Product Description

Latifa was born into an educated middle-class Afghan family in Kabul in 1980. She dreamed of one day becoming a journalist, she was interested in fashion, movies and friends. Her father was in the import/export business and her mother was a doctor. Then in September 1996, Taliban soldiers seized power in Kabul. From that moment, Latifa, just 16 years old, became a prisoner in her own home. Her school was closed. Her mother was banned from working. The simplest and most basic freedoms - walking down the street, looking out of a window - were no longer hers. Having never worn even a veil before, she now was forced to wear a chadri. Latifa struggled against an overwhelming sense of helplessness and despair. In a step of defiance, she set up a clandestine school in her home for a small number of young girls. To avoid arousing suspicion, the children were not allowed to attend every day, nor could they keep regular hours. Latifa knew that she was risking her life for something that could change little. But the teaching gave her a reason to get up in the morning. This is Latifa's poignant and highly personal account of life under the Taliban regime. With painful honesty and clarity, she describes the way she watched her world falling apart, in the name of a fanatical expression of faith that she could not comprehend. Her voice captures a lost innocence, but also echoes her determination to live in freedom and hope. Earlier in 2001, Latifa and her parents escaped Afghanistan with the help of a French-based Afghan resistance group.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #49032 in Books
• Published on: 2002-11-14
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 192 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
My Forbidden Face frames a fragment of Afghanistan's bloody history through the eyes of its author, Latifa. Now 22, Latifa was 16 when the Taliban seized power in 1996. Overnight, Afghani women were stripped of their aspirations, their pleasures and their freedom. She describes the sudden change that transformed her home into her prison and her clothes into symbols of shame in evocative yet matter-of-fact tones. The facts are familiar to us from countless articles and petitions but reading them here in a personal account brings home the state of abject fear Afghani women had to adjust to as the new reality of their lives. Every day Radio Sharia, the Taliban's mouthpiece, would broadcast harsh new decrees to bind the confines of peoples' lives ever tighter. The severest restrictions were reserved for women: they were forbidden to go out unaccompanied by a male relative--which meant poor widows risked beatings and even death, they were forbidden to work or to go to school and even forbidden health care--since that would have meant being treated by a man. From being an educated, outgoing girl who dreamed of becoming a journalist, Latifa was plunged into sickness and depression. But somehow, this timid--and by Western standards--sheltered girl, finds the enormous courage to start running a "school" in her living room--just as her mother, a nurse runs an illicit surgery for women from their home. This combination of naivety and worldliness makes Latifa's voice extremely poignant. My Forbidden Face is a powerful, readable little book you will want to absorb in one gulp. Not only does it give a voice to the nameless sufferings of so many but its bravery and determination are inspiring lessons to us all. --Rebecca Johnson

Review
A poignant account of the life of a teenage Afghani girl under the rule of the Taliban. Latifa's school was closed down, she was forced to wear a chadri and the simplest, most basic freedoms were denied to her.

Daily Mail
‘Thoughtful and affecting ... questions the complacency of Western feminism which has forgotten the many women across the world who still have nothing.’

Customer Reviews

Amazing, harrowing- a very important book for humanism
This book is fascinating, moving and very well written especially compared to the dry, war and politics Taliban non-fiction books out there. Latifa deals with what it is like to live under the Taliban as a human and especially as a female- her formally liberal Islamic traditions are brought to halt by the new regime and the book deals with her anger, disbelief and depression which this caused- her voice is all of Afghani women.
I completely disagree with the reviewer who says this doesn't give enough insight- statistics and positions of army units detailed in other books add nothing to the human feeling displayed in MFF. Only a familiar, oh-so-human voice like Latifa's can bring the troubles home to us in the West who cannot picture what life was really like under the Taliban.
Latifa mentions some of the Taliban's atrocities but does not need to use long lists of punishments, decrees and tortures to support her feelings- and is it necessary for books to do so? The writing style of MFF is simple, moving but never gratuitously melancholy. I don't know what the reviewer means when they say Latifah is detached from what's going on and unemotional- do they want stereotypes of wailing, hair ripping Islamic women? As Latifa says- Afghanis' are proud people.
Latifa's life story in Afghanistan under the Soviets and Taliban is harrowing and will stay with you for a long time. There is a strong sense of humanity in her story, however. This book will change your ideas if you are unfamiliar with Islam and the Middle East and, although in some places a frightening read, defiantly worthwhile.

Amazing, harrowing- a very important book for humanism
This book is fascinating, moving and very well written especially compared to the dry, war and politics Taliban non-fiction books out there. Latifa deals with what it is like to live under the Taliban as a human and especially as a female- her formally liberal Islamic traditions are brought to halt by the new regime and the book deals with her anger, disbelief and depression which this caused- her voice is all of Afghani women.
I completely disagree with the reviewer who says this doesn't give enough insight- statistics and positions of army units detailed in other books add nothing to the human feeling displayed in MFF. Only a familiar, oh-so-human voice like Latifa's can bring the troubles home to us in the West who cannot picture what life was really like under the Taliban.
Latifa mentions some of the Taliban's atrocities but does not need to use long lists of punishments, decrees and tortures to support her feelings- and is it necessary for books to do so? The writing style of MFF is simple, moving but never gratuitously melancholy. I don't know what the reviewer means when they say Latifah is detached from what's going on and unemotional- do they want stereotypes of wailing, hair ripping Islamic women? As Latifa says- Afghanis' are proud people.
Latifa's life story in Afghanistan under the Soviets and Taliban is harrowing and will stay with you for a long time. There is a strong sense of humanity in her story, however. This book will change your ideas if you are unfamiliar with Islam and the Middle East and, although in some places a frightening read, defiantly worthwhile.

Inspiring and terrifying
I read this book on the recommendation of an Amazon reviewer who compared it to "Bookseller of Kabul". I agree that "My Forbidden Face" gives another side of the same story, as the author even lived in the same neighborhood as the bookseller. Both books, however, are written by women--women of comparable education and expectations, but of completely different circumstances. Latifa, unfortunately, did not have the luxury of packing up and leaving when the story was over. When the Taliban took over Kabul, terror and depression soon overtook disbelief. Latifa was studying to become a journalist and begins writing down events to keep herself sane. The personal emotion is balanced with political facts and well-considered opinions, her personal narrative being used as a powerful supporting example of the political struggle being played out before her. She repeatedly points out inconsistencies of the Taliban decrees with the teachings of the Koran and gives a commendable outline of the unfolding political dramas.

Eventually she can be passive no longer. She risked her life to fight against the brainwashing that passed for education under the Taliban and to help her mother care for women who could not legally obtain any healthcare. The fact that this story can even be told is something of a miracle in itself.
The terrifying thing about this book is that it is NOT a story, it is a masterful piece of journalism--and we would do well to read it as a cautionary tale. Latifa's life, all too similar to ours, is completely overthrown, not by religious fanatics, but by power mongers using religion as a guise for their own ends. In the wake of the London bombings (7/05), with the hindsight of ethnic cleansing in Yugoslavia, this book should serve as a powerful reminder that what brutality reveals is a lust for power, no matter how loudly it cries of religion.