I escaped the Taliban: As a 12-year-old family skivvy in Afghanistan, Sola Mahfouz’s future was one of grind and having children. Today she is a top scientist in the US

Rebellious dreams

by Sola Mahfouz and Maliana Kapoor (Double day £16.99, 320 pp)

At the beginning of her compelling memoir about the escape from Afghanistan, Sola Mahfouz writes: ‘I started growing up the day my mother told me to stop laughing.’

That abrupt end to Sola’s carefree childhood happened just before her 12th birthday in 2008.

She and her cousins ​​cycled round and round the courtyard of the family residence in Kandahar, safely out of sight but audible, giggling and singing a popular Bollywood song.

Suddenly something came flying over the wall and they heard a group of boys laughing and screaming.

It was two large bags filled with feces. “After that day,” Sola writes, “I heeded my mother’s warnings.”

Her mother was terrified that even a brief giggle would lure a strange man to the door, ready to kidnap or kill to silence the sounds of a young woman.

And this was during the US occupation of Afghanistan, when you might have thought life would have become easier for women.

In retrospect, we know how short that break from Taliban rule would have been.

None of us who saw the unfolding nightmare in 2021 can forget the traumatic sight of young Afghans so desperate to escape the return of Taliban rule, with its medieval laws and barbaric punishments, that they clung to the sides and wings of a US aircraft as it began during the chaotic withdrawal of US and British forces.

But Sola’s fascinating book shows how, even during the NATO-controlled interlude, the terror for the citizens of Kandahar (the birthplace and spiritual home of the Taliban) never ceased.

Her mother continued to wear her burqa so as not to take any risks when she went shopping. And the Afghan burqa, Sola reminds us, is “the most restrictive covering for women in the world.”

With no sleeves or facial openings, except for little criss-cross slats to look through, it “strips women of their sense of humanity and reduces them to sky-blue monoliths.”

Random suicide bombings by the Taliban and kidnappings of children (their severed fingers were sent to parents who would not pay) made life in the city terrifying.

And it was not only this that made Sola long to escape from her homeland to a better life. “Every day,” she writes, “I faced the prospect of two deaths: the death of my body and the death of my personality, my independence, my girlhood.”

From the time she turned 12, she was expected to be a full-time skivvy and spend all day in the kitchen cooking elaborate meals for the men and boys of the family (not allowed to eat with them, living on their leftovers), as well as a potential bride, her mother entering negotiations for her mid-teens arranged marriage.

Her whole soul shuddered at the prospect of giving up her existence to a man she had never met, and living with his family as a house servant and child bearer.

And she had seen enough of her own mother’s life under a tyrannical mother-in-law (her grandmother Ana Bibi) to know about mothers-in-law from hell. When Sola was born, Ana Bibi had refused to hold her because she was a girl.

Sola went to cousins’ weddings and watched in dismay as they were handed off as cheap bargains in their wedding gowns.

Just reading about Sola’s limited existence made me claustrophobic. Although she was allowed to go to school as a child, her teacher was a sadist who tortured and bullied the girls, hitting them with a long, thin pomegranate branch.

She watched with envy as her brothers received an education that enabled them to study at Western universities.

Seven words from her grandfather rang in her ears. “English,” he said, “is the window to the world.”

So Sola decided to learn English. Her brother refused to help her. Instead of deterring her, his refusal ignited “a fire” under her.

She would show him what she was capable of. After doing her chores, she stayed up half the night to take an online course. It didn’t stop at English. She joined the online Khan Academy to study math and science from scratch.

On an online language learning platform, she met Emily, a student at the University of Iowa, and they became friends.

From the prison of her existence, Sola asked Emily how she could study in the US. She told her to take the mandatory SAT and IELTS tests. But there was no test center in Kandahar; the closest was in Pakistan.

And she didn’t have a passport (most Afghan women don’t, because they rarely leave the house, let alone leave the country).

The book becomes a real page turner as Sola talks about the mental torments she went through. Her father allowed her to apply for a passport, but upon arrival in Pakistan, after a dusty journey, she was told that the exam registration was already full.

Emily made it her job to make sure a place was cleared for her.

She passed! And she was offered places in colleges in America. Now she needed a visa. An official at the US embassy in Kabul turned her down. He didn’t believe she really went there to study.

The New York Times picked up the story – to the shock of Sola’s family, as they believed it would put them in danger.

But nothing terrible happened to them – and for Sola, the publicity changed her life. The US embassy called to say that her visa application had been approved.

When she got off the plane at Chicago Airport, Sola took off her headscarf. Emily collected her.

For the first time in her life, Sola sat in the front of a car, was driven by a woman, watched a man (Emily’s father) cook, took a long, hot shower, saw people drinking alcohol, and cycled along a road instead of going in circles turning in a compound.

But she hadn’t predicted her acute homesickness, or the culture shock of life in a banquet hall. This was by no means an escape to instant happiness.

In 2021, she watched in horror on TV as the Taliban recaptured Afghanistan before the US and UK pulled out.

Her parents managed to escape across the border in a car, but it horribly overturned, trapping her mother underneath, paralyzing her.

Sola is now a quantum computing researcher at Tufts University in Massachusetts. Quite an achievement.