That day I was warned not to travel to Badakhshan because of a credible threat that the Taliban planned to kill me by planting an improvised bomb under my car. The Taliban dislike women holding such powerful positions in government, and they dislike my public criticisms of them even more.
They often try to kill me.
Recently they have tried even harder than usual, threatening my home, tracking my journeys to work so that they can lay a bomb as my car passes and even organizing gunmen to attack a convoy of police vehicles assigned to protect me. One gun attack on my car lasted thirty minutes and killed two policemen. I stayed inside the vehicle, not knowing if I would emerge alive or dead.
.............
Dear Shohra and Shaharzad
When I was a little child I didn't know the words 'war', 'rocket', 'wounded', 'killing', 'rape'.
Words which sadly all Afghan children are familiar with today.
Until the age of 4 I knew only happy words.
From the coming May-release book, Letters To My Daughters: A Memoir, © 2011, by Fawzia Koofi. Published in 2011 by Douglas & McIntyre: an imprint of D&M Publishers Inc. Reprinted with permission of the publisher