Eve: How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution

by Cat Bohannon

In 1989, the Russians finally withdrew like a glacier, leaving the land scraped flat by the rollers of war. For a time, Abedo managed to settle down to a more “normal” life back in her village. She even opened a shop, selling goods to people she’d fought with. Her children grew. Though it certainly wasn’t normal for an Afghan woman to live the way she did, she maintained her independence and was well respected by her neighbors. Twenty years came and went. Her children had children. Poppies bloomed in the river valley, pink and white. Then, after another war burned half the cities down, the Taliban started interfering with her business. They told her not to sell to the U.S.-backed government. The government, meanwhile, told her not to sell to the Taliban. She refused to take a side. She’d probably still be living her ordinary village life if the Taliban hadn’t decided to set fire to her shop. After that, with the blessing of the American-backed government, she recruited ten young men for her own paramilitary troop. When I started researching this chapter, she’d survived, a cross between a wizened grandmother and a commandant, continuing to defend the daily life and well-being of her village with well-oiled guns. Given her extensive experience as both a fighter and a military commander, that U.S.-backed government had consulted her for security intelligence and strategy in the region. “Modern-day youngsters in the police and army don’t have experience,” she said to a journal...