a fad in consumer items. everything from toothpaste to underwear was put into a lot of things that would shock us now because it was thought to have these mysterious rays. of course they were killing people. >> host: i think i read in here and tested the 1940s, there's 500 or so nuclear explosions. is that about right works what happens to all of that explosion stuff? >> guest: until 1980, from 1945 to 1980 those took place in the atmosphere and created a tremendous amount of fallout, radioactive fallout that is still very much with us. it's still out there. it's been going down.

these elements naturally dk and get less radioactive. but they're still out there. we are all exposed to them all the time. after 1980 due to some treaties are among the big producers of nuclear weapons, the soviet union and the united states, france britain, the test went underground. they still take place from time to time, but for the most part there is no leakage into the atmosphere. >> host: where is it and what happens to the explosion stuff? >> guest: well, the united states contacts these tests in the western deserts where they originally tested bagheera shema and not the sake weapons. and they take caverns that are dug out far enough to meet the

service so that the force of the explosions can't propel these radioactive elements into the atmosphere. there have been leaks. nothing is perfect in engineering there have been leaks for the most part stuff is contained underground. >> host: are they useful? >> guest: that's a bit beyond my expertise. the hunches we don't really need to do that anymore. it is all pretty much as familiar as building refrigerators right now, but there's a lot of pressure to continue the evolution of nuclear weapons as you probably know. >> host: there's taste of a field guide to regulation by wink at all. thank you for being on booktv. >> guest: thank you.

>> host: journalists wegenstein and transfer support their books. one worker was temporarily raised as a boy and the other an account of teaching english to the children of north korea's elite. it is about an hour. >> guest: >> thank you so much for coming. my deepest apologies for the delay. i want to read a piece of my book, which centers around a conversation where two adult women who grew up as boys in afghanistan who have continued to live as adult man posing as men in afghanistan.

they are called not her and shot had. when i asked afghans to describe to me the difference between men and women over the years, interesting responses came back. while afghan men often begin to describe menace more sensitive, caring and less physically capable than men afghan women tend to offer up only one difference. you want to take a second and guess what that one difference may be? here's the answer. regardless of who they are whether they are rich or poor educated or illiterate afghan women often describe the difference between men and women in just one word freedom. as a men have it women do not. the same thing when i asked her. when no one is the boss of your

life is how she describes it. so when the west there's less of the difference between men and women i asked? they look at each other again and then back at me. they don't know. perhaps i'm supposed to tell them. but then changes her mind telling me not to bother. she doesn't want to hear it. we are nothing. we would be nothing in the west, too. more hopeful inspired by snippets of information from her american trainers and the paramilitary unit. i have heard that people don't care what you are or how you look in the west. not exactly true. but our definition of freedom may be different and it changes with each generation. the current war in afghanistan for instance is named operation enduring freedom, to indicate something worth fighting a 13 year war over. but freedom as we know it today is yet another evolutionary

luxury. american says annihilator tell her, birth sex is a reality. gender and freedom ideas. it is all how we choose to define those ideas. the afghan women i have not sometimes with little education but a lifetime of experience at being counted as less than a full human being have a distinct view of what exactly freedom is. to them freedom is to avoid an unwanted marriage and to be able to leave the house. it would be to have some control over one's own body and to have a choice of when and how to become bright it or to study and have a profession. that is how they would define freedom. as we have five on another day, three of her sisters are visiting with gold embroidery a

red yellow gather in the foyer found us with 11 children gathered between the kitchen and reception room. the toddlers crawl back and forth across the foyer where we fit erfurt, sandals piled up in a corner by the door. i would not be able to. i am lucky not to have to be pregnant all the time and to have one after the other. if i were a woman here, that would be my entire life. her sisters have carefully made a face is framed by long curly black hair. one sister leads forward as she attempts to explain not her to me. do you understand that it is the wish of every afghan woman to have been born a man to be free? the other two sisters agree. if it had been their choice, they would have been born a man. living a fantasy and that is why

