Book: My Forbidden Face

[Erudite]

Book: My Forbidden Face - Growing Up Under the Taliban: A Young Woman's Story
Author: Latifa (not her real name which is not given because at printing she still had family in Afghanistan; there is a fatwa on her because of this book and her actions in speaking out)
Genre: Non-fiction
Suitable for: adults

I've been trying to familiarize myself with the topic of women in the Middle East and this is the 3rd personal account from a woman in Afghanistan that I've read. Like the others, this one is horrific and yet inspiring at the same time. Horrific in what others (the Taliban) think is "good" for society...well, I can't believe they think it's good...they just want power. And inspiring in the ability to carry on and even triumph.

Latifa was 16 when the Taliban took over. She'd grown up in the war zone that was Afghanistan in the 80s and 90s. She was a modern young woman with posters of Brooke Shields and Elvis Presley on her wall. She had aspirations of going to college to become a journalist like her older sister. But when the Taliban took control of Kabul, her life was cut off. She could no longer safely leave her family's apartment and for four years stayed cooped up inside, only leaving once every couple of months. When she was 20, she saw a group of young boys at the mosque being "taught" and she wondered what will happen when these boys grow up, having no other education than the "rod" and the parts of the Koran they are required to memorize by the Taliban...parts that aren't even in the original. (The Taliban are teaching a Koran and Sharia (Islamic law) that she and her family, deeply religious people, have never heard. The Taliban pick and choose what they'll believe in and enforce, add whatever they want, and then toss it aside whenever it suits them.)

Latifa realizes that education is necessary and so she starts an "underground" school for the children who live in her building. Eventually, she and her parents are asked to go to Paris to tell what is happening to the women of Afghanistan and thus this book was born.

The book is heartrending, nauseating, and inspiring all at the same time. The Taliban were/are evil, but a simple school girl's ability to rise above the situation and become a voice for good and power is amazing. While this book is important to understand this aspect of the culture, I wouldn't recommend it due to the amount of graphic violence described in it. However, if you were seeking to understand the situation, it would be a valuable book for its firsthand account of a family living first under the Soviets, and then under the muhajideen, and then under the Taliban.