Madina Ayar writes for the ARA (You can see her eyes, but nothing else, in the photograph accompanying this text) from Kabul, about Afghan restaurants. She explains that "before" they were one of the few leisure venues where men and women sat together, but that the last time she went to one, "the garden area, which used to be where families sat, had become a 'women-only' space and men weren't allowed in." The waiters said, "Ladies, stay here. Gentlemen, you must go to the men's section." They did have a second unisex dining room, but it was like the smoking area in our old bars: no windows, no air.
I never tire of telling the women of our world, those I meet in book clubs or at wine tastings, that they should go, alone, one day, for a cocktail or a glass of cava at a cocktail bar or wine bar. Reading, chatting with the waiters, watching the comings and goings (how I love that expression, borrowed from Víctor Català), or waiting for someone with whom you'll "catch up." That precious freedom, that choice. It wasn't so long ago that it was incredibly strange to see a woman alone in a bar, here, in our own backyard.
Reading this woman, whose face I don't know, I can't remain indifferent. I always believe that the most important and decisive feminist conquest isn't business, it's leisure. And the totalitarians who want to exclude women exclude them from leisure (they shouldn't sit at the table) to confine them to business (in the kitchen). Nothing is more precious than a food and drink establishment filled with men and women. Perhaps because we're so used to it, we spend our meals looking at our phones instead of the uncovered face of our companion.