other women turn on her sometimes. she does not play by the rules to which they are all subject to it. neither wants to be here on government one the sisters said. not like us with our husbands as the government always. to make the understand why some continue to live as men in afghanistan when they reach adulthood another sister asked me a question that is simple to answer. if you could walk out the door right now is a man for staying here forever as a woman what would you choose? she's right. who would not walk out the door in disguise at the alternative was to live as a prisoner or a slave. who would really care about long hair or short skirt masculine, feminine is announcing one's gender give access to the world. so much for the ministry of gender for the right to a specific one but this realization. a great many people in the world

need be willing to throw out their gender if it could eat treated for freedom. the real story of other women who live as men in afghanistan may not be so much about how they break gender norms are what they have become by doing that. rather it is about this. between gender and freedom, freedom is the bigger and more important idea in afghanistan as well as globally, defining one's gender becomes a concern only after freedom is achieved. then a person can begin to build a word with new meaning. freedom is also what the sisters want to question me on. what do the women do with all the supposed freedom to hear about? after they whisper for a bat one of them turns to me. you can do anything you want and you come to afghanistan? [laughter]

is that the dust she says? or the war? we always have wars. the other sisters are with her. it's very strange for a woman to come to afghanistan by choice, presuming she can be anywhere in the world. my father will allow what they think. this is what you do with your life? the sister continues. don't you want the families who have children? she looks a little concerned. you should not wait too long to get married. you will be too old to have children. yes, i may be too old already i say. all three sisters look around before one speaks again put the question they want an answer to. what is the purpose of your life as a woman? what is the meaning? the might of been born a man that the mother. what is it not to make you a

woman? you have your freedom to first sister says again. you can walk out when you want but we also feel sad for you. she glances over her. we know our sisters that sometimes, too. it is the side issue of being a man. neither looks embarrassed and perhaps irritated. polkadot jumpsuit and maneuvered herself into her lap. vader adjusts her possessions to hold her knees with both hands. she laid her head down to inhale the scent of the years but the black hair. she closes her eyes for a moment. i told them to say one for me, tilting her head. they have so many. we can pretend one of them is lying. they cannot agree on that. when we maneuver through cobbles

outer neighborhoods on her way home with nadr at the wheel she suddenly has an announcement. i will take you to my boys. and of course we want to meet nadr's boys. she tosses her phone from the front seat we stick our heads together to see if she wants to show us and therein the middle of a tiny cell phone shot his nadr, her arms around the shoulders of two teenagers. both dressed in suits. the girls have young glowing faces with soft features. they are not trying to be cute nerdy they look down like most afghan women. they are all exposing their teeth. nadr turns around to see the reactions. she tells us they are her protégés. nadr has no children but she's heard he began to build her

legacy. they are her boys in training to become the next generation. [applause] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> well, okay. i'll see one question. maybe you can just start by

explaining what it is. just go it is meaning dressed up like a boy. you have either a son or a daughter or a daughter dressed like a son. it is almost like a third gender they are and you cut off arab the daughter of the grand pants and a shirt and she will act like a boy to the outside world. >> host: and suki, what will continue with this? [applause] >> hi sorry. i was just running behind. i will read -- it is a little section of the book from

"without you, there is no us." he comes towards the end of the book actually. here we go. here is the premise is that i spent six months in north korea teaching the sons of the elite and i was always wanting to implement some western concept into the lessons. sa was the much dreaded word among my students that fall. there was stress about without having to write one sense it was interpolating the final grade they were supposed to, but their own topic in hand and a thesis in outline. when i asked them how it was going, they would sigh and say disaster. i emphasize the importance of essays because a scientist they would one day have to write papers to prove their theories but in reality, nothing was ever proven in the world since

everything was at the whim of the great leader. their writing skills were a stunted as their research skills. writing inevitably consisted of repetition of these achievements, none of which were ever verified. they lack the concept of backing up claim of evidence. a quick look at the articles in the daily paper revealed the exact same tone from start to finish with either per gresh and rp singh. there was no beginning and no wind. so the basic three were five paragraph essays with a thesis, introduction, body paragraph supporting details. they were comprehending the introduction. it was like waving hello. hi d. say hello in an interesting way so the reader is hoped? i offered many examples but still they would show up during office hours shaking their heads and asking so what is it?

