Authors: Latifa, Shekeba Hachemi, Linda Coverdale (Translator), Linda Coverdale (Translator), Shekeba Hachemi
ISBN-13: 9781401359256, ISBN-10: 1401359256
Format: Paperback
Publisher: Miramax Books
Date Published: July 2003
Edition: Reprint
In a moving tale of oppression and courageous defiance, sixteen-year-old Latifa tells her story of growing up in war torn Afghanistan. She was a prisoner in her own home as the Taliban wreaked havoc on the lives of Afghan girls and women. The regime banned women from working, from schools, from public life, even from leaving their homes without a male relative. Female faces were outlawed as the burka, or head-to-toe veil, became mandatory. Like a contemporary Anne Frank, Latifa was forced to observe, absorb, and make sense of what was happening to women, to her country, to her family, from the confines of her four walls. In 2001, after escaping to Pakistan, then to Paris, with her parents, Latifa's future finally opened up. Written during exile, this book is an extraordinarily powerful account of a teenager's life under terrible circumstances and a celebration of the resilience of the human spirit.
[My Forbidden Face] is her story, told with a young girl's unflinching faith in the future.
Preface | ix | |
1 | The White Flag Over the Mosque | 1 |
2 | A Canary in a Cage | 30 |
3 | Three Girls | 63 |
4 | Massacres and Miracles | 94 |
5 | Three Little Girls from Taimani | 119 |
6 | Kite Hunting | 145 |
7 | Who Speaks for Afghanistan? | 173 |
Afterword | 200 | |
Acknowledgments | 203 | |
Glossary | 204 | |
A Brief Chronology | 207 |