'Zoya's Story' is a young woman's chilling account of her clandestine war of resistance against the Taliban at the risk of her own life.
Zoya grew up during the wars that ravaged Afghanistan and escaped to Pakistan while still in her teens, devastated after the death of her parents. She joined the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan which challenged the crushing edicts of the fanatical religious government and she made dangerous journeys back to her homeland to help the woman oppressed by a rule that enforced the wearing of the stifling burqa, condoned public stoning if a woman ventured out without a male chaperone and absolutely forbade women's work.
Zoya is our guide, our witness to the horrors perpetrated by the Taliban. She helped to film the execution of woman in the Kabul stadium; she travelled to remote villages with medical teams to give covert treatment to women who could not be touched by male doctors and ran literacy classes as schooling was banned for girls.
The spotlight that the New York terrorist attacks focused on Afghanistan highlighted the conditions of repression and fear in which Afghan women lived and makes 'Zoya's Story' utterly compelling. Hers is a memoir that speaks louder than the images of devastation and outrage; it is a powerful message of optimism as she fights to bring the plight of Afghan women to the world's attention.
