This is Bloomberg Business Week with Karl Messer and Tim Stenebek on Bloomberg Radio. Well, a new book out has received praise from Bill Gates, Al Khan of Khan Academy. We've had him on a bunch and many more. It is the story of one Afghan girl growing up in Afghanistan under Taliban rule, a rule that denies girls above a certain age and education. Now the book, though, really the bigger story of all girls in Afghanistan and what they face. So with us to help tell that story
and talk about the books. Malina Kapor, founder of Women in National Security at Stanford University. Her new book Defiant Dreams the journey of an Afghan girl who risked everything for education, and the subject of her book is Solamafo's also with us both, by the way on Zoom from Boston. She, as we said, is what the book is all about. Welcome, Welcome, Welcome to both of you, and Molina. I want to start with you. You and Sola came together right during the
COVID lockdown. Talk to us about that discovery.
Sure, So, Sola and I first met about three years ago. As you mentioned, it was during COVID. So we didn't even have a chance to meet in person, but Sola started telling me stories from her life and I started writing them and that became the basis for this book, Defiant Dreams. And initially I was just drawn.
To her incredibly during COVID though is it just random.
We were introduced by a mutual friend, okay, and I
think you know her story is incredibly inspiring. It's the fact that she started learning secretly in Afghanistan when she didn't even know how to add and subtract at the age of sixteen, and from that she was able to make it to the United States, where she's now a quantum physics researcher at TUTS And I wanted to be a part of amplifying that story and amplifying the stories of all the obstacles that women and girls have to overcome in Afghanistan today.
So tell us about your story what it was like growing up in Afghanistan, because I know you studied English and maths secretly, and then you also managed to cross a dangerous border into Pakistan to actually take the SAT test, So you.
Know, you know, as you said, at age sixteen, I did not know how to add and subtract, and that was because when I was eleven years old, I was forced to stop going to school. A group of men came to our door and threatened us if continued going to school. And from that day on, the restriction of my life only continued to increase. I left home only a couple of times a year, and whenever I did, I had to wear a suffocating burk that covered me
from head to toe. And meanwhile, my brothers were going to school, and they were thriving academically, and I was deeply jealous of their lives. Their lives seemed to be moving forward, and my own seemed stuck.
So you had like basically like a lack of access to that education.
Yes, as a woman. And then so this is a you know, I start at age fourteen, I began teaching myself English. At that time I did not know, you know, I would listen to four hours an hour and BBC. I would understand a word or two. And so Devine Dream is the story of how I went from that. Knowing how to add some chock at age sixteen, so all the way now coming to the US and being a researcher of Tought University, developing quantum algorithms.
And I want to stress what goes on in Afghanistan when it comes to women specifically. I know there's been a lot of reporting about it, and we have certainly talked about it, but either of you, you know, or so to talk a little bit more about what it is like to grow up as a young woman in Afghanistan, especially under Taliban rule.
So I think especially I think now that especially like in twenty twenty one, Taliban came back into power. I think, you know, after the US troops withdraw there's this striking visual representation that emerged on the streets and on TV of what women had and what was taken away. You know, there's murals that celebrated women's achievements over twenty years were either painted black or defaced. On TV two, you know, women were presenting shows and overnight they just disappeared, leaving
only men to fill the screen. And so now there's been now fifty eights in place to infringe every rights women had. They can't go to school, they can't work, and even simple things like going to a park is banned. And basically now you know, it's it's just an attempt to erase women from the public sphere in being a member of the society.
Yeah, I would add to that too that you know, in the United States, we had this understanding of the Taliban in twenty twenty one as maybe they were going to be a Taliban two dot zero that was somehow going to join the international order that was going to guarantee at least some basic rights for women. And that was the story of the Talban that stayed in the news for as long as Afghanistan was in the news.
And it's only once the world's eyes turned away that the Taliban started to take away core freedoms for women, you know, the right to assemble publicly, the right to go to school, the right to work. And so now we're actually at the two year anniversary of that Baliban takeover, and I think it's more important than ever to remember that we need to pay attention to those stories, because when we normalize what's happening to the women of Afghanistan, we all really lose something.
Talk to us.
About the moment you started realizing that you could get out of that situation and come to the US.
So, you know, my grandfather was self educated, and so when I forced to stop going to school, you know, for me, the world around seemed dark, and it's in those moments, like the words of my grandfather spoke to me very intimately, you know, he said, like knowing English
is like opening a window for the world. And initially I just wanted to be free intellectually, but over time that led to an actual freedom to come to the US and you know, and do what I wanted to do, to do research and being being free.
Do you feel free now?
I mean, I don't think we can ever be absolutely free, but yes, in some measures. Yes.
It's interesting because I know you were writing about and also talking about in this about how your mother warned you as a young girl not to laugh to draw attention to yourself. Do you feel like you're able to do that now?
Yeah, of course.
I Mean the thing is when I came initially, just I felt like I was my loving your old self again because after my after age love and for me, there's all there's restrictions, you know, I have to be careful as a woman and what to do and what not to do. And so when I came to the US, it just all those you know, restrictions just evaporated, and I just it just felt like, you know, I felt like those I just felt like I was now growing up again from that eleven year old self to now,
you know, as a twenty year old. And yeah, yeah, I think.
That story of how Sola took the SAT really highlights the differences between the US and Afghanistan, because here in the US that's just an exam we take for granted.
But in order for Sola to take that test, she had to cross into Pakistan, one of the cross one of the most dangerous borders in the world, a border where people are routinely beaten with electric cables, where men and women have to cross separately, where you have to take multiple vehicles just to get across, And she managed to get into one of the last testing spots in Karachi,
and that became her tic get out. But of course you have to think about now all the girls in Afghanistan today who are banned from education, and just think about how those kinds of insurmountable barriers are what they face when they try to get an education.
Well, that's what I want to ask you, Sola. I mean, would you say that most of the young women in Afghanistan, they want to get an education and want to be doing what you're doing, of course.
I mean there are so many you know, now there's some secret schools there, online school and you know, I hear stories of women saying like, as long as we breathe, we're going to be ed. We're going to educate it. We're not going to let this, you know, obstacles just suffocate us. But it's really hard, you know, there's so many even you know, for example, my story, even though I was educated myself, then you know, taking you know,
showing to the world. If I wanted to apply to schools in the US, I had to take the SAT which is not available, and of honest, I had school across another country. And then their second thing is the WISA, which is also again impossible to do. You know. I've recently heard the story of a woman, a young Afghan woman, she got accepted to Fulbright Scholarship, but the US denied USA. So I think once it's the formal schooling just goes away, there's so many other obstacles that emerges.
Molena just got about thirty seconds left here. What do you hope that people read this book and then they come away with what.
I think it's important for everyone to remember you know that this is a story of Sola, and it's a story that's deeply unique to the struggles and obstacles that she was able to overcome, but in many respects, it's also the story now of an entire generation of girls and women in Afghanistan. You know, it's estimated that there are two point five million girls right now who are
deprived the basic human right to education. And so really our message with this book is don't turn away, don't look away from these stories.
Well, I'm glad we were able to tell Sola's story, and thank you Molena for joining us and bringing us this book. Founder of Women in National Security at Stanford University, Molena Kapor, thank you so much that new book, Defiant Dreams the journey of an Afghan girl who risked everything for education. And of course our thanks to the subject of that book, Solamafu's both of them joining us from Zoom in Boston.
It's amazing teaching herself English math and calculus and physics as well.