The Broken Circle: A Memoir of Escaping Afghanistan

by Enjeela Ahmadi-Miller

He shook his head of long hair. I could see the resolve on his face. “You have to know something,” he said. He glanced around as if he wanted to make sure no one would hear us. “What?” I said with insolence. “What do I have to know?” “This happens every day in Afghanistan.” “What happens?” “Little girls are sold to men like this every day. This is her lot in life. It can’t be changed.” Masood was deliberate and firm in his explanation.

My family was hardly the only one fractured by war—Mommy and my sisters were in New Delhi, Padar still in Kabul, and here we four were in an unlit mountain cave, eating over a crude cook fire, steps away from the horror of death. My family’s strife was but a drop in the flood of countrymen fleeing for their lives.

The beautiful table with all the lavish food made me feel odd. Eating such delicious food when there were so many people with so little to eat, people I knew by name, whose faces I could see clearly in my mind, seemed wrong. I set my fork down; my discomfort was so overwhelming. My body was here, sitting at this beautiful dining table, but my soul couldn’t forget the country we had just traversed. I couldn’t get thoughts of Mina out of my mind, and the freedom fighters struggling for their lives in the freezing mountains.