ninme

The Times – Teenager wants to be Afghan pop queen

Two squeaky clean heart throbs and a demure teenage songstress in a headscarf will battle it out this week for a place in the final of Afghan Star, a television talent contest that has gripped more than ten million viewers from Jalalabad to Herat.

Ten million is a lot of viewers. That’s pushing Oscars territory. (or if things continue to follow current trajectories)

To Western eyes, Afghan Star looks as gawky and awkward as a TV show from the 1950s. The singers are chaste, the sets wooden and the tunes traditional. Female contestants are draped in headscarves as they nervously sing anodyne songs before crowds of youths in their smartest clothes and on their best behaviour.

Cute! And good for them. We can force American-style democracy on them, but not tie them to a lifetime of Ryan Seacrest at the same time.

This season, the show’s third, there is a chance that there will be a female winner for the first time. She is a shy 18-year-old called Lima Sahaar from the deeply conservative southern city of Kandahar, once the spiritual home of the Taleban and still a place where no women venture out on the streets unless wearing a burka. …

Despite such apparent handicaps, the teenager has managed to win over a nation that expects its women to be modest in public.

Yesterday, at a press conference where she sat beside two cocky male semi-finalists who sniggered and looked embarrassed when a Western reporter asked them about girlfriends, she appeared almost saintly.

“If I win and become rich I will give the money to the poor,” she said to murmurs of approval. “I want to work hard, serve the people and write good songs.” The boys quickly added that they also wanted to get rich so they could help the poor.

I can’t tell you how much that cracks me up.