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Search - My Forbidden Face (Audio Cassette) (Unabridged)

My Forbidden Face - Audio Cassette - Unabridged
Author: Latifa (pen name of Chekeba Hachemi), Linda Coverdale, Edita Brychta (Narrator)

A moving tale of oppression and courageous defiance -- the true story of a teenage girl growing up in war-torn Afghanistan. — It is a written by a 16-year-old girl who faithfully recorded events over a five-year period as they happened to her and her family in their country of Afghanistan after it was taken over by the Taliban. — Latifa and her pa... more »rents escaped Afghanistan with the help of a French-based Afghan resistance group. She used the psuedonym Latifa to write the book because she still has family and friends back in Afghanistan, where she was born and raised in an educated, middle-class family.

Read by Edita Brychta. 4 sound cassettes (6 hrs.) :

Latifa briefly describes her family's life as a happy, contented existence in a united, affectionate, religious, and liberal family. Her father has his own import/export business; her mother is a doctor. One of her sisters, 20-year-old Soraya, is a flight attendant, the other, Shakila, is married, living in Pakistan and on her way to the US with her husband. Her older brother Wahid fought during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, while another brother Daoud is an economics major in college. Latifa looks forward to being a journalist. As the youngest, she is spoiled and catered to.

The story begins on September 27, 1996 --- the day that the white flag of the Taliban is flown over Kabul, the same day that Latifa goes to the town's square to see the mutilated body of a former president and then becomes a prisoner in her home.

In shock and horror, Latifa observes how life in her country has changed in one day: "Just yesterday, despite the civil war, life was 'normal' in Kabul, even though the city is in ruins. Yesterday, I went to the seamstress with my sister to try on dresses we were going to wear to a wedding today. There would have been music. We would have danced," she writes, in a manner reminiscent of Anne Frank, the Jewish teenager who chronicled the horrors of the Nazi regime.

***

From 1997 to 2001, sixteen-year-old Latifa was a prisoner in her own home as the Taliban wreaked havoc on the lives of Afghan girls and women. This is her testimony -- a young woman's reaction to the inhumanity taking place before her very eyes. Latifa's life was turned upside down the moment the Taliban took Kabul. The oppressive regime banned women from working from schools, from public life, even from leaving their homes without a male relative. Female faces were outlawed as the burka, or head-to-toe veil, became mandatory. Latifa had planned to pursue journalism, in a quest for the truth about the ever-shifting power structure in her country. From the Russians to the warring factions, Latifa's existence had been marred by violence and upheaval. But when the Taliban took over, her world was reduced to the few rooms of her apartment. Like a contemporary Anne Frank, Latifa was forced to observe, absorb, and make sense of what was happening to women, to her country, from the! confines of her four walls. Frustrated by the sight of children wandering the streets below, and despite the danger to her own life, Latifa established a school and attempted to defy a regime, one child at a time. In May 2001, Latifa and her parents escaped through dangerous Taliban territory to Pakistan, then Paris. After several weeks, their flight was discovered, and the government issued a fatwa against them. Now in 2002, with the Taliban in retreat, Latifa's future seems brighter, although her homeland is still in turmoil. Written during her exile, this book is an extraordinarily powerful account of a teenager's life under terrible circumstances and a celebration of the resilience of the human spirit.

ISBN-13: 9780786869893
ISBN-10: 0786869895
Publication Date: 2002
Edition: Unabridged
Rating:

Currently 3.3/5 Stars.

3.3 stars, based on 2 ratings

Publisher: Miramax
Book Type: Audio Cassette
Members Wishing: 0
Reviews: Amazon | Write a Review

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Search - My Forbidden Face (Audio Cassette) (Unabridged)

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