Q. When you first broke the story of bacha posh for the New York Times in 2010, it drew millions of views and a massive response from readers worldwide. What drew you to this topic and inspired you to expand the article into a full-length book?
A. It’s the story of a lifetime. How often does a journalist come upon an actual secret that unspools into a story no one has ever told before? And this secret cut right to the most difficult questions of human existence: war, oppression, differences between the sexes. When I first discovered and started researching the bacha posh, I was frustrated to find that none of the Western experts on Afghanistan I consulted had any idea this was happening. In time I realized I had to become the expert.
As a woman, the experience of bacha posh opens a window onto a very raw form of patriarchy, where people like me are unwanted, despised, and abused. Writing a full-length book gave me the space to go much more in-depth on this issue and to try to understand why that is.
But this is also a story that goes beyond the experience of being female in one part of the world; as a reader of my original Times piece said: “What woman hasn’t wondered how life would have been different if she had been born a boy?” Her comment helped me realize that this is not just a story about Afghanistan—it’s a story about all women and the history we share, one that should be read and understood by women (and men) everywhere.
Q. Most bacha posh are forced to become girls before they hit puberty, sometimes after living their whole lives as boys. What kind of lasting impact—if any—did this have on the women you interviewed?
A. My research, based on interviews with dozens of bacha posh, shows that the impact on adult females depends very much on when their transition back to life as a woman takes place. A few years as a boy when they’re still children may be remembered as an empowering experience. But for those who go through puberty and beyond as young men, things quickly become much more complicated. Aside from the psychological conundrum, those who are nurtured as boys and young men through their teens and beyond can see a delay in the development of female identity and even the onset of puberty. It’s an example of how the mind affects the body. Bacha posh really is a singular, contemporary case study in the nurture versus nature debate.
Q. To research and write this book, you have spent a great deal of time in Afghanistan over the past few years. What was it like?
A. Working in a country at war can be physically and mentally exhausting; you’re on high alert most of the time. There’s a feeling that there is no time to lose, because who knows for how long you can be lucky and not be in the wrong place when a blast goes off? Imagine how Afghans who have lived with this for more than thirty years feel. Of course, this environment has its advantages. Afghans are extremely polite and hospitable, and there is very little time for indecision or procrastination; interactions are much more immediate. With the constant presence of potential disaster, life takes sharper contours. And you laugh a lot together.
Q. You worked closely with this book’s subjects. Did you become friends with the women you interviewed?
A. A classic tenet of journalism dictates that a journalist should not make friends with her subjects. But I believe you can be a professional and a human being at the same time. With all my main characters I have developed an intimate, respectful bond. Over the years I’ve asked them to tell me things they have never spoken of before, about their bodies, about sex, about religion—all the forbidden topics. In return I have shared some secrets of my own with them.
At the same time, there were no blurred lines about who the journalist was and who the subjects were. Each of these very brave women made a conscious choice to be part of this book, and I have tried to honor that by offering a lot of transparency about my work. For instance, when I had a somewhat finished manuscript in the summer of 2013, I went back to Kabul to see each of them again. We read it together, and for those who could not read, I read it out loud. Some details were added; others were taken out. Together we have tried to be careful and protect their families. In the end I hope I have done them and their courage justice, and they have told me that they hope people will want to know about them. This is a dispatch from inside extreme suppression, from those who just happen to have been born in the most dangerous place on earth to be a woman.