so it goes on and on. i will skip on a little bit. i am trying to reap little sections for one chapter. instead of a lesser-known sources, which is not possible here, it was not possible. i asked that they read a simple essay from 1997 are quoted resident bill clinton and how important it was to make the schools wired. i got it approved by the counterparts. counterparts with the north korean staff who looked over the last design. it related to current textbook theme of college education. i hope they would grasp how behind they were. i also gave them for articles from "the new york times," the "financial times" in harvard magazine that mentions mark zetterberg, facebook twitter. none of the pieces evoke a response.

not even the sentence about earning $100 billion from something he dreamed that. it was possible that they viewed a reading as lies or perhaps the capitalist angle without them. the next day it was during office hours. they wanted to change their essay topics. curiously, the new topics they proposed all has to do with the ills of american society. one said he wanted to write about corporate punishment to american and japanese middle schools. another one are geared the policy of deciding a baby's future should be forbidden. a third student wanted to write about the evils of allowing people to own guns so freely in america. a fourth student said iovino in america was the biggest producer of it. if it's one change the topic to divorce. there was no divorce in the

dprk, but in america, the rate was more than 50% and divorce was a mental illness according to him. so what happens when people are a nappy hair people are not the hereafter been married a while i asked? the student looked at me blankly. still another student wanting to write about, it donalds was horrible. the same student and asked me what kind of food does that tamils make? one student mastery which country produced the most computer hackers. he had been taught that it was america. the question stumped me especially since i had just seen a news item on cnn nation about cybercrime by north korea. instead computer crimes could be committed anywhere, by anyone. so would be hard to pinpoint one country as the source. from there ct scan then i thought saw one student had written that despite nuclear weapons on countries such as the united states can develop a nuclear weapons.

it seems he had no idea that north korea had begun developing a nuclear weapon as an international concern. another look at starvation was an impossible problem to solve especially in africa, even countries such as england and america had starvation problems. another chose the topic of money and how it made it do unethical things. one thing was clear. they switched the essay topics to condemn americans have been compelled with the articles. but i had intended as inspirational, they must have viewed as those seen and felt slighted. the nationalism that had instilled in them for so many generations had produced an ego that was so fragile that they refuse to recognize the rest of the world. the experts expending their awareness can ask irene. the paragraph is something

koreans have. i had a pile of preachy, self-righteous pirates. almost half the students claimed the most famous food in the world and all other nations are envious of it. once to note that the american government had named the official food of 1996. [laughter] when i questioned he said everybody knew this fact since the korean textbook said so. the internet search revealed the teachers had internet, students didn't. a quick internet search revealed that a japanese manufacturer had claimed the japanese -- proposed as an official olympic food, but have been denied. somehow the item had been related and was not treated as knowledge. to correct my students on each bit of misinformation these straying into dangerous

territory. another teacher said no way. don't touch that. if the books as its root you cannot tell them how to live. after several lessons a student said to me at dinner, a strange thing happened during our science class this afternoon. social science class was the north korean spy mission of philosophy and nato is class, basically taking this class everyday. they never volunteered information, so i listened intense way. the students continued here and we had to write an essay. he explains the normally wrote in korea i never thought of them as essays before. but it made him feel strange. what was so strange i asked? i don't know who said pausing out fully.

