My Forbidden Face Growing Up Under the Taliban : a Young Woman's Story
Latifa was born in Kabul into an educated and middle-class Afghan family, both liberal and religious. As a teenager she loved fashion and cinema and longed to become a journalist. Her mother, a doctor, and her father, a businessman, encouraged her dreams. In 1996, the Taliban seized power. From that moment, sixteen-year-old Latifa became a prisoner in her own home. Her school was closed. Her mother was banned from working. The simplest and most basic freedoms - walking down the street, listening to music - were no longer hers and she was forced to cover herself entirely with a burqa. With painful honesty and clarity, Latifa descibes the way her world fell apart in the name of a fanatical interpretation of her faith.