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For the Love of a Child tells the true story of Maryam Kahil, who, from a young age, rebelled against the terrible life and inferiority she was destined to live as an Afghan. A determined, tormented woman, determined to achieve freedom and equality with men.
If she could choose, Maryam Khail certainly wouldn't have been born a girl. In Afghanistan, girls can dream, but only boys' dreams come true. Amid a patriarchal and sexist society, the young woman grew up fearing the fate of the women in her homeland and her family, especially her grandmother, who was subjected to constant beatings and rape.
The daughter of a modern couple, Maryam believed she was protected from the dangers of Afghanistan, until the Soviet Union and communism took over the country and transformed the once peaceful Kabul into a war zone, sometimes between the Soviets and the Afghans, sometimes between civilians themselves.
Fleeing the horrors of these conflicts to save their lives, the Khail family settled in India and later in the United States. But the Afghan ghosts still haunted Maryam. With her mother's death, the young woman was arranged to marry a cruel man from her tribe. Beaten, raped, and humiliated, just like the women of her country—from whose example she had always wanted to distance herself—she questioned Afghan tradition and divorced. Rejected and disapproved of by her family, Maryam faced the greatest terror for a mother: the kidnapping of her son.
For the Love of a Child tells the story of a woman tormented by an oppressive culture in search of her baby, taken by his father to a land amidst cruel wars. Jean Sasson's sensitive book tells the true story of a violent country, of historical conflicts, and the rise of one of the most authoritarian and tyrannical regimes in the world: the Taliban.
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