Krishnan Guru-murthy went to Afghanistan to report on abused women for channel 4. He found it unsettling. He has a daughter, who is 8. He loves her.
So listening to a young woman in Kabul describe how her father stabbed her 16 times, slashed her throat and left her for dead because she refused to marry the man he’d chosen is an unsettling experience. I was in Afghanistan for Unreported World making a film about how some fathers and husbands treat their daughters and wives.
There is all sorts of cultural history and religious pressure to explain how women have been deprived basic rights in Afghanistan. But this kind of violence? I can’t pretend to understand how anyone can do it, but the voices of the survivors are compelling.
I can’t understand it either. I can understand rage and ragey impulses, but I can’t understand actually carrying them out. There’s a wall there, that bars comprehension.