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to control the origins of life by controlling women’s bodies. The old Afghan expression
zan, zar waa, zamin
summarizes the ever-present threat against men’s personal property, which was always the main reason for taking up arms: Women. Gold. And land. In that order.
    Resistance against the Soviets was boosted by generous financing and logistical help from abroad: U.S. president Jimmy Carter had declared that the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan constituted “the greatest threat to peace since the Second World War.” As the fight against Communism was a battle between good and evil, Islamic fundamentalists made excellent partners in this mission as they, too, had clear views of good and evil, albeit from a slightly different perspective.
    And so the gains of women in Afghanistan once again directly contributed to war, as their fate was mixed into the powder keg of tension between reformers and hardliners, between foreigners and Afghans, and between the urban centers and the countryside.
    Yet, the outside world did not seem to notice the central controversy of Afghan women. The foreign powers instead seemed to agree that there were much bigger problems with Afghanistan than such a peripheral issue, which would have to be revisited at some other time, when the men had stopped fighting. The threat of Communism—and the need to contain it—ensured American dollars and arms kept flowing to the Soviet opposition, moderates and extremists alike.
    A ZITA ’ S FAMILY HELD out in Kabul for a while, through violence and power struggles following the eventual Soviet troop withdrawal, when mujahideen groups fought for control of the capital. When the violence shut down schools and many areas of the city, a routine was established for the now seventeen-year-old’s rare outings with her father. Azita always carried a note with the phone numbers for relativesin her pocket and a few bills in one of her shoes, in case an attack should separate them.
    In the spring of 1992, Kabul erupted into full-blown civil war. Azita gradually trained herself not to panic when a first blast set off a series of explosions, or when she,like most other children in Kabul at the time, saw body parts and corpses on the streets. Her memories from that time largely revolve around shock waves, vibrating buildings, and the fires that ensued: “It started from everywhere. Shooting, bombarding, blasting, killing. Everywhere, there was something. One day we had fifteen or sixteen rocket blasts in our neighborhood. The house was shaking all the time.”
    Her father, Mourtaza, decided the family had to leave. His family had grown, with three more daughters and one son arriving after Azita, and he could not find a way to take them to Pakistan. Instead, they made a difficult journey back to their remote home province of Badghis. The apartment in Kabul was boarded up, the store left behind. It would be ransacked, but there was nothing they could do to stop it—everyone they knew was fleeing, too. After packing all they could in a small car, the family drove off as refugees in their own country. As their car became a target for snipers the family abandoned it by the road, continuing for eighteen days by bus and by foot, sleeping in mosques and trying to avoid rebels and looters along the way. Those are days Azita cannot recall anymore; her brain has buried them somewhere.
    When they reached what they saw as a semblance of civilization again—the city of Herat in western Afghanistan—they were certain of survival, as war had not yet reached nearby Badghis. Her youth would end there, and she would not return to Kabul for many years.
    She remembers being angry about the war, and that she had not been able to take any of her books with her, from the small library her father kept in the house.
    “Did you have a favorite book?” I ask her in the car, as she describes her last days in Kabul.
    “Of course.
Love Story
.”
    “Oh. I read that, too.” I had found it at my