Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg Business Week with Karl Messer and Tim
Speaker 1: Stenebek on Bloomberg Radio. Well, a new book out has
Speaker 1: received praise from Bill Gates, Al Khan of Khan Academy.
Speaker 1: We've had him on a bunch and many more. It
Speaker 1: is the story of one Afghan girl growing up in
Speaker 1: Afghanistan under Taliban rule, a rule that denies girls above
Speaker 1: a certain age and education. Now the book, though, really
Speaker 1: the bigger story of all girls in Afghanistan and what
Speaker 1: they face. So with us to help tell that story
Speaker 1: and talk about the books. Malina Kapor, founder of Women
Speaker 1: in National Security at Stanford University. Her new book Defiant
Speaker 1: Dreams the journey of an Afghan girl who risked everything
Speaker 1: for education, and the subject of her book is Solamafo's
Speaker 1: also with us both, by the way on Zoom from Boston. She,
Speaker 1: as we said, is what the book is all about. Welcome, Welcome,
Speaker 1: Welcome to both of you, and Molina. I want to
Speaker 1: start with you. You and Sola came together right during the
Speaker 1: COVID lockdown. Talk to us about that discovery.
Speaker 2: Sure, So, Sola and I first met about three years ago.
Speaker 2: As you mentioned, it was during COVID. So we didn't
Speaker 2: even have a chance to meet in person, but Sola
Speaker 2: started telling me stories from her life and I started
Speaker 2: writing them and that became the basis for this book,
Speaker 2: Defiant Dreams. And initially I was just drawn.
Speaker 1: To her incredibly during COVID though is it just random.
Speaker 2: We were introduced by a mutual friend, okay, and I
Speaker 2: think you know her story is incredibly inspiring. It's the
Speaker 2: fact that she started learning secretly in Afghanistan when she
Speaker 2: didn't even know how to add and subtract at the
Speaker 2: age of sixteen, and from that she was able to
Speaker 2: make it to the United States, where she's now a
Speaker 2: quantum physics researcher at TUTS And I wanted to be
Speaker 2: a part of amplifying that story and amplifying the stories
Speaker 2: of all the obstacles that women and girls have to
Speaker 2: overcome in Afghanistan today.
Speaker 3: So tell us about your story what it was like
Speaker 3: growing up in Afghanistan, because I know you studied English
Speaker 3: and maths secretly, and then you also managed to cross
Speaker 3: a dangerous border into Pakistan to actually take the SAT test,
Speaker 3: So you.
Speaker 4: Know, you know, as you said, at age sixteen, I
Speaker 4: did not know how to add and subtract, and that
Speaker 4: was because when I was eleven years old, I was
Speaker 4: forced to stop going to school. A group of men
Speaker 4: came to our door and threatened us if continued going
Speaker 4: to school. And from that day on, the restriction of
Speaker 4: my life only continued to increase. I left home only
Speaker 4: a couple of times a year, and whenever I did,
Speaker 4: I had to wear a suffocating burk that covered me
Speaker 4: from head to toe. And meanwhile, my brothers were going
Speaker 4: to school, and they were thriving academically, and I was
Speaker 4: deeply jealous of their lives. Their lives seemed to be
Speaker 4: moving forward, and my own seemed stuck.
Speaker 3: So you had like basically like a lack of access
Speaker 3: to that education.
Speaker 4: Yes, as a woman. And then so this is a
Speaker 4: you know, I start at age fourteen, I began teaching
Speaker 4: myself English. At that time I did not know, you know,
Speaker 4: I would listen to four hours an hour and BBC.
Speaker 4: I would understand a word or two. And so Devine
Speaker 4: Dream is the story of how I went from that.
Speaker 4: Knowing how to add some chock at age sixteen, so
Speaker 4: all the way now coming to the US and being
Speaker 4: a researcher of Tought University, developing quantum algorithms.
Speaker 1: And I want to stress what goes on in Afghanistan
Speaker 1: when it comes to women specifically. I know there's been
Speaker 1: a lot of reporting about it, and we have certainly
Speaker 1: talked about it, but either of you, you know, or
Speaker 1: so to talk a little bit more about what it
Speaker 1: is like to grow up as a young woman in Afghanistan,
Speaker 1: especially under Taliban rule.
Speaker 4: So I think especially I think now that especially like
Speaker 4: in twenty twenty one, Taliban came back into power. I think,
Speaker 4: you know, after the US troops withdraw there's this striking
Speaker 4: visual representation that emerged on the streets and on TV
Speaker 4: of what women had and what was taken away. You know,
Speaker 4: there's murals that celebrated women's achievements over twenty years were
Speaker 4: either painted black or defaced. On TV two, you know,
Speaker 4: women were presenting shows and overnight they just disappeared, leaving
Speaker 4: only men to fill the screen. And so now there's
Speaker 4: been now fifty eights in place to infringe every rights
Speaker 4: women had. They can't go to school, they can't work,
Speaker 4: and even simple things like going to a park is banned.
Speaker 4: And basically now you know, it's it's just an attempt
Speaker 4: to erase women from the public sphere in being a
Speaker 4: member of the society.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I would add to that too that you know,
Speaker 2: in the United States, we had this understanding of the
Speaker 2: Taliban in twenty twenty one as maybe they were going
Speaker 2: to be a Taliban two dot zero that was somehow
Speaker 2: going to join the international order that was going to
Speaker 2: guarantee at least some basic rights for women. And that
Speaker 2: was the story of the Talban that stayed in the
Speaker 2: news for as long as Afghanistan was in the news.
