SIBA SHAKIB

With her bestseller, Afghanistan, Where God Only Comes to Weep, Siba Shakib drew attention to the distressing situation of Afghan women. Taking up this theme again, she now tells a wonderful story of love and courage, and of a remarkable woman who finds her own path in life. When the young girl, Samira, is born, her father - a brave commander fighting in the mountainous land of Afghanistan - decides to bring her up as a boy known as Samir. Soon the fact that Samir is really a girl has been forgotten. Samir learns to fight, ride and shoot, and when her father is killed, she becomes head of the family. However, as an adult, Samir''s love for the friend of her youth forces her to confess the truth. She wants to live as Bashir''s wife but in return she must reveal her female identity and, in so doing, give up her freedom. Samira follows her heart but she hates wearing the veil. Eventually the torment is too great and Samira realises there has to be a third way for her - the way of a self-confident woman who bravely takes charge of her own life...

Shirin-Gol was just a young girl when her village was levelled by the Russians' bombs in 1979. After the men in her family joined the resistance, she fled with the women and children to the capital, Kabul, and so began a life of day-to-day struggle in her war-torn country. A life that includes a period living in the harsh conditions of a Pakistani refugee camp, being forced into a marriage to pay off her brother's gambling debts, selling her body and begging for the money to feed her growing family, an attempted suicide, and an unsuccessful endeavour to leave Afghanistan for Iran after the Taliban seized control of her country. Told truthfully and with unflinching detail to writer and documentary-maker Siba Shakib, and incorporating some of the shocking experiences of Shirin-Gol's friends and family members, this is the story of the fate of many of the women in Afghanistan. But it is also a story of great courage, the moving story of a proud woman, a woman who did not want to be banished to a life behind the walls of her house, or told how to dress, who wanted an education for her children so that they could have a chance of a future, to live their lives without fear and poverty. .