Memoir: An Indian woman faces the Taliban’s horrors after moving to Afghanistan with her husband

November 1993. Time, unbroken, lurches forward at its own slow pace. For all I know, it will go on this way till eternity. I sit in a corner of the veranda, wondering wistfully whether I’ll ever go back. The Indian women here no longer dream of returning home.

Kakoli and Shoma have accepted their fate; why can’t I? And then I ask myself, why should I? If I accept this, what are my education and my culture worth? I’m not a woman to take such things lying down. Islam doesn’t seem to empower women to talk back. They have to accept all kinds of oppression. Or else the men will either divorce them or kill them.

It’s only November and yet it has already begun to snow lightly from time to time. One more winter has arrived. I see no effort from Jaanbaz’s side to take me away from here. Winter only means sitting quietly in a corner of the room. There’s very little sun, which seems to have been driven out by the cold to some other part of the world. Winter acquires a devastating form here. But we have no shortage of food to speak of. Meat, potatoes, onions and...

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