By Shira Badakshi
Soraya Tarzi (1899-1968) was the first queen of Afghanistan as the wife of King Amanullah Khan between 1919-1929 and played a major part in the modernization reforms of her husband, particularly regarding the emancipation of women. She was the first woman ever featured as Person of the Year in Time-magazine in 1927.
The rise and fall of the celebrity-couple narrates multilayered perspectives of Afghanistan before the Taliban and tries to explore the reasons for the reforms failure and which clashes they caused in the country.
In the first chapter, the couple is in Paris touring Europe. They get lots of attention from Western politicians and the media. Soraya is praised for her exclusive wardrobe and her ideas about women’s emancipation.
She was born in Damascus, Syria as the daughter of an Afghan reformist thinker, Mahmud Beg Tarzi, and a Syrian Feminist mother, Asma Rasmya Khanum. Her family returned from exile and Amanullah and Soraya got married.
Soraya Tarzi became Amanullah Khan’s only wife, which broke centuries of tradition. Amanullah dissolved the royal harem when he became king and freed the enslaved women of his household. Queen Soraya grew to be one of the region’s most important figures when she married into the royal family. Nevertheless, resistance immediately arose against the progressive royals.
Shira Badakshi travels back to the past to examine the roots of the clashes in Afghanistan. Power fights between ethnic groups and religious fractions and the colonial global politics of the west are the backdrop of a colorful narrated graphic novel in a unique drawing style fusing drawing and painting aesthetics.
