Nadia Anjuman

A selection of Nadia Anjuman's poetry in English translation appears in the book, Load Poems Like Guns: Women's Poetry from Herat, Afghanistan (Holy Cow! Press, 2015), edited and translated by Farzana Marie. The book includes both Farsi and English versions of the poetry of eight Afghan women poets including Anjuman. The introduction also tells the story of Anjuman's life and death in detail, based on interviews with the poet's family, friends, classmates, and professors and research on the ground in Herat.

Anjuman's husband, Farid Ahmad Majid Neia, graduated from Herat University with a degree in literature and became the head of the library there. Anjuman's friends and supporters are of the opinion that Neia and his family believed her poetry to be a disgrace to their reputation. Anjuman continued to write despite, and was set to publish a second volume of poetry in 2006 entitled “Yek sàbad délhoreh” (“An Abundance of Worry”) which included poems expressing her isolation and sadness concerning her marital life.

Cristina Contilli, Ines Scarpolo, and M. Badihian Amir translated Anjuman's work into Italian in a volume entitled Elegia per Nadia Anjuman, published by Edizioni Carte e Penna, from Torino, Italy in 2006.

On November 4, 2005, Anjuman and her husband had an altercation. According to Neia, Anjuman wanted to go out and visit family and friends, a common practice during Eid al-Fitr (the final day of the holy month of Ramadan). Neia said he would not allow her to visit her sister. Anjuman protested, and they began to fight. That night, Neia beat Anjuman until she was unconscious, severely bruised, and her head cut. Hours later, with Anjuman apparently still unconscious, Neia took her to a hospital by rickshaw; the driver later told authorities that Anjuman was already dead when Neia placed her body in his carriage. Soon afterward, a senior police officer, Nisar Ahmad Paikar, stated that her husband had confessed to battering her following a row, but not to killing her; instead, Neia alleged that Anjuman took poison and confessed to doing so before she died.

The citizens of Herat suffered the abuses of the Taliban for six years before their purported liberation by the United States-backed Northern Alliance in 2001. Anjuman was 21 and, as she was free to pursue an education, applied and was accepted to Herat University, where she matriculated in 2002 in the department of Farsi Literature and Languages. While earning her degree in literature, Anjuman published a book of poetry entitled “Gul-e-dodi” (“Flower of Smoke”) which proved popular in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran.

As a teenager, Anjuman rallied with other local women and began attending an underground educational circle called the Golden Needle Sewing School, organized by the young women and mentored by Herat University professor Muhammad Ali Rahyab in 1996. Members of the Golden Needle School would gather three times a week under the guise of learning how to sew (a practice approved by the Taliban government), while in actuality the meetings enabled them to hear lectures from Herat University professors and lead discussions on literature. If caught, the likely punishment was imprisonment, torture, and possibly hanging. In order to protect themselves, the attendants had their children play outside the building and act as lookouts. They would alert the women of approaching religious police, at which point the students would hide their books and take up needlework. The program continued through the entirety of the Taliban governmental rule.

Nadia Anjuman (Persian: نادیا انجمن ‎; December 27, 1980 – November 4, 2005) was a poet from Afghanistan.

In 1980, Nadia Anjuman Herawi was born in the city of Herat in northwestern Afghanistan. She was one of six children, raised during one of Aghanistan's more recent periods of tumult. In September 1995, the Taliban captured Herat and ousted the then-Governor of the Province, Ismail Khan. With the new Taliban government in power, women had their liberties drastically restrained. A gifted student in her tenth year of schooling, Anjuman now faced a future with no hope for education, as the Taliban shut the schools for girls and denied any instruction to her and her peers.