Welcome to Breaking Down Patriarchy. I'm Amy McPhee, all the best. Can you remember how old you were when you first became aware of the country of Afghanistan?

Maybe you remember Afghanistan being the site of a conflict between the United States and Russia. For me, personally, I didn't really know anything about the country until September 11th of 2001,

when average American citizens suddenly became aware of something called the Taliban.

And along with the rest of the country, I suddenly learned a lot of information about the country

over the next couple of decades, but all filtered through Western media, never from Afghans

themselves, or anything that was really Afghanistan-centric. My personal connection to the country

began in the fall of 2022 when our family met a family who had recently immigrated to the U.S.

as refugees from Afghanistan. The dad of the family

had fought as a soldier against the Taliban. So in 2021, when the Taliban entered the province where they

lived and took over, this family fled for their lives. And thankfully, they were able to get help

from the U.S. government as they needed passports and flights and resettlement for their

family. They have five kids, ages 10, down to eight months, and our family helps them with whatever

they need. We're kind of their contact people here in the U.S., and we spend most Sundays with them.

And we really, really love this family. We've become great friends. And sometimes

when I look in the faces of their three little girls, I imagine what life might have been like

if they had stayed in Afghanistan. I keep reading about the restrictions that the Taliban has placed upon

women again. And the first time I went over to their house, I met them and

hung out with them for a couple of hours. And then I cried all the way home in the car because

suddenly the stories that I had been reading in the news were suddenly very, very real to me.

At the same time, the last time that we were at the family's house just last week, their

kids were telling me in their rapidly improving English all the things that they used to

love to do when they were back at home.

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