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.

Afghanistan is the land of invisible bullets and the land of a death foretold, the land of doomed destinies, and the land of dejected and disgruntled youth, waiting forever for dreams that will never come true.

“Madar, what does ‘emigrating’ mean?” Still searching the horizon, Madar said, “It means becoming a stranger in a foreign country. . . . It means dying alone.”

I 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.

My son, in your motherland the mentioning of a woman’s name outside the family circle is a source of shame. And no child is known by its mother’s name.

“Being a woman is like being in quicksand. The more you struggle to stay afloat, the deeper you sink.”

“The people in the books are much better than people outside books. Literature is different from war.”

“By reading more novels, Homeira, you will become more creative. You will know more people and you will experience many different lives.”

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