i realized that it was different now. writing in english and writing and korean are different. but then it is also the same. i kept thinking of the essay structure that i was writing. i did not question further. i thought i understood. a must have been deeply confusing to approach the writing is an essay. in this country there is no proof no checks and balances unless of course they wanted to prove the great leader had single-handedly written thousands of books and save the nation to build a miraculous number of things. their entire system was designed not to be questioned and to squash critical thinking. so the form of an essay in which a pcs had to be proven as antithetical to their entire system. the writer of an assay acknowledges the argument opposing theses and refuses them here but opposition is not an

option. a third felt a familiar sick feeling. perhaps this is only the beginning. the questions they would have, the questions they should be asking, and the questions he would realize they have not been asking because they did not imagine they could before because asking man that they could no longer exist in their system. [applause] >> i am supposed to sit here. >> well, if such a privilege to be here with these two fantastic writers who have gone to the far ends of the earth and come back with such fascinating stories. i read through these books as if they were mystery stories or a

game of thrones series. they were so fascinating. i learned so much. i originally structured my question to question you each separately, but now altogether. i will ask each of you a few questions about your own books and then i want to ask questions that are relevant to those of you about your writing practice and being a reporter. so jenny, afghanistan has been called the worst lease in the world to be a woman. but all we hear in our media is how much better things are getting. girls are in school. books about women starting small businesses and breaking out of the early confines of their homes. but is it still the worst place? >> guest: i think there is certainly other horrible places to be a woman but in terms of being one of the most conservative countries on earth

where there is utter poverty and women have very few rights. only men can inherit property. there's domestic violence. women still burned themselves to death. yes, it is still true. there has been modest progress mostly concentrated to the urban areas such as cobalt, iraq, where women have been able to get out of the house, get an education, relatively more liberal, but according to the conversations and the people who work on the ground there and in the last five years when you're in the more rural areas, things are very much the same. following traditions that have been around for a very long time, regardless of what regime. so after the taliban had many

restrictions on women to go back to the culture of honor, where women should be purer and sheltered. they remain in place and this is as i read for my book, women cannot decide anything about over their own body would make it pregnant, who they get married to whether they leave the house essentially. so that is the story and i think the story we want to hear is how great everything has become and they're certainly progress that has been modest and easily reversible. >> host: you type towards the end of the book about how billions and billions of dollars worth of international aid has been sprinkled all over the country producing very little effect except to create a class of, you know to get a hold of

some of this money. then you say something very interesting, which is because women's right has been promoted in this way, sort of this international aid staff, that now it's identified with the new elite and with the last. so, does that suggest to you you know, whatever progress is necessary will be dismantled among the elite? >> if you gave me the idea that it starts with one, i would never distance any effort to help make things better. the thing of foreign aid is does it get there first of all? it is the number one corrupt country in the world. a big story that was told in the

beginning of the war was how we were to liberate the women there. so much money was put into gender projects. there was also infrastructure and all of that but it is also the specific idea of coming out, bringing women out from their homes and giving the girls in education. so again, there's been some progress to that end. unfortunately, we see in his wrist while those who have power and money, want to hold onto that very badly and they will make any excuse to say that women's rights and women's education, for instance is for a period. ..

>> have a more fluid view of what gender is and what the difference between men and women is. so when we come in and we institute a women's ministry and a quota of women many parliament and we try and explain this to men and women and say, you know, we're going to empower you many times there's also reluctance to buy our version of that and a reluctance toward that -- against that sort of foreign,

foreign aid imposed version of what it should be. society has changed in some in some small degree and will keep changing if there's an extended period of peace, but it's also difficult to come in and just promote women's rights, for instance, when there are no roads to travel on -- >> right, right. yeah. >> and why does that then become such a priority for the foreigners? that can sometimes also be a provocation. what is it with you and women's rights? is it a stand against men? we have some of this in our own history as well. but it's very controversial. >> yeah. i want to just get back to the bash approach for a minute because it's a fascinating example of what you're talking about that on the one hand they have an incredibly rigid gender structure, but then there's this

little bridge that you can, you can cross if you're, i guess the right kind of little girl is be you accept this. and turning a girl into a boy, and i was struck by that, what a useful thing this was, that the boy can run errands the boy can work in the store, the boy can accompany his sisters when they go out and protect them and also the fascinating thing of how you stress this a lot, how important it is to have friends and how the batch approach is almost a magical way of encouraging the next baby to be a boy. and you actually find a doctor who seems to put some nate -- faith in that.

