When Manizha Talash ended her breakdance routine at the Paris Olympics by wrapping herself in a cape bearing the slogan “Free Afghan Women”, she knew she would be disqualified. “I had been thinking about this for four months, ever since I knew I was going to the Olympics,” says Talash, 21.
“I thought: I’ve got one minute when the whole world’s watching me and I thought, what’s more important, my dream, my life, or women in Afghanistan? I didn’t go there to win, that doesn’t matter to me.”
The cape was made from a burqa, seen by many as the ultimate symbol of the oppression of Afghan women.
“Afghan women have no agency in their lives,” she posted on Instagram. “With the fabric of this burqa that represents so much, I want to show the girls back home that even in the most difficult circumstances, they have the strength to transform things. From a burqa they can make wings. If they are in a cocoon, one day soon they can fly.”
She was disqualified immediately for making a political protest.
“The Olympic authorities saw it as a political protest but I don’t, although I knew this is what would happen,” she says. “I don’t see it as political but as doing the world a favour by helping Afghan women.
“Breaking is a form of expression and so I felt that this is what I had to do, even if it meant being disqualified.”
Asked if she thought it was hypocritical of the authorities to ban her, given the large number of countries with poor human rights records that are allowed to compete, her only comment was: “Everyone has their rules.”
Talash joined Kabul’s tiny breakdance scene when she was 18 and was the first and only female breaker when the capital fell to the Taliban in 2021. She and her fellow breakers fled to Pakistan before being evacuated in a Spanish military aircraft.
After working a hairdresser in Huesca in Aragón, she moved to Madrid and a few months later was reunited with her family.
With the help of an American journalist and documentary filmmaker, she applied to join the Olympic refugee team, representing Spain in the first – and possibly the last – time breakdancing has been an Olympic sport.
“In the refugee team, we were 37 people all from different countries speaking different languages so it wasn’t easy to make close friends but we really felt like a team and everyone helped everyone else,” she says.
On the day of the competition, Talash says she was nervous because she was among the best breakers in the world.
“Some of them had been breaking for more than 20 years, since I was born, and they’d been in lots of competitions while I’d only been in two,” she says.
“These are people I learned from by watching videos so I was very happy to be among them. I was also anxious in case the protest didn’t go well or people wouldn’t see it.”
Not only was her gesture seen around the world, she says, it was warmly received by the public and her fellow competitors. It was also a boost to women in Afghanistan who saw it on social media.
She has no regrets and says the Paris protest was not a one-off.
“I wouldn’t do the same thing but I don’t just want to talk, I want to act, and if I can do something else, I will,” she says.
Talash now lives in Madrid, with her family nearby, and hopes the Olympic Refugee Foundation will continue to support her financially, as they do all scholarship holders, and will not withdraw their support because she was disqualified.
As for the future, she says: “I’m going to train more because breaking is my life. I also have a clothing line that I hope people in Afghanistan will be able to make at home. And I want to learn other sports and go to the Games again.”