"To Kill a Sparrow"
It's a, "two households, both alike in dignity" kind of story. The kind of story you don't even think happens outside of sweeping dramas written to wrench your heart. But it happens sometimes, and it happened to a couple from Afghanistan—Soheila and Niaz.
You might have heard about "To Kill a Sparrow," a short documentary produced by our bayside neighbors, the Center for Investigative Reporting; it's been frothing in the blue wake of Twitter this week and being lauded in outlets like The New York Times, but in case you didn't, get thee to it.
The film explores the plight of women in Afghanistan who have been jailed for "moral crimes"—adultery, running away from home—through the story of Soheila, a woman bold enough to run away from an arranged marriage to be with the man she truly loves. When she was five, Soheila's father promised her to an elderly man as a bride, once she was of marrying age. But once she was indeed old enough to be "married off," she decided that wasn't the life she wanted for herself.
There are a helluva lot more complications all stacked against Soheila, but we'll let you watch it. It's a stark, straight-forward—if harrowing—peek into a community where women's rights are finally becoming a national issue, but ingrained culture is forcibly clashing with the law of the land.
