Women’s Identity and the Practice of Bacha Posh in Nadia Hashimi’s The Pearl That Broke Its Shell

Abstract

Both at national and international levels, there has been several attempts by various scholars and writers to depict the difficulties and problems women encounter in Afghanistan, but the writers who have lived in the secure locations or in ‘border zones’ – like in Europe and U.S, have made plenty of efforts to present the plights and struggles in their works that these women have tackled throughout the history of this country. While adhering to the issue of women and their identity in Afghanistan, Nadia Hashimi’sThe Pearl That Broke Its Shell has effectively presented and raised the issue of the Bacha Posh custom, a girl dressed as a boy for various reasons. But, it is the girl or a woman who faces problems based on her gender, not the boy or a man. This papers aims to problematize gender and identity issues related to Bacha posh girls and the Bacha Posh custom in Nadia’s Hashimi’sThe pearl that Broke Its Shell where Hashimi as a female Afghan diaspora novelist have done a great deal to portray the problems most women have in their identities in their early age while encountering with this custom that girls are forced to wear like a boy and act like a boy.