Women is in honor of her namesake, Malalai of Maiwand (1861-1880).

Malalai was a heroine in the Afghanistan rebellion against the British in the Second Anglo-Afghan War. This war, which lasted from 1878 to 1880, involved Afghanistan’s attempt to prevent British colonization. Malalai’s story involves the fight against colonialism, women at war, and the power of romantic poetry as a form of resistance.

Malalai was born in Khig, a small village near the larger community of Maiwand. When the Battle of Maiwand began, her father, a shepherd, and her fiancee joined the ranks of Afghans fighting the British. Malalai was there to provide support to troops by supplying nursing care, water, and weapons. According to legend, the battle took place on what was to be her wedding day. When the Afghans began to fall back, Malalali grabbed a flag (some say she used her veil) and shouted this landay:

“Young love! If you do not fall in the battle of Maiwand,

By God, someone is saving you as a symbol of shame!”

As the battle intensified she took the place of the lead flag-bearer, declaring:

With a drop of my sweetheart’s blood,

Shed in defense of the Motherland,

Will I put a beauty spot on my forehead,

Such as would put to shame the rose in the garden!

Poetryfoundation.org has a wonderful essay about the landay or landai, a form of poetry much beloved by Pashtun women before and Malalai:

In Afghan culture, poetry is revered, particularly the high literary forms that derive from Persian or Arabic. But the poem above is a folk couplet — a landay — an oral and often anonymous scrap of song created by and for mostly illiterate people: the more than twenty million Pashtun women who span the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Traditionally, landays are sung aloud, often to the beat of a hand drum, which, along with other kinds of music, was banned by the Taliban from 1996 to 2001, and in some places, still is.

A landay has only a few formal properties. Each has twenty-two syllables: nine in the first line, thirteen in the second. The poem ends with the sound “ma” or “na.” Sometimes they rhyme, but more often not. In Pashto, they lilt internally from word to word in a kind of two-line lullaby that belies the sharpness of their content, which is distinctive not only for its beauty, bawdiness, and wit, but also for the piercing ability to articulate a common truth about war, separation, homeland, grief, or love. Within these five main tropes, the couplets express a collective fury, a lament, an earthy joke, a love of home, a longing for the end of separation, a call to arms, all of which frustrate any facile image of a Pashtun woman as nothing but a mute ghost beneath a blue burqa.

Malalai was shot and killed during the battle, but the troops, inspired by her words and leadership, won the day. She continues to be a popular figure in Afghanistan, with a presence in school textbooks. Many schools and other buildings are named after her and her name is still popular. Malalai’s grave, in Khig, is a shrine. While British records don’t mention her presence at the battle, her life and role in the battle are considered to be mostly factual by historians in Afghanistan.

 

In addition to sources linked to above,I am heavily indebted to Wikipedia for articles about Malalai, the landai, and the Second Anglo-Afghan War, as well as garenewing,com.uk.