Kubra Khademi
La fille et le dragon – lecture and drawing

In 2024, Kubra Khademi, a Hazara feminist artist from Afghanistan, published her first graphic novel, La fille et le dragon [The girl and the dragon]. She gave the text to Nicole Lapierre, a French anthropologist and sociologist. In an adaptation for the stage, the two writers are offering a live ‘drawn’ lecture of the book.

One day during the winter of 1989, in a poor refugee family which had left Afghanistan to escape the Soviet Army, the mujaheddins and the persecutions which the Afghan Sunnis systematically inflicted upon the Shia Hazara, a little girl was born, with her hands completely open, considered a good luck sign for the household. She was the sixth child alongside ten other children. The mullah refused to choose a first name for her, to record her birth in the family Koran. Why should he, for a mere girl? In the end she was given the name Kubra, meaning “big.” The child showed talent in drawing, a gift which for her became like a kind of armor, protecting and strengthening her against the hardships she would experience living under the double, iron rule of religious fanaticism and the patriarchy. With her weapons, pencils, brushes and a fierce determination, Kubra began an incredible journey as an artist, with a sacred mission: killing the dragon! A unique graphic and literary depiction of the invincibility of art, an homage to women, to life, to freedom.

Accessibility infos :

• Reading in French without surtitles