Dancing in the Mosque

by Homeira Qaderi

Still, after your father didn’t let me hear your voice or have a picture of you, Jaber felt sorry for me and said, “Being a woman is like being in quicksand. The more you struggle to stay afloat, the deeper you sink.” But sometimes, Jaber seems to have turned into another Nanah-jan. He would say, “If you had accepted your womanhood, you wouldn’t be suffering this much.”

“You shouldn’t take the risk. Don’t bring danger into this house. We should bury the enemy under the ground.” “But Baba-jan, these are only books, not enemies,” I said. Baba-jan sighed. “Homeira, power defines what the enemy is. We must act prudently.”

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

Over time, I began to tell my friends Sara and Elaheh a little about my life in Afghanistan; I still remember their awestruck looks as they closed their books and listened to my stories. At that time, no one had yet written anything about women under the Taliban. They hadn’t known that such a place existed and I hadn’t known that outside of Afghanistan, the world was a relative paradise for women.