so could you talk a little bit about that how -- tell us a little more about the social role of the approach and how it works in the family. >> sure. when you have an extremely segregated deeply patriarchal society, it's very divided. so men and women do different things. they are different species. they look different. men can inherit property. they support the family. women are inside the house. women are told that they have lesser capability. their brains are weak, so if they studied, for instance many times women are told this they -- their uterus would just fall out. it's dangerous for women to be educated. these are some of the uneducated truths that go around in afghanistan. so then the thing is then that

the irony of that i suppose is also when you have such a rigid system people think of creative ways to buck that to get around that. and one such way is that if you don't have a son in the family but you have daughters you will simply make one into a son to the outside world. so it's not so much about actually fooling anyone it's more of a disguise, it's a practical way of coping with this very dysfunctional system. so then it will raise the status of the family because others will see a son because without a son you're seen as very weak suns there's no one to -- since there's no one to inherit you, there's no one to carry on the family name, the line will end with you. so both men and women, you know, a couple who if they don't have a son, they're shamed in society. so it will raise the status of the family. and then having a --

[inaudible] can also provide an economic advantage for the family. you can send the child out to work as a boy. this could be child labor, which is not certainly not something about freedom. another reason could be to give the girl an education. if you live in a dangerous area and you can't travel to school for instance it might be easier to pass as a boy. you'd be doing something for your daughter in that sense, and there's also that component of manifestation, what we think of as the secret almost, you know? you see a boy in front of you, and that will encourage the woman to give birth to a son next. so every afghan will know about this practice. they may not do it to their own child, but it's sort of a don't ask/don't tell in afghan society where, yeah, you have a son or a daughter sometimes you have several. and it's something that is largely accepted when it's about children. not so much when they then reach

puberty. >> because you have several examples of women who refuse to go back to being a girl at puberty. >> well, you've grown up in a gender that you know can move around, you can play outside you can ride a bike, you can climb trees, you can access to the -- you have access to the world. girls, the whole culture of honor, you know, comes down to this idea that a girl needs to be pure to be groomed for her future marriage to her husband of her parents' choice. >> yeah. >> so, you know, she cannot be near other boys. you have to keep her inside and keep her restrained. and having lived on the other side of that, many times these girls don't know what other girls do, how they live. they just know that they can't be outside much. and they prefer not to do that. i mean, when i met the teenager in the book for the first time,

she said i see how women are treated here. why would i want to be one of them? >> yeah. >> so then there's a reluctance to going back if you push it too far. >> uh-huh. uh-huh. well, it's a really fascinating book, and we're selling it out there along with the other books, and i really recommend it to everybody. i want to just ask, suki, i want to ask you a couple of questions, if i might. one thing i didn't quite understand from your fascinating book is how you got to teach at this technical college run by evangelical christians where everyone was a evangelical christian but you. how did they come to think that you were one of them? [laughter] >> well, the school was, it was funded through -- [inaudible] by evangelical christian schools, christian educators. but they have a long history of

running -- [inaudible] sister school similarly. but i just apply for a job, and when i found out -- i was covering -- [inaudible] in 2008 for harper's magazine and i found out about the school, and i applied. amazingly, i got an interview, and they didn't ask about my faith. so i think it was sort of assumed. and then i felt my writing past might get in the way but i told them that i was, i mean i told the private school that i was a novelist, my first book was a novel, and he seemed okay with it. and then i was -- [inaudible] there was a lot of waiting for the visa. that went on for years but -- >> uh-huh. >> so once i got there, i basically kept my mouth shut. i didn't ever -- no one asked me

about my faith and i never explained. >> there was a fascinating strand in the book in which you're living under a kind of dual self-censorship. you have to be very very careful not to reveal any information about the west that would undermine the world view of your students like what the internet is, for example. i thought that was really fascinating. that they had this thing. they had a kind of intranet where they could download certain kinds of information like a dictionary on their computers. they didn't know that there was the internet. they thought that was the internet. >> right. there was a lot of kind of under -- it was everyone was undercover in a way -- >> yeah. >> they weren't allowed to -- the north korean government knew who they were but the deal they made for building the school that was, you know, cost at

