And the World Changed (56 page)

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Authors: Muneeza Shamsie

BOOK: And the World Changed
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Sehba Sarwar,
Soot
copyright © 2008 by Sehba Sarwar. Published here, for the first time, with the permission of the author.

Bapsi Sidwa, from
Orphans of the Storm: Stories on the Partition of India
(UBS Publishers' Distributors Ltd., 1995). Reprinted with the permission of the author.

Sara Suleri Goodyear, from
Meatless Days
, copyright © 1989 by The University of Chicago. Reprinted with the permission of University of Chicago Press and the author.

Photo Credits

Author photographs copyright © 2008. Copyrights in the individual photographs are in the names of the authors. Printed with the permission of the authors.

Photographer credits:

For Talat Abbasi's photograph: Lars Mathisen

For Humera Afridi's photograph: Ahad Afridi

For Fawzia Afzal Khan's photograph: Noman Isanisland

For Aamina Ahmad's photograph: Shehryar Piracha

For Feryal Ali Guahar's photograph: Irfan Jamil Rahman

For Uzma Aslam Khan's photograph: David Maine

For Rukhsana Ahmad's photograph: Linda Brownlee, courtesy of Renaissance One

For Sabyn Javeri-Jillani's photograph: Shahzeb Jillani

For Shahrukh Husain's photograph: Helen Pedersen

For Soniah Kamal's photograph: Mansoor Wasti

For Maniza Naqvi's photograph: Adnan Dumisic, photo studio, Sarajevo

For Tahira Naqvi's photograph: Jaishri Abichandani

For Sehba Sarwar's photograph:
Dawn
, a daily newspaper in Pakistan For Bina Shah's photograph: Behrouz Hashim

For Kamila Shamsie's photograph: Salma Raza

For Muneeza Shamsie's photograph: Ayesha Vellani

For Sara Suleri Goodyear's photograph: Azra Raza

For Nayyara Rahman's photograph: Tahira Rahman For Bushra Rehman's photograph: Jaishri Abichandani

For Qaisra Shahraz's photograph: Veronica Taylor

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

MUNEEZA SHAMSIE was born in Lahore, educated in England, and has lived in Karachi for most of her life. Both a writer and a critic, Shamsie has edited two pioneering anthologies of Pakistani English writing.

ALSO AVAILABLE FROM FEMINIST PRESS

THE SHIPWRECKED

Contemporary Stories by Women from Iran

Edited by Fereshteh Nouraie-Simone

Translated by Sara Khalili & Faridoun Farrokh

This stunning collection of short stories captures the lives of women in Iran in the aftermath of the revolution. Evoking the enormous isolation of daily existence, and the persistence of a people living under a repressive regime, these literary gems reward us with an inside view of a turbulent and closed society.

Fereshteh Nouraie-Simone is a historian at the American University School of International Service.

WALKING THE PRECIPICE

Witness to the Rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan

Barbara Bick

This is not Charlie Wilson's War. In richly detailed anecdotes, Walking the Precipice describes through a woman's eyes the rise of the Taliban in war-torn Afghanistan. Bick provides a personal report about the country at the heart of the “War on Terror.”

In 1990, sixty-five-year-old activist and grandmother Barbara Bick traveled with a women's delegation to Afghanistan for what she thought would be her last great adventure. Instead, while Mujahideen shelled Kabul, Bick forged deep friendships with her Afghan hosts. In the ensuing years, she watched with horror as the Taliban took over most of Afghanistan and instituted fiercely anti-woman policies. Eleven years later, at age 76, Bick returned to Afghanistan, this time to an even more dangerous terrain than Kabul: she traveled to the region controlled by the Northern Alliance, an anti-Taliban militia. She found herself in early September 2001 at a compound where Ahmad Shah Massoud, a leader of the Northern Alliance, was also staying. Bick walked out of the compound on September 9; minutes later Taliban infiltrators assassinated Massoud, a prelude to the al Qaeda attacks on the United States.

In the years that followed, the U.S. government became deeply involved in Afghanistan, and Bick decided to go back one more time, to see how women were faring under the new government. In 2004, when she returned, she was one of the few Western women able to bring years of experience to understanding the country's trauma. Walking the Precipice gives new insight into the people, politics, and culture
of a country that is on everyone's radar—for its beauty, and for its tragic place history.

A longtime peace and human rights activist, BARBARA BICK worked for Women Strike for Peace, NEGAR-Support for Women of Afghanistan, the Institute for Policy Studies, the Institute of Women's Policy Research, and the National Conference of State and Local Public Policies. She is the author of Culture and Politics and Walking the Precipice.

HAREM YEARS

The Memoirs of an Egyptian Feminist, 1879-1947

Huda Shaarawi

Translated by Margot Badran.

Introduction by Margot Badran.

In this firsthand account of the private world of a harem in colonial Cairo, Shaarawi recalls her childhood and early adult life in the seclusion of an upper-class Egyptian household, including her marriage at age thirteen. Her subsequent separation from her husband gave her time for an extended formal education, as well as an unexpected taste of independence. Shaarawi's feminist activism grew, along with her involvement in Egypt's nationalist struggle, culminating in 1923 when she publicly removed her veil in a Cairo railroad station, a daring act of defiance.

HUDA SHAARAWI (1879-1947) was among the last generation of Egyptian women to live in the segregated world of the harem. Her feminist activism grew out of her involvement in Egypt's nationalist struggle, and led to her founding of the Egyptian Feminist Union in 1923.

ABOUT FEMINIST PRESS

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is a nonprofit educational organization founded to amplify feminist voices. FP publishes classic and new writing from around the world, creates cutting-edge programs, and elevates silenced and marginalized voices in order to support personal transformation and social justice for all people.

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