Dancing in the Mosque

by Homeira Qaderi

My grandmother believed that one of the most difficult tasks that the Almighty can assign anyone is being a girl in Afghanistan.

took the birth certificate from him and read it. It contained your name, your father’s name, and your grandfather’s name. But nobody had asked for my name. I was irrelevant. I

When I was younger, Madar often said, “Let’s tie our wishes to the wings of the birds to carry them to a faraway land where our dreams can bloom like spring flowers.”

The girls of Herat still had the highest self-immolation statistics in the world.

Behind the steering wheel, I was no longer a passenger in the city, I owned as much of the city as any man did.