least $35 million was to not prosthelytize. a different breed of missionaries than, you know, the other -- the ones who got detained went there on tourist visas and were passing out bibles. that's very different. these people were there under the invitation of the north korean government. but the deal is they don't process the he tuesday. so they were given this secret room where they did this mass service once a week. they did bible studies in their rooms, but they were never allowed to talk about it. and the student iss didn't know what the internet was. the teachers had it, but they have a thing called intranet. >> right. >> you have it at the library, pre-downloaded information. they thought that was the internet. >> right. >> and we had so many things we were not allowed to discuss. and, you know, a million things that we just could not reveal. and telling them about the internet, for example, would be one of them. >> yeah. >> so you just, you basically don't say things.

>> but what was also fascinating was that while you're having to withhold all this information from your students, you also had to pretend sort of to be a christian a little bit that your colleagues were a little worried when they thought you were -- didn't have enough faith. and there was a funny incident where the counterparts who were the korean -- >> north korean staff -- >> -- north korean staff had said it was okay for you to show one of the harry potter movies to your students. and your colleagues had a fit because that's witchcraft. [laughter] so it must have been, it must have been a real challenge to you to have to preserve both those worlds separately and together and yourself in relation to both of them. >> and i think there was an aspect of, you know that question had been raised could i

have gotten -- [inaudible] under the permission of either the north korean government or the missionaries. the answer is, no. i mean, there was no way i could have written a book with their permission, because it's never been given. when it has been given, it was to sell the propaganda of the north korean regime. so you walk out basically telling north korea's agenda. so the only way, i mean -- [inaudible] i think after the third time i realized i could only write about this place if i was to be embedded, is the only way. write something meaningful. so the school did provide that opportunity. >> yeah. >> to get to know the students. but it did come with that price of -- i mean but, you know i think another thing that was you know, the book is incredibly personal. i'm really personal. and that was by choice because i

needed to do -- i needed to humanize north korea. that was what's lacking. we don't have any story coming out of north korea that is not from defectors. defectors are telling the story why they fled north korea. so reports from north korea inside are basically propaganda because you can't really see anything or talk to north koreans. so, you know, this gave a chance to get to know north korean students, and we lookedded at them in a -- looked at them in a locked compound. none of us were ever allowed out. so months and months of that sort of personalities coming out or what they really think coming out in a very, very guarded way. and i think that that was really important, to have that personalized portrait. then they stopped being just this set of archetypes. >> and you loved your students. >> i absolutely loved them.

>> you say that so often, and you're so caring and maternal towards them and they seem so grateful for your affection and concern. >> well, i mean, -- [inaudible] why so much love was possible. first of all, we were locked up in there. we didn't have anything. they didn't have anything but me really because there was no internet or anything. and also so young, and in a sense they were 19 and 20, but they could have been 7 because they didn't know the outside world. there was just like, there was nothing. they knew nothing about anything that's not -- [inaudible] they didn't know. >> they seemed much younger than american kids of the same age. >> oh, absolutely. they were like children in in many ways, and yet they're also young men, you know, sops of the elite -- sons of the elite. the most, most eligible bachelors of north korea, these were the young men. and it was really like -- and i was thinking in through being

there, it's not that they lied all the time, they lie about everything, and yet they were so honest which seemed such a paradox. they were so sincere but they were also really corrupt. [laughter] and i realized why, because that was what was really, really confusing about being there because they were, like with such ease, you know? if a student's not sitting at -- we all ate every meal together, and because the counterparts wouldn't let us sit with a student more than once, they would assign seats, and one student would not be there and would be replaced by another student, and i said what happened to him? immediately they would say, oh, he went to get a haircut, he had a stomach ache. the answers would come at the same time, so i was like is it a stomach ache or a haircut? right away they'd say he had a

