Siba Shakib

One woman’s harrowing story about life under the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. Shirin-Gol was just a young girl when her village was levelled by the Russians in 1979. When the men in her family joined the resistance, she fled with the other women and children to Kabul, and so began a life of day-to-day struggle in her war-torn country. A life that included a Pakistani refugee camp, a forced marriage to pay off her brother’s gambling debts, selling her body and begging for money to feed her growing family, an attempted suicide and an unsuccessful attempt to leave Afghanistan for Iran after the Taliban seized control of her country. This is the story of the fate of many women in Afghanistan. But it is also a story of a courageous and proud woman who refused to be banished to a life behind the walls of her house, who wanted an education for her children so that they could have a chance to live their lives without fear and poverty.

Afghanistan, where God Only Comes to Weep

my heart cracks from reading this book :'(

It is only when she is about two years old that Shirin-Gol stands up by herself for the first time, comes out of her corner in front of the hut, takes a few steps, goes over to Mole-sister, who is crouching in front of the hut and washing clothes, crouches beside her, splashes her little hand around in the soapy water, gets a smack on the fingers, pees on the floor, is carried back to her place by Mole-sister and set back down again.

God sees all that and at that moment he remembers Shirin-Gol's mother. He suddenly remembers that for two years he has forgotten to give Shirin-Gol's mother a new child in her belly. So merciful God hurries to catch up on what he has missed, and before Shirin-Gol is quite three years old she has two brothers at once put in her lap, and from that point on, day in, day out, she is busy with the twins.

She rarely raises her head now, no longer knowing what her mother and older sisters, her father and other brothers are doing all day

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