Secret schools defy Taliban to offer Afghan girls light and hope
The first time she stepped into the secret school for girls, Maryam felt a rush of hope, as if rediscovering light after more than a year of darkness.
That was how long she had been confined to her home by the strict rules governing women’s behavior imposed by Afghanistan’s Taliban authorities. Now, she took her place on the red carpet among rows of other schoolgirls gathered in the drawing room of a private home in Kabul, transformed into an underground classroom.
It was a revelation, recalls the slight 17-year-old with wide eyes and thick eyebrows and a rim of black hair visible beneath her headscarf, who dreams of computer programming. “Girls were studying, they had their books open,
