WE MET ZOYA for the first time at the small hotel where she was staying near the Vatican during a fund-raising trip to Italy in the spring of 2001. Rita had read about her sometime before and tracked her down to Pakistan with the help of Amnesty International and Emergency, an Italian relief organization that helps war victims. We had then won permission to interview Zoya for the two magazines we work for.
She joined us in the hotel lobby. She was friendly and attractive and wore a gray dress with a scarf draped over her shoulders. We knew that in her homeland not even that scarf would have saved her from a beating in the street.
Her gaze intense, she spoke with a confidence that made her seem older than her twenty-three years. Her graceful manner was at odds with the stories she told us, stories that often seemed inconceivable to us. But we felt close to her, and we identified with her hopes. It was her optimism that struck us: she wanted to teach women to read and write in a country where most of them were illiterate, to treat sick women in a country where the authorities decreed they should die rather than be treated by male doctors, to speak of justice and democracy in a country where the only law was that of an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.
After the interview, we asked her if we could go for a walk together. We felt the need to spend some more time with her, without a tape recorder. It was raining, but she quickly accepted. She didn’t care about the rain—she didn’t even want to use an umbrella. She told us that she had been exiled to a desert and enjoyed the rain. When we got back to the hotel, she asked us to wait and went to fetch something from her room. It was a present, a hand-carved iron box set with black stones, and inside were a necklace, a bracelet, a ring, and earrings made of silver and blue enamel. Zoya told us they had all been made in a refugee camp.
When we telephoned her sometime later to offer to write a book with her, her first questions were “Why don’t you write a book about someone else? What is special about my story?” When she finally agreed, she said she wanted the book to stand for the suffering of all Afghan women. She came to stay with us in Rome so that we could ask her at length about her life. Only the people closest to her knew where she was, for her own protection.
As we listened, she led us into her world. We felt, with her, the claustrophobia of the burqa, we heard the Taliban’s whip whistling through the air, and we saw the tears of the mothers who had lost their sons. But Zoya also made us laugh with her contagious sense of humor about the absurd aspects of life under the rule of religious fundamentalists.
We have several people to thank for helping to make this book happen: Cristina Cattafesta at Emergency and Edoardo Bai; Luca Lopresti at Amnesty International; Sean Ryan, Paolo Palleschi, and Camillo Ricci, our employers, who gave us the time to write the book; Anne Keefe, who transcribed the tapes of our interviews at speed and cheered us on; our publisher, Michael Morrison, who backed the idea with enthusiasm; our editor, Claire Wachtel, who flew to join us for the last sprint; our agent, Clare Alexander, who guided us from the beginning; and our families, who warmly encouraged us.
We hope that sooner or later we will visit Zoya in Kabul and that we will find her living the life she wants to lead.
JOHN FOLLAIN AND RITA CRISTOFARI
Rome, January 2002