Speaker 2: And it's only once the world's eyes turned away that
Speaker 2: the Taliban started to take away core freedoms for women,
Speaker 2: you know, the right to assemble publicly, the right to
Speaker 2: go to school, the right to work. And so now
Speaker 2: we're actually at the two year anniversary of that Baliban takeover,
Speaker 2: and I think it's more important than ever to remember
Speaker 2: that we need to pay attention to those stories, because
Speaker 2: when we normalize what's happening to the women of Afghanistan,
Speaker 2: we all really lose something.
Speaker 4: Talk to us.
Speaker 3: About the moment you started realizing that you could get
Speaker 3: out of that situation and come to the US.
Speaker 4: So, you know, my grandfather was self educated, and so
Speaker 4: when I forced to stop going to school, you know,
Speaker 4: for me, the world around seemed dark, and it's in
Speaker 4: those moments, like the words of my grandfather spoke to
Speaker 4: me very intimately, you know, he said, like knowing English
Speaker 4: is like opening a window for the world. And initially
Speaker 4: I just wanted to be free intellectually, but over time
Speaker 4: that led to an actual freedom to come to the
Speaker 4: US and you know, and do what I wanted to do,
Speaker 4: to do research and being being free.
Speaker 1: Do you feel free now?
Speaker 4: I mean, I don't think we can ever be absolutely free,
Speaker 4: but yes, in some measures. Yes.
Speaker 3: It's interesting because I know you were writing about and
Speaker 3: also talking about in this about how your mother warned
Speaker 3: you as a young girl not to laugh to draw
Speaker 3: attention to yourself. Do you feel like you're able to
Speaker 3: do that now?
Speaker 2: Yeah, of course.
Speaker 4: I Mean the thing is when I came initially, just
Speaker 4: I felt like I was my loving your old self
Speaker 4: again because after my after age love and for me,
Speaker 4: there's all there's restrictions, you know, I have to be
Speaker 4: careful as a woman and what to do and what
Speaker 4: not to do. And so when I came to the US,
Speaker 4: it just all those you know, restrictions just evaporated, and
Speaker 4: I just it just felt like, you know, I felt
Speaker 4: like those I just felt like I was now growing
Speaker 4: up again from that eleven year old self to now,
Speaker 4: you know, as a twenty year old. And yeah, yeah,
Speaker 4: I think.
Speaker 2: That story of how Sola took the SAT really highlights
Speaker 2: the differences between the US and Afghanistan, because here in
Speaker 2: the US that's just an exam we take for granted.
Speaker 2: But in order for Sola to take that test, she
Speaker 2: had to cross into Pakistan, one of the cross one
Speaker 2: of the most dangerous borders in the world, a border
Speaker 2: where people are routinely beaten with electric cables, where men
Speaker 2: and women have to cross separately, where you have to
Speaker 2: take multiple vehicles just to get across, And she managed
Speaker 2: to get into one of the last testing spots in Karachi,
Speaker 2: and that became her tic get out. But of course
Speaker 2: you have to think about now all the girls in
Speaker 2: Afghanistan today who are banned from education, and just think
Speaker 2: about how those kinds of insurmountable barriers are what they
Speaker 2: face when they try to get an education.
Speaker 1: Well, that's what I want to ask you, Sola. I mean,
Speaker 1: would you say that most of the young women in Afghanistan,
Speaker 1: they want to get an education and want to be
Speaker 1: doing what you're doing, of course.
Speaker 4: I mean there are so many you know, now there's
Speaker 4: some secret schools there, online school and you know, I
Speaker 4: hear stories of women saying like, as long as we breathe,
Speaker 4: we're going to be ed. We're going to educate it.
Speaker 4: We're not going to let this, you know, obstacles just
Speaker 4: suffocate us. But it's really hard, you know, there's so
Speaker 4: many even you know, for example, my story, even though
Speaker 4: I was educated myself, then you know, taking you know,
Speaker 4: showing to the world. If I wanted to apply to
Speaker 4: schools in the US, I had to take the SAT
Speaker 4: which is not available, and of honest, I had school
Speaker 4: across another country. And then their second thing is the WISA,
Speaker 4: which is also again impossible to do. You know. I've
Speaker 4: recently heard the story of a woman, a young Afghan woman,
Speaker 4: she got accepted to Fulbright Scholarship, but the US denied USA.
Speaker 4: So I think once it's the formal schooling just goes away,
Speaker 4: there's so many other obstacles that emerges.
Speaker 1: Molena just got about thirty seconds left here. What do
Speaker 1: you hope that people read this book and then they
Speaker 1: come away with what.
Speaker 2: I think it's important for everyone to remember you know
Speaker 2: that this is a story of Sola, and it's a
Speaker 2: story that's deeply unique to the struggles and obstacles that
Speaker 2: she was able to overcome, but in many respects, it's
Speaker 2: also the story now of an entire generation of girls
Speaker 2: and women in Afghanistan. You know, it's estimated that there
Speaker 2: are two point five million girls right now who are
Speaker 2: deprived the basic human right to education. And so really
Speaker 2: our message with this book is don't turn away, don't
Speaker 2: look away from these stories.
Speaker 1: Well, I'm glad we were able to tell Sola's story,
Speaker 1: and thank you Molena for joining us and bringing us
Speaker 1: this book. Founder of Women in National Security at Stanford University,
Speaker 1: Molena Kapor, thank you so much that new book, Defiant
Speaker 1: Dreams the journey of an Afghan girl who risked everything
Speaker 1: for education. And of course our thanks to the subject
Speaker 1: of that book, Solamafu's both of them joining us from
Speaker 1: Zoom in Boston.
Speaker 3: It's amazing teaching herself English math and calculus and physics
Speaker 3: as well.