Outspoken My fight for freedom and human rights in Afghanistan

Memoirs don't come much more inspirational than this dispatch from medical doctor and activist Simar detailing her women's rights advocacy in Afghanistan. Born in 1957 to a Hazara family--an often-persecuted Afghan ethnic minority--in the Jaghori district, Samar learned via childhood exposure to novels like Les Misérables that "other people didn't live by the same strict rules that the people in Afghanistan adhered to," and that her country "needed change." After graduating from medical school in 1982, she founded a hospital in the Jaghori region that specifically served women and children. Over the following decades, Samar created a clinic that helped educate women health workers, and visited patients in remote areas by foot, donkey, and horse, even when her efforts angered Taliban forces who threatened to kidnap and kill her unless she stopped "promoting the rights of women every chance I got." In 2002, Samar began serving as Afghanistan's Minister of Women's Affairs, and her achievements included helping to found Kabul's Gawharshad University. Acknowledging that "most of the world sees us as a people at war," Samar carefully balances a steely indictment of her country's repressive tendencies with an affection for her heritage. It's a crucial complement to American narratives about Afghanistan, like Elliott Ackerman's The Fifth Act. Agent: Hilary McMahon, Westwood Creative Artists. (Feb.)

A profile of an Afghan women's rights advocate who defies political roadblocks and cultural boundaries. As an adolescent, Afghan physician and humanitarian advocate Samar demonstrated a desire to help others, particularly women stripped of their human rights in her home country under the misogynist Taliban regime. Once she fully comprehended how "the unfairness of being a woman" in Afghanistan made the country unjust, she made it her life's mission to educate, motivate, and empower Afghan women. In her memoir, the author offers a robust combination of historical data and heartfelt stories of growing up beneath the weight of her family's suffocating expectations with a father who had two wives. Most illuminating are the details about her enthusiastic work founding hospitals and clinics for Afghan refugee women as a medical professional and a political activist on behalf of women's human rights. Samar relates the embattled history of Afghanistan with lucid facts personalized with deeply felt impressions about her homeland's perpetual unrest. The author opens readers' eyes to the harsh realities of life for Afghan women, who are denied access to health care, education, and basic human liberties. Throughout her career as an activist and doctor, Samar has worked tirelessly on both peace negotiations and human rights education, while raising awareness about the benefits of equality, fairness, and justice reform to her country's decision-makers, even in the face of death threats. Setbacks like sieges and terrorist attacks still threaten to undo her diligent work. "The fight for human rights and equality requires long-term commitment for generations to come," she writes at the end. The author's vital memoir forms a fitting companion piece to co-writer Armstrong's Veiled Threat, which chronicled her vigilant search to find Samar throughout Taliban-occupied Afghanistan in 1997. Samar's inspirational lifelong legacy of resistance and resilience is palpably present in this memorable self-portrait. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

PROLOGUE by Sally Armstrong It began as a quest and turned into an odyssey. The Taliban had taken over Afghanistan in late September 1996 and forbidden education for girls and working outside the home for women-- basically putting women and girls under house arrest. During that time, I was the editor in chief of the Canadian magazine Homemaker's , and we covered many important issues of the day. I heard about a woman who was defying the Taliban edicts, keeping her schools for girls open and her medical clinics for women running. I wanted to interview her for a story I was writing about this incomprehensible return to the Dark Ages. But first I had to find her. My quest included dozens of phone calls and scouring the news for the name of this woman. At last, I talked to human rights expert Farida Shaheed in Lahore, Pakistan, who said, "Come over here and we'll discuss this." Despite an editorial budget seriously strained by the cost of a flight, I left immediately. I met Shaheed at her office, where women were being educated about the duplicity of their religious-political leaders. Shaheed was a fountain of information, teaching me the ABCs of militant fundamentalism. But then she told me, "I can't give you the name of the woman you seek--she's in danger of being killed." At about 5 p.m., when I was despairing my decision to fly across the world, Shaheed said, "There's a flight to Quetta tomorrow at 9 a.m. You should be on it. Someone will meet you in the arrivals lounge." It was an easy flight to this city about 700 kilometers west of Lahore. By the time the plane landed my curiosity was thoroughly piqued. When I walked into the arrivals lounge a woman approached me, smiling. She extended her hand and said, "You must be Sally. I'm Sima Samar. I believe you've been looking for me." And that's when the odyssey began. For the next week, I followed Sima around the hospitals and schools she was operating for women and girls. I discovered that she is the quintessential Afghan woman: she's strong, she adores her country, and she's had to fight for everything she's ever had. Sima Samar was only twelve years old when she learned the meaning of the words author Rohinton Mistry would later write that life was poised as "a fine balance between hope and despair." At that tender age she began to fight to alter the status of women and girls in her country. She fought the traditional rules for girls in her own family. She fought the Soviets, the mujahideen, the Taliban. She fought every step of the way to get an education and become a physician, to open her hospitals and schools for girls, and to raise her children according to her own values. The article I wrote resulted in more than twelve thousand letters to the editor from women demanding action for the women and girls of Afghanistan. Some of the letter-writers started Canadian Women for Women in Afghanistan, and similar associations sprang up around the world. They all asked Sima to come and speak. After 9/11 and the subsequent defeat of the Taliban, US president George W. Bush invited her to the State of the Union address in 2002 and introduced her as the face of the future of Afghanistan. At every podium in Europe, in Asia, in North America, she told her heartwrenching story and was received with standing ovations, cheers and promises. She was a journalist's dream, sharing her stories with authenticity, passion and even humor. Little did I know that when my journalistic quest was finished the odyssey would continue for more than two decades. As our friendship grew, I became her witness--when the Taliban threatened to kill her; when the government that formed after the Taliban was defeated in 2001 tried to sideline her; when she defied the naysayers and became the first-ever Minister of Women's Affairs; and when she started the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC). I traveled to the central highlands with her to see her far-flung schools in action, and I was with her family when suicide bombers struck at the meeting she was attending at the Serena Hotel in Kabul. When Sima visited Canada, she met my family and even swaddled my first grandchild. And when I visited her country, I sat on the floor cross-legged around the dastarkhan at dinner with her family and learned more about Afghanistan and Afghans than I ever could have imagined. I watched her fight back, bristled at the threats she received and grinned at her audacity. When it comes to justice and equality, she simply does not take no for an answer. I remember one occasion when the Taliban demanded she close her schools for girls and said if she did not, they would kill her. She replied, "Go ahead and hang me in the public square and tell the people my crime: giving paper and pencils to girls." I urged her to tell her own story when the Taliban, following on disgraceful backroom deals made with the United States, returned to power. While the world saw the twenty-year international intervention in Afghanistan as a failure, the truth is that during those twenty years, life expectancy in Afghanistan went from forty-seven years to sixty-three years, the boys and the girls went back to school, and nation-building began. That isn't a failure--it's a miracle. Sima was one of the leaders behind those remarkable changes, and I told her that the future of her country might depend on the honest telling of the chronicle of women, tradition, human rights and justice. What's more, she was in a position to know exactly why the government eventually collapsed. I saw her life of resistance and resilience as a cautionary tale to others who allow deception and misinformation about culture and religion and gender to overrule the history and ultimately the will of the people. This is her story. Excerpted from Outspoken: My Fight for Freedom and Human Rights in Afghanistan by Sima Samar All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.