Each writing of yours is weaving history into stories. Let’s start with memory. How did it all begin for you?

I started writing about a year after I finished my pediatric training and at the nudging of my husband. He saw my love for stories and has a deep appreciation for work that lingers. I was working in the emergency department of a children’s hospital. On days when I didn’t have a shift, I started drafting a story. I’d grown up with an ear to the heartbreaking history of Afghan people. Girls denied education. Families huddled together as rockets flew into their neighborhoods. People crossing borders on foot, carrying remnants of their lives and prayers for safety. My parents have come to me a couple of times, surprised by a small detail I have included in one of my books – a superstition or a cultural practice. We hear and experience so much in our lifetimes. The writing process exposes what stands out in our minds. The topography of a person’s memories is fascinating to me, a map created in the process of living.

Personal and political flows into each other in your writing. How do you balance fiction and lived realities, especially when writing about war, migration, and gender?

Most people don’t have the bandwidth or interest to take a deep dive into the politics or history of Afghanistan, the refugee crisis, or the current policies of the Taliban. I write knowing my novels might be an introduction or even the whole lesson for some readers. I feel a responsibility to write as realistically as possible about the struggles and backdrop. As an example, I relied heavily on the research of Human Rights Watch’s Heather Barr when describing the way women were shuttled through the criminal justice system in Afghanistan. Heather visited every women’s prison and interviewed several women, learning how women were cornered into signing confessions they never made or how some women ironically found prison was a safer place for them than home. At the same time, the women we meet in the story are fictional characters. They are my imagined guides, taking us into spaces we wouldn’t otherwise see and showing us what it is like to live through the gross injustices Afghan women face.

Do you write with a specific audience in mind—Afghan readers, diaspora, or a global audience?

I do write with an audience in mind but that audience is actually the characters of the story. Stories flow best when I can hear and see the characters in my head, when it feels more like I’m witnessing than creating. And in the process of storytelling, I feel duty bound to do justice to their stories, almost as if they are over my shoulder reading the pages. If the story falls short for this primary and imagined audience, it will most assuredly fall short for any other audience.

As we mark four years since the Taliban’s return to power—four years that have silenced Afghan women through systematic edicts—how do you see the role of literature, storytelling, and advocacy evolving not just to preserve Afghan women’s voices, but to ignite a broader, global response that demands their restoration?

Literature is a funny thing. We pick up novels knowing they are inventions of someone’s imagination and yet stories can summon tears and outrage. To me, literature invites the reader into a private room, like a therapist’s office or a confessional, to hear the truth of a person’s story. It turns a one dimensional label into a three dimensional human through backstory, context, and reflections. Fiction about Afghan women does not and should not replace the voices of Afghan women but it can help readers to see past headlines or tragic photos and understand that Afghan women have dreams for themselves and hopes for their children. Afghan women have long been called resilient for enduring conflict and the uniquely brutal misogyny of the Taliban but I fear this praise paves the way for the world to ignore their plight and diminishes the struggles. There is a mental health crisis among Afghan women and girls as a direct result of schools and careers being taken from them by the Taliban. They live under a system of gender apartheid, one unlike anywhere else in the world. To curl up with a book is to hear their call for solidarity.

Writers like Nawal El Saadawi have long ago described the stereotyping in the publishing industry in the US towards fiction from diasporic South Asian and Middle Eastern women writers. Have you faced any such challenges with your publishers and editors?

I’m grateful to have worked with agents, editors, and publishers who have helped me finesse my stories into their final form, who have helped bring these stories to readers in far corners of the world. And I’m very fortunate to have landed with professionals who celebrate the way storytelling reveals humanity, builds bridges, and reveals the nuance of people most often seen as monoliths. The publishing industry may not be perfect but it’s certainly evolved and there are editors and publishers who are actively working to make it a more vibrant and authentic space.

The image of the oppressed veiled women is the popular imagination of contemporary discourse around muslim women from the global south. In what ways do you hope your writing challenges Western narratives about Afghanistan and Muslim women?

I can remember a time when Googling “Afghan woman” would yield pictures of a burqa clad woman cowering under a Taliban’s whip or the famously haunting green eyes of an Afghan refugee, Sharbat Gula. Global discourse around Afghan women centered on what was done to them, framing them always as victims. But Afghan women are also survivors, leaders, and hot-blooded rebels. I see stories as vehicles to convey their stories and bring readers to the truth that Afghan women are most capable of saving themselves. They do need a few basic conditions – education, agency, a means to support themselves – to do so.

