Dancing in the Mosque

Homeira Qaderi goes into labour in Kabul on the day a suicide bomber attacks. The road to the hospital is barricaded, and she has to cross the wreckage on foot while an armed soldier, afraid she is hiding a bomb, aims his gun at her pregnant belly. Her son Siawash is born that day.

The birth is the start of a harder stretch. Qaderi lives under a theocratic, patriarchal order and refuses to bow to it. She teaches children to read and write in defiance of the law, and she campaigns for women's rights, at risk to her own freedom.

Shortly after Siawash is born, she prepares to travel to the United States for the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa. Her husband divorces her, which lets her leave Afghanistan, but only without her son. She has to make a choice that stays with her for good.

This is a memoir written as a mother's letter to the child she left behind. It also tells the wider story of Afghan women living with oppression and abuse in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. The tone is intimate and painful, and the book looks at motherhood, sacrifice and survival through one woman's own account.