stomach ache but then went to get a haircut. [laughter] i realized that these lies were sometimes, you know, like that was the amazing thing about being there longer and living with them. there were levels of lies. some lies were to protect their system because everything about the great leader is a lie. they have to constantly protect things that had to do about the great leader. but there were things -- because lies were so rampant it became a habit. so they lied real easily and yet they were really innocent. >> yeah. >> and i think what i realized that this was so inhuman, north korea is the most inhuman system but yet they were so human pause they were young -- because they were young men just innocent. i think it's the human side of them and the inhuman system is constantly crushing. >> i think i've gotten the message that we should open it up to questions because i know you have a lot of them out

there. so let's do that. [inaudible conversations] so should i ask, call on people? do you want to call on people? >> [inaudible] >> okay. >> and if you just want to send me in a direction? >> how about right in front. >> hello. is my mic on? [inaudible] testing, testing. my name is ted henkin, i'm following you guys on twitter and really glad you're here at mccauley. i occasionally teach here so really welcome. i've done work in cuba, and i've sometimes used the strategy it's better to ask forgiveness afterwards than permission beforehand, right? [laughter] so my question is about methodology. i'm a sociologist, and, you know, i'm wondering from both of

you could you speak a little bit more about your methodology in doing this work in a country and then presenting that work to an english-speaking audience because you said before about don't ask, don't tell but you guys were asking and now you're telling, right? you were asking lots of questions about somewhat taboo subjects and now you're sharing that later. and so methodologically and even ethically, how did you and how do you deal with that in your work? thank you. >> should i beginsome. >> yeah, jenny, tell us. >> well i -- it was a difficult and unusual experience for me as a journalist. i just stuck to the very basic core of journalism 101 where i always identified myself and what i was doing sometimes exaggerating saying, you know, i wrote a newspaper piece first

about this, and i said, you know, it will be on the internet. they're like yeah we don't really know what the internet is, and we're fine. we want to do that. many times it was a reverse negotiation for me where i said well maybe we shouldn't talk about this, this is a family secret. this is the first or second conversation after she had told me -- [inaudible] and, you know, i don't want to expose you. so i was trying to get her to take the story back, and she said no, i think we should tell the story like it is, this could be interesting for people. and i said, are you sure? she said yes. we had many versions of that are you sure we should disclose this, to we want to protect the family more and maybe not divulge all these details? and many times the things that i thought were controversial or potentially damning they did not mind. so it was also cultural issues many times.

i would say do you want to talk about how your husband beat you? yes. because every woman's beaten by their husband here. but you cannot write about menstruation, for instance. so, and that -- because that was a taboo. so i kept in very close touch with all my subjects and i'm still in touch with them and once i had a finished manuscript i went back to kabul, and i went over it with them. so they, again, could make the decision on appearing in the book and knowing exactly what was written about them, about their families. sometimes we changed a few details to protect children, and we did that whole process very much collaborative, you know, in a collaborative manner, and that's the only way i could, i could do it. but it was still hard, and i was nervous, and i'm still sometimes also afraid because there's

this publish and be damned thing. at some point you just have to pregnant it to the world. but -- present it to the world. but so far there have been no repercussions, and my, the women in my book have told some of their innermost secrets that they've never told anyone about before, and up until now at least they take great pride in this book. my main character, for instance, was approached by the u.s. embassy, and they said -- in kabul, and they said, you know, how could you talk to this foreign reporter about all this, why did you do that? and she had made she explained to them that she had made a very conscious decision early on to talk about this because it's a window into how afghanistan works and afghan culture. so that's sort of my story. >> thank you. >> well mostly i was, you know, being undercover cuts all of

that out. the only thing i could do was make sure that i mean, definitely the students, what would happen to the students. and i changed obviously all the missionaries and the students' names and the students were all blurred. so which made it quite a difficult task, because the whole book is about really their loveliness and how unique they were. and i had to kind of make them blur, blurry so you couldn't single them out. and generally, also they come across being really loyal to their leader, so there was really nothing to fault them in a way, and maybe only two incidences where they could be you know, i literally made them impossible to identify. so i if felt confident that i protected them, because as an entire group they will not be

