“Before the Whole World:” Sahra Mani’s Bread & Roses

Do you remember where you were when you heard that U.S. troops had withdrawn from Afghanistan in 2021? I recall that moment in my high school civics class, arguing against my male peers that we simply could not expect to invade a country, prop up its government for twenty years, and then leave without expecting that system to stand without our aid. Annoyed by my liberal assertion, my teacher boldly declared, “It’s the American soldiers who died in the withdrawal that we should be thinking about, not the Afghans who allowed the Taliban to take over their country again.” While I brooded over the fact that I had been rudely interrupted, a dangerous thought sparked my mind’s eye. If thirteen U.S. soldiers lost their lives when trying to escape the Taliban, how atrocious must life be for the twenty-one million Afghan women still living under their occupation?

Despite the fact that most U.S. and European-based news sources have ceased covering Afghanistan and the status of women’s rights in the country, independent journalists and filmmakers continue to record and report on the democratic decline of the country and the subsequent gender apartheid. This list includes Sahra Mani, an Afghan filmmaker and the founder of the Afghanistan Documentary House, which seeks to document Afghan women’s lived experiences authentically and accurately. Following the Taliban’s invasion of Afghanistan on August 15th, 2021, Mani began compiling and filming a documentary on the Afghan women’s movement titled Bread & Roses, co-produced by Pakistani women’s education activist Malala Yousafzai. Mani captures both the slow deterioration of women’s rights, freedoms, and legal protections and, most centrally to the plot, the courage of the Afghan women in their fight for human rights. Released in 2023 and now available on Amazon Prime and Apple TV, her nearly ninety-minute film highlights the strengths, fears, and hearts of the activists as they force not only their oppressors to look upon the suffering they have caused but also the world to look upon the suffering they have chosen to ignore. 

Mani chooses to focus Bread & Roses on the lives and stories of three women: Zahra, a dentist-turned-organizer, Sharifa, a government employee recently fired due to the Taliban’s decrees deeming women unfit for State service, and Taranom, a women’s rights activist living in exile in Pakistan. These three women are never shown together throughout the film, but their various circles collide and intermingle throughout the narrative. As Zahra prepares for a protest with other women in the safety of her clinic at the beginning of the documentary, she crafts signs with statements such as “Litigation is the right of every citizen,” in Pashtu, the language of Bread & Roses’ audio. She and her fellow organizers hold fast to the fact that their movement is not solely for the “women’s issues” we tend to consider in the United States, such as abortion or birth control, but for the democratic values and individual rights of Afghanistan’s citizens. During the film’s first march, Mani provides an intimate look at the dozens of military guards surrounding the protestors, all women carrying signs and chanting for the Ministry of Women’s Affairs to reopen while their male counterparts watch from the opposite side of the street. Their participation in not only making posters but organizing and leading these marches amidst a sea of machine-gun wielding officers speaks to the Afghan women’s presence in the resistance against the Taliban, both for their individual rights as women and for the democratic rights of their country.

Image Credit: Apple TV

While former government employees like Sharifa struggle with the long hours at home with the occupation and limited mobility in Kabul, they find creative ways to support the country that the Taliban had forsaken in their takeover. Taking a taxi into downtown Kabul with only Mani as her companion, Sharifa discusses the economic crumbling of the country with the male taxi driver. The two exchange ideas back and forth regarding the next steps of the Taliban, and, for a moment, they are free to be two Afghans sharing their grief and anxieties over the state of their nation. However, the moment is fleeting, as an officer of the Ministry of Virtue and Vice approaches the vehicle and harshly reminds the taxi driver that it is illegal both to play music in the car and for a woman to ride in a taxi unaccompanied by a male chaperone. Nevertheless, Sharifa leaves the taxi and heads to the market, seemingly unbothered by the officer’s remarks. There, she helps to distribute food to those experiencing economic hardship due to the rapid inflation the country experienced following the invasive government’s return. Although rarely included in mainstream Western conversations of protesting, Sharifa’s defiance of the Taliban’s at-home orders and drive to help those in need highlight the small acts of rebellion the women of Afghanistan continue to engage in, even amidst such mobility restrictions.

Not all of the fighting for a free Afghanistan happens on Afghan soil, as Mani calls attention to Taranom’s journey as a refugee living in political exile. Filming through her cell phone, Taranom shows snippets of her life after fleeing the Taliban and consequently her homeland. Living in a safe house in rural Pakistan, Taranom films herself venturing into the market and bartering with the locals to buy fruits, nuts, and other foods to prepare for Yalda. A festival celebrated in Persian cultures on the winter solstice each year, Yalda is traditionally observed alongside family, something refugees like Taranom are unable to do since many of their loved ones were not able to cross the Afghan border or are imprisoned by the invasive government. Yet in vivid red fabric and with vivid red lips, Taranom is filmed rejoicing in the courtyard of the safe house with other refugees, drinking and dancing with their shadows cascading along the compound’s walls. Even though she cannot be with her biological family on this important holiday, she is able to forge connections and community with her fellow countrywomen and men, claiming her culture and country as hers, which the Taliban’s government can never steal from her. 

Mani drives home the point that the Taliban’s successful reclamation of Afghanistan and their discriminatory practices against half of the country’s 42 million citizens is not the responsibility of the Afghan women, but rather of the world who closed their eyes to such horrors. Over vast deserts and snow-covered peaks, Taranom laments losing her homeland, speaking a prophecy over the land she loves but that cannot keep her safe: “May history remember once upon a time, such cruelty was permitted against the women of Afghanistan. Before the United Nations. Before all human rights organizations. Before the whole world. Before countries that denounce cold-heartedness and cry for democracy.” 

The title, Bread & Roses, is a reference to James Oppenheim’s twentieth-century poem of the same name, originally published in American magazine. Detailing the “Bread & Roses” protests of female textile workers in Massachusetts, Oppenheim’s poem describes the workers’ advocacy for a living wage and the ability to enjoy the fruits, or “roses” of their labor. By naming this film after such a critical poem detailing women’s labor and democratic organizing in the U.S., Sahra Mani is calling on the American people to refuse to look away from the Taliban’s gender apartheid, and instead fight for the democratic values we profess to believe in as we let own democracy crumble under the second Trump administration.

I curl up in the dimness of my apartment, my keys sitting besides my laptop as I dream of the day I earn my degree in May. One piece of paper can indicate such a privilege, yet I don’t believe that privilege allows us to close our eyes to the horrors others endure each and every day. Do you? I believe that in honor of women such as Zahra, Sharifa, and Taranom, I am called to use my privilege to lift up their voices and continue their fight, so that one day I might not be in the minority when I say I’m a woman with the keys to my own apartment and a frame for my own diploma. Will you?

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Kami Steffenauer is a senior in the College studying Anthropology and Women's & Gender Studies. She dedicates this article to the Afghan women who have fought and continue to fight for democracy at home and abroad.