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Author Sola Mahfouz to talk about her struggle to get an education under repressive rule in Afghanistan

To ring in the New Year, Arm in Arm will be hosting a book discussion and signing Friday, Jan. 10, at 7 p.m. in the Harvard Unitarian Universalist Church Fellowship Hall, 7 Elm Street. Author Sola Mahfouz will talk about her book, “Defiant Dreams: The Journey of an Afghan Girl Who Risked Everything for Education,” which she co-authored with Malaina Kapoor.

Author Sola Mahfouz. (Courtesy photo)

Sola Mahfouz is a pseudonym. She explained in a telephone interview that it protects herself and family members still in Afghanistan. Sola means “peace” in her native language, Pashto. It is a common name in many Afghan families who have lived through the turmoil of war. Mahfouz is the Arabic word for “protected.” It is also the name of Nobel Prize-winning Egyptian writer Naguib Mahfouz whose work she has found influential.

Before writing this book, Mahfouz was reading a lot, which in turn made her reflect on her own life. She contemplated how there is nuance in each person’s story. There is nuance to Afghanistan beyond the violence depicted on the news. “Yes, there is war and suicide bombs, but we did also go to weddings. How do these two things exist together? I wanted to show it all.” This book is her first attempt to show “how the political affects the personal;” her individual story is situated within the context of the political dynamics in Afghanistan.

“Defiant Dreams” opens with a laughing 11-year-old Sola juxtaposed with images of bombs exploding, soldiers patrolling, and the Taliban shooting to kill outside her home in Kandahar, a city in the south of Afghanistan. Even her birth, two years after the Taliban took over Kandahar, was affected by their rule, when the only female obstetrician would not work that night because she feared for her safety.

At age 6, Mahfouz’s educational journey began. The Taliban had been driven out of Kandahar by U.S. forces at this point. She attended her local school that, although funded by international aid groups, was so poorly equipped that it did not have chairs for their students. The teachers were not invested in educating girls, and corporal punishment was common. When she was 8, the violence had come to include bombing by Taliban insurgents and foreign soldiers mistakenly shooting civilians. She was understandably frightened on her 20-minute walk to school. When she was 11, a group of men came to their home, spoke to her father, and threatened to harm her if he continued to send her to school. Mahfouz stopped but left school with only rudimentary literacy skills. She did not know how to add or subtract.

Mahfouz then spent many years at home, with the exception of the weddings she attended, “opulent, massive weddings that sustained us all during those violent years.” There was nothing that required her presence outside the house, unlike her brothers, who had educational and professional opportunities by virtue of being male. Her domestic life involved household chores and brief moments of “frivolity.” She went through a time of all-consuming religious study as she tried to give her life more purpose, but instead this “left [her] with only the most soul-wrenching questions.”

Mahfouz found a purpose, and her educational journey resumed. At 15, the girl with only basic literary skills in Pashto started teaching herself English. Her brother, who had the schooling and the books, did not help her, because he accepted that women and girls in Afghanistan did not learn this. But she found ways. Then, a 16-year-old Mahfouz, who did not know addition, learned higher-level math. She squeezed in lessons between chores and meals. Just like her brother, Mahfouz aspired to a higher education. However, in keeping with more traditional expectations, family pressure for her to get married was also starting. All these occurred within the context of the ongoing war and violence outside her home.

The book details all the hoops she went through, first to obtain formal documentation of her informal learning, then to get to an American university. Hers was not the usual college application process. To take the SAT, she would need to travel to Pakistan. But first she needed to find a man willing to drive her so she could apply for a passport. Mahfouz was tenacious. And at times, she had help—from an American online friend Emily, a New York Times reporter, a stranger at the U.S. embassy, and her mother. Eventually, Mahfouz left for college. The last three chapters are devoted to her early years in the U.S. where she continued to accomplish so much.

When I spoke to Mahfouz, she observed that individuals are never shaped by just their own experiences. There is a relationship to the collective, the family, the world. In writing this book, she needed to be honest and depict what shaped her. We see this in the book’s early chapters she devoted to her grandparents. She also said of her grandfather, “If he never did what he did, I never would have done what I did.” I expressed surprise that despite her parents’ education, the girls in her family did not receive more schooling. Mahfouz said she could not blame her mother for this. She had been educated and she had a profession, but it was taken from her.

Mahfouz admitted that writing this book was definitely emotional. It provided her with an opportunity to say what was on her mind, and there was so much to talk about. She also found it rewarding to be able to connect situations in her or her family’s lives with the politics at the time, then reflect on these moments. She noted how she would initially have a fragmented view of something but in telling the story, she would need to connect things. As she told one story, other stories would come.

Mahfouz stressed that this book was written in part to give readers a deeper understanding of what life is like in Afghanistan beyond what is covered in news broadcasts. Such depictions tend to show only extremes, such as the violent extremist or the hopeless victim. Hearing the words by reading the books of someone who has lived the reality has helped her delve deeper and consider the humanity of the people beyond what may be shown on television. She vehemently wants people to know that “Afghanistan is more than bombs and the Taliban.” At the same time, she also acknowledged this is her personal story and is “just a drop in the bigger ocean of Afghanistan and the people.”

Mahfouz has been living in Boston since 2020. She is currently a quantum computing researcher at Tufts University Quantum Information Group. I asked her how she likes Boston. She said it is a place that is very intellectually rich, where one can make many good friends who are invested in and caring about the world. “I have lived in other places in the U.S., but there is nothing like Boston,” she said.

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