Why a Booktrail?
1990s, 2001: The Taliban take over Kabul and women especially see their lives transformed forever
The Dressmaker of Khair Khana
What you need to know before your trail
When the Taliban took control of Kabul, Kamila Sidiqi and all the women of Kabul saw their lives transformed. Overnight, they were banned from schools and offices and even forbidden from leaving their front doors on their own. The economy collapsed and young men left the city in search of work and security. Desperate to help her family and support her five brothers and sisters at home, Kamila began sewing clothes in her living room. Little did she know that the tailoring business she started to help her siblings would be the beginning of a dressmaking business that would create jobs and hope for one hundred neighbourhood women and would come to mean the difference between starvation and survival for hundreds of families like her own.
Locations
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Kabul
A country and city the author goes to to search for a story which shows how the women, those left behind by war cope. Cope when the world shines a light on you after American forces oust the Taliban, your controllers, following the terrorist attacks on 2001. .
Women who had been barred from schools and offices just four years earlier were now going out in to the workplace.
“The streets of the Afghan capital were a cacophonous free-for-all, with crutch-bearing amputees, taped-together cars, donkeys, fuel-towing bicycles, and United National SUVs all fighting for the right of way with no traffic lights to guide them and only a smattering of police governing their progress.”
“The crunchy grime of the brown Kabul air clung to everything – lungs, sweaters, headscarves, and windows. It was a noxious souvenir of decades of war …”
Booktrail Boarding Pass: The Dressmaker of Khair Khana
Destination: Kabul Author/Guide: Gayle Tzemach Lemmon Departure Time: 1990s, 2001
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