punished. missionary wise, you know, i knew that they would be unhappy about the book obviously, but they would have never allowed me to write the book if i had told them what i was doing. and because they were already there with the north korean goth's -- government's blessing, this was not going to hurt them in the same way as kenneth bay or jeffrey -- [inaudible] if there was any repercussion, it would not be that kind of punishment. it might be financially more you know, raising money for the school or something. but besides all of that i thought north korea is a unique situation where there is no inside report. it's now being sent to international criminal court for the worst violations against humanity. 25 million people are in there, pretty much a gulag nation. the level of pure barbaric

enclosement of its citizens it's unthinkable to me that this country is allowed to exist and i think i've been attacked a lot for, you know people ask is this another way of having gotten in there? obviously not, because no one's done it. there's literally no inside report coming out of north korea. so, you know, i think that i think that i did actually -- [inaudible] about how i feel about all of this and i think getting messages like, you know there's blood on your hands for writing this book and i don't actually -- i really feel like blood is on all of our hands because this country's been in existence for the last 60 some years. millions have died from persecution. there's actually gulags in there right now with political prisoners. and, you know, none of us are doing a single thing for, you

know bringing change to north korea. so i don't know how much longer we can sit around and wait until next time north korea decides to invite journalists in there for another feel-good, you know public con sort. >> let's -- concert. let's take another question. let's see, how about in the white sweater. >> my question, my question's for jenny. i have seen pictures from kabul of women in miniskirts from the '60s at universities and to my mind that's still in las living memory. so i wonder if anyone you spoke to referenced to a past like that. i don't think it happened in the rural areas, but certainly in the cities where there was more gender equality and parity, if they remembered that or if they brought it up ever. >> will yes. that's sort of a short golden moment that many ex-pat afghans

refer to and also afghans themselves, but this was the russian attempt or the soviet attempt to do essentially, what we've tried to do now to bring women out from their homes and all that. it was very limited and it wasn't, you know it wasn't like that was a time when women were free and it was also very different because it's still a conservative culture ruled. so it will be referred to as the russian time many times by afghans, and it was a brutal war. so it's almost that thing of, you know, at least the -- like, we hated the russians but at least it was some relief in some ways in the cities, for

instance. you see still buildings and that. so there's a little bit of -- it's a conflicted romance maybe with that time because at the same time, you know millions died. but it's largely referred to a more, a short sort of, a short period in time where afghan women in the rural areas could do that to some extent also depending on who they were, and those were often upper class women. >> well there's -- it's fascinating that your main character's parents were that, and the mother remembers riding in a mort scooter in -- motor scooter in the miniskirt and the father was a professor, and they end up selling their daughters for the bride price. >> yeah. >> yeah. >> this is what --

>> and that's what war -- >> -- war does to people maybe. war will hurt women in a very direct way. >> yeah. >> the argument for taking a girl out of school, for keeping women inside, all that becomes easier to make. so that's the very precarious mom right now also -- moment right now also, you know when you've seen the past decade of some women getting an education certainly more girls, is that going to be allowed to continue? because from the, from the urban centers there's a hope that that will also grow. but what happens also in a time of increased ip security is that those -- insecurity is that those people leave. those with means and possibility, they would leave the country. so then you have another wave of conservatives coming in, and that's sort of what we're seeing now. like every afghan who can will try and get out, ask can that's the immediate thing that you hear when you land in kabul.

what's current rate for being smuggled to europe? and, you know, what routes do we take now? it's not a sense of, you know, we're building our future here. >> yeah. fascinating. one more, one more -- yeah one more question. how about you there. >> do i need a mic? >> [inaudible] >> you do. [laughter] >> this question is also for jenny. granted this phenomenon is surreptitious, but i'm wondering if you have any ballpark -- how widespread is this? ..

it's not uncommon. that's as far as i will go. but there's -- afghan many times will not say how many children they have. so' in that regard there are no statistics. it's not possible to say. >> are we out of time? >> we are. >> this is so fascinating. >> i want to thank you and i would like to invite -- [inaudible] [applause]