Status Updates From We Are Afghan Women: Voices...

"But she said she had five children, and she told me that the life of her children and their security were more important to her than her own freedom. It was more important for her to see these children grow up and be alive, rather than for her to work and to be able to go out."

just want to make a note that naheed esar's story and experience with widows in afghanistan in the early 2000s is really eye opening.

"There is no honor in punishing women."

"... and then the war with the mujahideen and then the Taliban, the women vanished. They had to vanish to be safe."

"I knew one thing, though. Education had changed my life. With education, I was able to help my own family. Once you have education, no one can ever take that away from you. If you have education, you can start over."

" - fathers coming literally crying and saying, "I can't write my own name. Į put my thumb on paper to sign, and my daughter, she is just
four years old, and right now, she can write my name."

"Each season, watching my bees leave and fly off and then return, laden with sweet nectar for honey, fired in me a passion to be able to move about freely. But not just for me, for as many women as I could find. I believe that in order to change a country, first you must work on the women."

"I made three trips to Afghanistan as First Lady of the United States, and each time, as I gazed down, I had the sense that I was flying over the outlines of an ancıent civilization or the footprınt that it had left behind."