by DIAA HADID
In the year since the Taliban seized power in Afghanistan, they have used their muscle to restrict the education and curiosity of girls. They’ve been banned from high school, told to cover up and stay home. But in one secret book club in Kabul, about a dozen teenagers are defying the Taliban to continue learning – and along the way have connected to a girl from a different time and place who was also forced to live her life in secret.
“She had hope. She was fighting. She was studying. She was resisting her fate,” says Zahra. She’s in the basement of a building on a side alley on the outskirts of Kabul where the book club met on a recent August day with two young volunteers who act as facilitators, steering the conversation and asking questions.
Zahra is speaking of Anne Frank.
The girls are reading and discussing the teenager’s famous diary, which she began writing at age 13. And they are struck by the parallels: Just like them, Anne was only a kid – one who was starting to learn about the world – when she was forced into hiding because of a violent, oppressive government.
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