You’ve been politically active, including running for U.S. Congress. How does your activism intersect with your fiction, especially in light of the term refugee and its current trends in US politics?

There are so many ways and reasons to be active. The United States, like so many countries, is experiencing a wave of nationalism and hostile backlash to immigration. This is an opportunity to teach people about the forces behind the forced displacement of people from their homelands. The United States has had a hand in the destabilizing of several Latin American countries, as well as the decades of war in Afghanistan. I find it important to shine a light on America’s role in global conflict because it reveals our complicity. I’ve also found that some readers have not witnessed the story arc of a displaced person. Stories can debunk the idea that “refugee” is a terminal illness. People rebuild and sometimes a work of fiction can help break through the myopia.

Your novels are nuanced in the way they delve into debates of feminism. How do you see decolonial feminism in the contemporary world, where neo-imperialism and the rise of local traditionalist regimes both have been hindering every little joy of women?

After 9/11, much attention was paid to the way the Taliban were oppressing Afghan women. As the United States prepared to send troops into the country, people learned about girls being banned from school, about women being lashed for wearing nail polish and forced to cover themselves head to toe in a burqa in public. When the Taliban were ousted in 2001, America celebrated this as a feminist victory. Girls could return to school. Women could show their faces. A quota was set, mandating a percentage of Afghanistan’s parliament seats be filled by women. The gains made were used to justify the military intervention (along with the larger mission of ensuring Afghanistan would not be a safe haven for terrorists like Bin Laden). But twenty years later, when the United States negotiated its withdrawal from Afghanistan with the Taliban, we signed an agreement that made no mention of women’s rights or human rights. The country has fallen back into the hands of the very same misogynists, but there is no outrage. There is little more than a tsk tsk from the United States. Post-colonial feminism demands we prioritize women’s equality even when it’s not strategically motivated or politically convenient for us. Traditions are fine if they represent the will of all people governed by those traditions, but not when they subjugate half the population. The Taliban won’t be holding elections or allowing women to vote. Their edicts represent terrorism, not tradition.

Can you share a memorable or even funny moment from your writing journey? Something that’s stayed with you?

This writing journey has given me so many standout moments. When my second novel was published, a box of first copies arrived at my home. I was excited to unpack them and remember my young son standing by and watching. But when I opened the flaps of the carton and he saw the books inside, he became quite disappointed and said: “I thought you wrote the books but you just order them!” On a more serious note, I’ve received some incredible messages from readers who have shared the impact the stories have had on them. I’ll share a recently received message from an Afghan-American reader as an example: “I saw my mother in so many pages, in the quiet strength and resilience, in the aching for a life that was suddenly torn apart. Through your words, I felt seen, comforted, and connected…Thank you for honoring our history and for capturing what it means to endure, to remember, and to rebuild.” I keep some of these messages pinned on a board to remind me, on days when the writing feels cumbersome, why I need to return to the page.

What is your message for our readers about Afghan women and their lives?

Afghan women are eager to be seen as individuals worthy of basic rights. They may not be very visible or audible because the world’s attention is pulled in so many tragic directions now. But what we deny Afghan women will only hurt us. The school system in Afghanistan is now controlled by an extremist government. Madrasas enrollments are steadily increasing and the next generation is being indoctrinated. The regression toward fundamentalism will not remain contained within Afghanistan’s borders. Our world grows more interconnected by the minute. What happens to Afghan women will be of global relevance. Time will reveal how. 

Finally, what will be your recommendations to the Usawa reader’s community: podcasts, books, articles, anything?

I’m deeply grateful to Usawa for uplifting the voices and sentiments of Afghan women in this very dark era. It’s incredibly difficult to get much news out of Afghanistan but there are a few social media accounts to watch: TogetherStron12 on X as well as Malala Fund and Afghan Women Strong on Instagram.

Rawadari (rawadari.org) is an Afghan human rights organization that monitors human rights violations and advocates for justice. There are books written by Afghan women: Dancing in the Mosque by Homeira Qaderi, Opium Nation by Fariba Nawa, and Outspoken by Dr Sima Samar to name a few.