Behind the Burqa: Our Life in Afghanistan and How We Escaped to Freedom - Hardcover

by Batya Swift Yasgur (Author)

Advance Praise for Behind the Burqa

""Whenever and wherever adults make war, children die and women are subjected to fear and humiliation. This is true of Afghanistan too. Read this harrowing book. The tragic yet heroic tale of two women is told with great simplicity. They will haunt you.""
-Elie Wiesel, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate

""The stories of Sulima and Hala achingly articulate the twin and enduring legacies of misogyny and violence. A critical historical document, Behind the Burqa ultimately reveals the unbreakable strength of Afghan women.""
-Eve Ensler, author of The Vagina Monologues
Founder and Artistic Director, V-Day

""Behind the Burqa provides important information about conditions in Afghanistan, as well as the plight of asylum-seekers in the United States. I highly recommend this book to all people who are concerned about human rights, both at home and abroad.""
-Senator Sam Brownback, (R. Kansas)
ranking member, Immigration Subcommittee, Committee on the Judiciary

""This book is a gripping reading experience, and it also offers important suggestions for those who would like to participate in making our asylum politics more humane.""
-Eleanor Acer, Director, Asylum Program, Lawyers Committee for Human Rights

""This book shows the injustices suffered by innocent women seeking asylum in the U. S. and the power of religious faith to provide hope and courage even in prison.""
-Fauziya Kassindja, author of Do They Hear You When You Cry

""Sulima and Hala epitomize the worldwide struggle of women for equality and justice. Their story is gripping and illuminating.""
-Jessica Neuwirth, President of Equality Now

Front Jacket

Faceless behind their burqas under the harsh and ruthless rule of the Taliban, the women of Afghanistan were, for decades, voiceless as well. Terrorized and persecuted during twenty years of war, famine, and despotism, two generations of Afghan women have come of age under conditions of oppression and privation unimaginable and unpublicized in the West.

In Behind the Burqa, you'll meet two sisters whose thirst for freedom and independence led them to extraordinary acts of courage, defiance, and desperation. For fear of reprisal, "Sulima" and "Hala" cannot, even now, reveal their true identities. What they do reveal in remarkable detail is the private torment of women in Afghanistan and their decades-long public struggle for political rights, education, and equality.

Sulima paints a vivid portrait of growing up in a strict Muslim household. She tells the chilling story of how her own brothers betrayed her in the name of family honor-and she recounts the important role she played in the formation of Afghanistan's first women's rights and literacy movements in the 1970s. Sulima also relates the events that led to the stark choice she was forced to make between being sent to prison and leaving her country forever.

Hala, sixteen years younger than Sulima, describes a childhood plagued by the rise of the Mujihaddin and the unspeakable brutality of mobs intent on ridding Afghanistan of all Western influence. Through her eyes, we witness a midnight raid on her family's home, the poverty and starvation that beset the nation during its years of war and anarchy, the perils of running a clandestine school for girls under the Taliban regime, the terrors of being arrested and brutalized, and the dangers of fleeing Afghanistan. Just as shocking is the story of her arrival as an asylum-seeker in the United States-and her determination at the hands of immigration authorities.

This unforgettable tale of bravery, struggle, and survival reveals an Afghanistan only hinted at in news reports and government statements. Sulima and Hala introduce dozens of their "sisters," whose colorful personalities, capabilities, and hopes for the future were for so long hidden. Behind the Burqa will anger you, it will frighten you, and, ultimately, it will inspire you with the compelling and suspenseful stories of these women, their tragedies, their triumphs, and their fierce determination to prevail against the odds.

Back Jacket

Advance Praise for Behind the Burqa

"Whenever and wherever adults make war, children die and women are subjected to fear and humiliation. This is true of Afghanistan too. Read this harrowing book. The tragic yet heroic tale of two women is told with great simplicity. They will haunt you."
-Elie Wiesel, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate

"The stories of Sulima and Hala achingly articulate the twin and enduring legacies of misogyny and violence. A critical historical document, Behind the Burqa ultimately reveals the unbreakable strength of Afghan women."
-Eve Ensler, author of The Vagina Monologues
Founder and Artistic Director, V-Day

"Behind the Burqa provides important information about conditions in Afghanistan, as well as the plight of asylum-seekers in the United States. I highly recommend this book to all people who are concerned about human rights, both at home and abroad."
-Senator Sam Brownback, (R. Kansas)
ranking member, Immigration Subcommittee, Committee on the Judiciary

"This book is a gripping reading experience, and it also offers important suggestions for those who would like to participate in making our asylum politics more humane."
-Eleanor Acer, Director, Asylum Program, Lawyers Committee for Human Rights

"This book shows the injustices suffered by innocent women seeking asylum in the U. S. and the power of religious faith to provide hope and courage even in prison."
-Fauziya Kassindja, author of Do They Hear You When You Cry

"Sulima and Hala epitomize the worldwide struggle of women for equality and justice. Their story is gripping and illuminating."
-Jessica Neuwirth, President of Equality Now

Author Biography

BATYA SWIFT YASGUR is a freelance writer of both nonfiction and fiction. She won the 1995 Mystery Writers of America's Robert L. Fish Award for Best First Published Story and the Coalition of Alternatives in Jewish Education's David Dornstein Memorial Creative Writing Award for short fiction. She is the author of America: A Freedom Country (published by the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service), the project through which she met Hala, one of the sisters whose story is told in Behind the Burqa. She is also the coauthor of Women at Risk, a book about cervical cancer and the HPV virus.