Wahab's father welcomed her into the world with fanfare typically accorded the birth of a son—gunshots into the Afghan sky. Though his friends chastised him for celebrating a daughter in such a way, Wahab's father insisted his daughter would "do more for her people than one hundred sons combined." Three years later, in 1979, he was captured by the KGB for speaking out against Soviet involvement in Afghanistan. He never returned. After being shuffled to the care of her progressive grandfather, Wahab eventually wound up with her uncle in Portland, Oreg. Though she completed high school in only three years, Wahab could no longer abide her uncle's strict enforcement of Pashtun gender-biased codes of conduct, so she moved out. After college, determined to live up to her father's hopes, Wahab became an interpreter for American forces in Afghanistan. As one of the military's few speakers of Pashtu—a complex and heavily-coded language—Wahab became a spokesperson for her culture, educating her colleagues and helping them to establish relationships with her fellow Pashtun people. In vibrant but understated prose, Wahab vividly portrays a misunderstood culture, as well as the tense life on military bases where everyone must wear body armor and carry a weapon. While fighting to build a bridge of understanding between her "native and adoptive nations," Wahab admirably wages a more universal war—for gender equality, human rights, and peace. (Apr.)
In My Father's Country: An Afghan Woman Defies Her Fate
