These are among the safer art forms right now, and many women are again active in that space. It might sound romanticised to call it a political space, but I think it is. For women, the fact of coming together is itself political, regardless of whether there’s a declared political agenda. At a time when half the population is banished from public life, that matters enormously, even when it only happens among neighbours.

Although we have no empirical measure of the impact, I’d say that the fact of being together, the care work involved and the storytelling all build resilience, and when women build resilience, it reaches their children too. There’s a kind of uplift within the family, a greater capacity to withstand hardship.

The play’s title relies on a pun that captures the complex reality of Afghan refugees living in Germany. Literally, Shahr-e Naw translates as ‘New Town’ and is the name of a modern and upscale neighbourhood of Kabul. By placing this familiar piece of home in Berlin, the title symbolises the way exiles transplant their culture, identities and memories into a completely new western environment as they navigate exile.

The title also adds a layer of colloquial street slang. In conversational Dari, dropping the ‘h’ sound turns the word for ‘city’ (shahr) into ‘shar’, which means wicked, troublesome or mischievous. Combined with naw (‘new’), the phrase doubles as a slang term for something or someone that is weirdly wicked or a new kind of troublemaker. This double meaning honours the characters’ Kabul roots while playfully highlighting the chaotic and disruptive experience of trying to redefine yourself in a foreign country.

The story follows two close female friends, one a long-time resident of Germany and the other a recent arrival. Their intense bond constantly leaves outsiders guessing whether they are just friends or a romantic couple. As they navigate a series of bizarre and chaotic situations in Berlin, they are repeatedly confronted by men who try to stereotype and control them. Tension peaks when the women find themselves among highly educated, intellectual Afghan men who, instead of offering a safe space, use their smarts to insult and judge them.

The play shows that misogyny and the mistreatment of women are universal problems, and it challenges western audiences who might assume that gender oppression is confined to a single culture or extremist group.

It was a very diverse audience, ranging in age from 16 to 60. It included members of the Afghan diaspora, some newly arrived, and people from Eritrea, Ghana, Pakistan, Yemen and eastern Europe, along with a few Germans. Very early in the show, the audience began calling out and interrupting. Some men felt entitled to shout comments at the stage in response to the male characters. All the male characters were represented by a single mannequin that changed outfits throughout the play. When one of the actors made a satirical joke about how a man would behave in a certain situation, real men in the crowd began mimicking that exact behaviour. I fired back from the stage, matching every one of their insults with an even sharper comeback to put them in their place.

This tension became deeply personal during a scene featuring the mannequin dressed as a bacha posh, a girl raised as a boy in some Afghan families. For this costume, a headscarf was styled to double as a fashionable bolero jacket. Watching this unfold from the crowd was a former colleague of mine who used to mock me for wearing a headscarf while I was teaching in Afghanistan. I looked right at him and made it clear that it didn’t matter if the headscarf was worn as a bolero, paired with make-up or worn traditionally. It was absolutely none of his business.

While three or four people stood up and walked out partway through the show, clearly recognising their own toxic behaviours being criticised on stage, the rest of the crowd appeared moved. Afghan artists in the audience laughed and applauded, while others cried, danced and celebrated. A 16-year-old boy and a 60-year-old woman were both brought to tears. The hostile reactions illustrate an idea by the anti-colonial theorist Frantz Fanon: that it deeply unsettles the people in power when they lose the ability to safely judge you from afar and suddenly realise you are the one watching and judging them.

It’s clear to me that this work doesn’t reach Afghanistan, but I don’t see that as a tragedy. The point is to invite reflection. Start with your own misogyny before you externalise your criticism. I know far too many diaspora art collectives with a serious misogyny problem, run by people who consider themselves great and say things like ‘I’ve empowered so many women’. It’s a matter of coherence and credibility.

You can’t decolonise anything if you haven’t understood how colonialism works, where it operates and how deeply it’s bound up with capitalism. And the problem is that capitalism gets left out and terms like ‘decolonial’ and ‘intersectionality’ are thrown around without an understanding of the body of thought they emerged from.

I see this particularly among evacuated Afghan artists who had the privilege of gaining an institutional foothold here, often at a university, studying art at bachelor’s or master’s level. They’ve encountered a term like ‘intersectionality’ and think it covers everything, but class never features. Naming an injustice from within an excluded group isn’t automatically an expression of progress. And the moment you try to explain that distinction, you’re accused of being against intersectionality.

The key principle should be ‘do no harm’. The situation in Afghanistan is catastrophic, and not only because of the Taliban. Good intentions aren’t enough, because you can cause harm even if you have the best intentions. I find it naive to believe that good intentions alone prevent harm.

Documenting or publicising a piece of art – a craft circle, a mural, a performance – can be exactly what gives it reach and meaning. But if publishing it endangers the project on the ground and the people who made it, that’s a serious problem. Artists, as well as everyone amplifying their work, must resist the pull to publicise for their own visibility or career if doing so risks the safety of the people involved. Protection must matter more than being seen.