defiant dreams
by Sola Mahfouz and Maliana Kapoor (Doubleday £16.99, 320pp)
At the beginning of her compelling memoir about fleeing Afghanistan, Sola Mahfouz writes: “I started growing up when my mother told me to stop laughing.”
The abrupt end to Sola’s happy childhood came just before her 12th birthday in 2008.
She and her cousins pedaled safely out of sight but audibly through the courtyard of the family compound in Kandahar while giggling and singing a popular Bollywood song.
Suddenly something flew over the wall and they heard a group of boys laughing and cheering.
At the beginning of her gripping memoir about fleeing Afghanistan, Sola Mahfouz (pictured) writes: “I started growing up when my mother told me to stop laughing.”
They were two large sacks filled with excrement. “After that day,” Sola writes, “I listened to my mother’s warnings.”
Her mother feared that even a brief giggle might lure to the door a strange man willing to kidnap or kill a young woman in order to silence a young woman’s noises.
And that was during the US occupation of Afghanistan, when you might have thought life would have gotten easier for women.
With hindsight, we know how brief that respite from Taliban rule was supposed to be.
None of us who have watched the looming nightmare of 2021 can forget the traumatic sight of young Afghans so desperate to escape the return of Taliban rule, with its medieval laws and barbaric punishments, that they turned to the sides and wings of a US plane clenched It began during the chaotic withdrawal of American and British troops.
But Sola’s fascinating book shows how even during the NATO-controlled interlude, terror never stopped for the citizens of Kandahar (the birthplace and spiritual home of the Taliban).
Her mother continued to wear her burqa to avoid being attacked while shopping. And the Afghan burqa, Sola reminds us, is “the tightest covering for women in the world.”
With no sleeves or facial openings, other than tiny crisscrossing louvers to see through, “it robs women of their sense of humanity and reduces them to azure monoliths.”
Accidental suicide bombings by the Taliban and kidnappings of children (whose severed fingers were sent to parents who refused to pay) made life in the city terrifying.
And it wasn’t just that that prompted Sola to flee her homeland for a better life. “Every day,” she writes, “I faced two deaths: the death of my body and the death of my personality, my independence, my childhood.”
Sola’s fascinating book shows how even during the NATO-controlled interlude, terror never stopped for the citizens of Kandahar. In the picture Maliana and Sola
From the age of 12 she was expected to work full-time as a laborer, standing in the kitchen all day cooking elaborate meals for the men and boys of the family (she is not allowed to eat with them, since she has to feed on her leftovers). and also a potential bride whose mother is entering into negotiations for her arranged teenage marriage.
She shuddered with all her soul at the prospect of relinquishing her existence to a man she had never met and living with his family as a domestic servant and nanny.
And she had seen enough of her own mother’s life under a tyrannical mother-in-law (her grandmother Ana Bibi) to know about mothers-in-law from hell. When Sola was born, Ana Bibi had refused to hold her because she was a girl.
When she attended her cousins’ weddings, Sola watched in dismay as they were handed over in their wedding dresses like cheap bargains.
Just reading about Sola’s cramped existence made me claustrophobic. Although she was allowed to go to school as a child, her teacher was a sadist who tortured, bullied and whipped the girls with a long, thin branch of pomegranates.
She watched with envy as her brothers received an education that enabled them to study at Western universities.
Seven words from her grandfather echoed in her ears. “English,” he said, “is the window to the world.”
So Sola decided to learn English. Her brother refused to help her. Far from deterring her, his refusal “kindled a fire beneath her.”
She would show him what she was capable of. After completing her chores, she stayed up half the night completing an online course. It didn’t stop with English. She joined the online Khan Academy to study math and science from scratch.
She met Emily, a student at the University of Iowa, through an online language learning platform, and they became friends.
From the prison of her existence, Sola asked Emily how she could study in the US. She told her that she had to take the mandatory SAT and IELTS tests. But there was no testing center in Kandahar; the closest was in Pakistan.
Sola is now a quantum computing researcher at Tufts University in Massachusetts. Pictured: Sola and Maliana
And she didn’t have a passport (most Afghan women don’t, as they rarely leave home, let alone the country).
The book becomes a real page turner when Sola talks about the mental anguish she went through. Her father allowed her to apply for a passport, but when she arrived in Pakistan after a dusty journey, she was told that the exam registration was already full.
Emily has made it her mission to make sure there is a spot for her.
She passed! And she was offered places at colleges in America. Now she needed a visa. An official at the US embassy in Kabul rejected them. He didn’t think she really went there to study.
The New York Times picked up the story, to the dismay of Sola’s family, who thought it would put her in danger.
But nothing bad happened to them — and for Sola, the public has changed her life. The US Embassy called and informed her that her visa application had been approved.
As she got off the plane at Chicago Airport, Sola took off her headscarf. Emily picked her up.
For the first time in her life, Sola sat in front of a car, was driven by a woman, saw a man (Emily’s father) cook, took a long and hot shower, saw people drinking alcohol, and pedaled down a street instead of a bike to drive in circles.
But she hadn’t anticipated her acute homesickness or the culture shock of living in a party dorm. This was by no means a flight to instant happiness.
In 2021, she watched in dismay as the Taliban retook Afghanistan before the US and Britain had even left.
Her parents managed to flee across the border in a car, but the car overturned horribly, her mother was pinned under it, and she became paraplegic.
Sola is now a quantum computing researcher at Tufts University in Massachusetts. Quite an achievement.