All Wrapped Up with Nowhere to Go

By Margaret Carlson/Los Angeles

I'm an avid reader of PEOPLE, but until a few weeks ago, I didn't know what Mavis Leno looked like. The wife of Jay Leno is an aggressive homebody, and for all the outside world knew of her, she might as well have been wrapped in a burka, the full-body shroud Afghan women are forced to wear. But she's emerged to give voice to those very women. "Silence," she says, "is killing" the women of Afghanistan, where the Taliban, an extreme faction of mujahedin, largely composed of Lord of the Flies-like boy soldiers, swept to power in 1996. Women, who made up 40% of doctors and 70% of teachers in the capital, were forced to abandon Western clothes and stay indoors behind windows painted black "for their own good." If they show any skin or go outside without a male relative, they risk death. Women can't be treated by male doctors, yet women aren't allowed to practice medicine. Only boys can go to school.

So now each day Leno drives to the cramped offices of the Feminist Majority Foundation in her blue BMW in which the red engine light keeps coming on (she says Jay coddles only his vintage cars). She recruited Linda Bloodworth-Thomason (creator of Designing Women) to help grab attention for Afghan women. Together, they battled compassion fatigue to mount a $150- per-head buffet dinner with more than 100 A-list names. Despite Leno's spending 12-hour days on the phone, performers and guests were dropping out days before the March 29 event ("You mean Sally Field's not coming? Well, then count me out"). Then, at breakfast on the Thursday before the gala, Jay told Mavis, "Guess who's going to be on the show tonight? You are." Her first ("and last," she adds) appearance gave the event the final push it needed. Lionel Richie opened. Lily Tomlin joked. Marlo Thomas introduced. Sidney Poitier spoke. All the Judds came. Jay's stand-up was funny but surprisingly emotional when he came to Mavis. In a roomful of women, he said, it was embarrassing that "the only one crying was the guy."

Now's the moment for the dry-eyed journalist to note that Jay would ordinarily be making late-night mincemeat out of himself and others present like Geena Davis, Kathy Bates, Loni Anderson and Xena Warrior Princess. Hollywood often sets itself up for ridicule. (Remember Jessica Lange testifying on the farm crisis because she played a farmer's wife?) But isn't it better to use your fame for something other than getting a table at Spago Beverly Hills? Mavis has been criticized as misinformed by a tiny but noisy pro-Taliban lobby, whose frequent spokesperson is Laili Helms, the Afghan-born daughter-in-law of former CIA chief Richard Helms. Its protest outside the party was menacing enough so that Jennifer Holliday (Dreamgirls) was too shaken to perform. Helms, who lives freely in a New Jersey suburb, is convinced the Taliban is good for Afghanistan and that life is better now that someone is in charge after years of civil war.

Well, Hitler appeared to be good for some Germans too. But the dimmest bulb in Hollywood could hardly misunderstand what the Taliban is about. Disagreement comes only from oil-hungry corporations and relief groups fearful they'll be kicked out for criticizing the regime. There are 130 human-rights and women's groups aligned against recognizing the Taliban. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright declared that "if the Taliban...wants international acceptance, they must treat women not as chattel but as people." There's no religious justification for the behavior: the 55-country Organization of the Islamic Conference refused to admit the Taliban. At the party, two of the few reporters who have been in the country, Christiane Amanpour, the Goddess of War Reporting, and Diane Sawyer, sent tapes about the virtual house arrest of the female population.

Anyone who doubts should talk to the family of the woman killed because her ankle showed as she rode a bicycle. Or the flight attendant on my plane home. I thought the glimmer of recognition in her eyes came from watching obscure cable talk shows and that she was about to toss me an upgrade. In fact, Nasrin was a recent emigre who had twisted her schedule around to be at the event. Her story of brutality shocked me out of my fear of a middle seat. She'd fled here with her mother, leaving behind a father in prison and female relatives plunged into the Dark Ages. No one has misinformed her. Leno and the Feminist Majority look like her best chance to go home again.