Product Description

When the young Afghanistanian girl Samira is born, her father, a commander fighting in the mountainous regions of Afghanistan, decides to raise her as a boy called Samir. The fact that Samir is really a girl is soon forgotton as Samir learns to fight, ride and shoot as well as any boy and when her father is killed she becomes the head of the family. As an adult, she falls in love with the male friend of her youth and is forced to reveal her true identity. In order to marry Bashir, she must relinquish the freedom she is afforded as a man. Samira follows her heart but hates wearing the veil. Eventually, the torment becomes too great and she decides that there must be a third way to live, as a confident woman not confined by the rules of her culture. This is her story.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #86874 in Books
• Published on: 2005-05-05
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 352 pages

About the Author
Born in Iran, Siba Shakib grew up in Tehran and attended a German school there. A writer and maker of documentaries and films, she has travelled to Afghanistan many times over the last five years, visiting the north as well as the territory that was commanded by the Taliban. Several of her documentaries have won awards, including the moving testimonials she has made of the horrors of life in Afghanistan and the plight of the Afghan women. She lives in New York and Germany.

Customer Reviews

Worth Reading-Excellent
This book was a very good read. I was enticed in the book from the moment i started it to the moment i put it down.

It is a story about a father who wants a boy so desperately that he bring up his first child a girl' as a boy. Her parents didn't have anymore children, so her father continue to treat Samira as a boy and taught her to fight, ride horses, shoot and many more men tasks. This is a very difficult senario to be in for Samira/Samir and the older she got the more difficult it became for her. Her father didn't have to bear the affects of this, as he died when Samira was still a child. It only became difficult when she fell in love with a friend that she realised that the effects of being a girl will change her future. The problems arised when the girl started developing into a female that her destinity had to be changed and only Samira on her own had to decide what she wanted to be at the time and what she wanted to become in the future.

Samira showed courage, strength and showed those people that identify women as weak that they can be as strong as men are. Samira became her mother's strength and she became her grandfathers missing arm. She wasn't scared and dealt and acted as men did naturally and found it difficult to behave as a real women when she really had to try too for her love of her friend who became her husband.

It is one of the best books i have read and the style of writing is very diffent, but good.

Amazing!!!!
This book is absolutely amazing I just could not put it down my family were neglected for 3 days!!! Kept having to remind myself it was a true story, absolutely unbelievable. However I dont know if this is a good thing or a bad thing but the ending was most unsatisfying and left me desperate to know what happens to Samira / Samir, how did Siba Shakib learn of her story I have so many burning unanswered questions!!! Would make a fantastic film, as long as the dialect is left how it is, as americanising it with hollywood, would totally ruin this romantcaly written biography.
I need a follow up book for my sanity!!!!!

Totally Enthralling
This book was impossible to leave down and I read it in 2 days. An absolutely entralling tale of a girl who was forced to live her life as a male. Excellently written, with every last detail perfectly described, I would recommend this book 100%