Director Geeta Gandbhir on documentary: ‘Muslim women can do work that is equal to men’

A Journey of a Thousand Miles: Peacekeepers is the story of three Bangladeshi policewomen with the UN in Haiti.

A Journey of a Thousand Miles: Peacekeepers is the story of three Bangladeshi policewomen with the UN in Haiti. Courtesy TIFF

Between June 2013 and July last year, Bangladeshi peacekeeper Rehana Pervin witnessed a heated protest in the Haitian capital, Port-au-Prince.

She also watched as government officials evicted victims of the 2010 earthquake from their shabby tents. She saw the bodies of a mother and her 10-year-old son, who had been doused in petrol and burnt alive.

Yet, paradoxically, in many ways the months she spent in Haiti were like a holiday. Instead of cooking and cleaning for her family in Dhaka, she learnt to shoot a gun and deal with violent protests. She didn’t have to listen to her son’s lectures on how anti-Islamic she was for taking a job. And she could laugh and sing with other members of her police unit.

Before they were deployed, the women discussed how their husbands would cope – "Fly all you want, fly high, but lay the egg in the right place," Pervin jokes in the documentary A Journey of a Thousand Miles: Peacekeepers, which had its world premiere last week at the Toronto Film Festival.

“You could see how sad she was to go back,” says the film’s Bangladeshi producer Nandita Ahmed. “She had a hard time reintegrating, because she found ways to reach her full potential while in Haiti. She’s so playful and loves to sing and dance. I think this mission was an escape from her life.”

Not all those featured in the film were happy to be away from home. Mousami Sultan cried when she read letters from her children (“When my mom gets on a plane, I’ll get on another plane and fly beside her,” her son says as she leaves).

But Sultan enrolled in the police to counter the effects of the abusive family she grew up in, and deals with her troubles in Haiti out of a sense of obligation to this idea. “It’s hard being away,” she says. “But I think women in uniform can help other women fuel their courage.”

A New York Times article about Indian woman peacekeepers in Liberia inspired Geeta Gandbhir, co-director of A Journey of a Thousand Miles: Peacekeepers with Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, to look at other missions. When she heard of the Bangladeshis training for Haiti, she knew she had found her subjects.

“The key things we wanted to show were that Muslim women can do work that is equal to men, and their work is valuable both outside their country and inside,” Gandbhir says.

“We wanted to make a great story about women in our area. We are [often] portrayed as victims.”