Forbidden poems

Rahila Muska, a teenage girl, lived in the Helmand province of Afghanistan, a Taliban stronghold. Muska was known for regularly calling into a radio program on which women share landays, a traditional Pashtun form of poetry. Like most women who do this, Muska shared other people’s poems, not her own—to acknowledge authorship would have endangered her life. 

In 2010, Muska took her own life. She lit herself on fire and eventually died.

When Eliza Griswold heard about Muska’s death, the journalist traveled to rural Afghanistan with photographer Seamus Murphy to explore Muska’s story. Muska’s father had pulled her out of school after the fifth grade. Like many women and girls in that region, she was not allowed to leave home. Her only continuing education was these landays, which she picked up from other Pashtun women and from the radio program.