My story on how I learned to read and write and how I buried my books when the Taliban took over Afghanistan for the 2nd time. — My father and uncles were bi-sawad, a Persian word for illiterate, meaning they could not read or write. They inherited it from their father, my grandfather, and great-grandfather. Traditionally sawad (literacy) was seen as a male thing; naturally, no females in our family were literate. But interestingly, it was a…
