thank you so much for coming and my deepest apologies for the delay. i want to read a piece of my book of a conversation with two adult women that grew up as boys in afghanistan that have continued to live as an adult then men in afghanistan. when i asked them to describe

the difference between men and women, over the years, interesting responses came back. while afghan men often begin to describe women as more sensitive, caring and less physically capable than men come afghan women tend to offer one difference. if you want to take a second to guess what that one difference might be? here's the answer. regardless of who they are whether they are rich or poor educated afghan women often describe the difference between men and women in just one word freedom as in men have it and women do not. they said the same thing when i asked her. when no one is the boss of your life, how she described it. so, there is less of a difference between men and women i asked. they look at each other again and then back acne.

but then she changes her mind telling me not to bother her. she doesn't want to hear it. we would be nothing in the west. she is more hopeful and inspired by snippets of information from her american trainers and the paramilitary unit. i heard people don't care how you are or what you look like in the west. not true, that 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 war over. but freedom as we know it today is yet another solution area luxury. when i later tell her, both is a reality. gender and freedom are ideas.

and it is all how we choose to define those ideas. the afghan women that i have met sometimes with little education but a lifetime of experience being touted as less than a 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 pregnant. or to study and have a profession. that is how they would defend freedom. as we arrive on another day three of the sisters are visiting. they are scattered between the children and reception room. they called back and forth with

our sandals piled up in the corner by the door. i am lucky enough not to have to be pregnant all the time and to have one after the other. if i were a woman that would be my entire life. they've carefully made-up faces framed by long curly hair. one sister leaned forward as she attempts to explain to me. do you understand that it is the wish of every afghan woman to have been born a man to be free to ask the? the other sisters agreed if it had been their choice. they are living the fantasy and that is like other women turn on her sometimes. she doesn't play by the rules to which they are all subjected. she wants her own government, one of the sisters says. not like us with our husband is

the government always. make me understand why some continue to live with man in afghanistan when they reach adulthood, and other sister asked me a question that's the simplest answer. if you could walk out the door right now as a man or stay in here forever as a woman, what would you choose? she is right. who wouldn't want out the door in disguise if the alternative was to live as a presenter or a slave? who would care about long hair or short pants. if announcing one's gender gave access to the world so much of the for the mysteries of gender or the right to a specific one with this realization. a great many people in the world may be willing to throw out their gender if it could be treated for freedom. the real story of the other women that live in afghanistan

may not be so much about how they break gender or 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. any person can begin to fill the word with a new meaning. three of them is also what the sisters wants to question. what does a western woman do with all of of the freedom they hear about after they whispered for a bit one of them occurred turned to me. you can do anything you want when you come to afghanistan? is if the dust or the war? we always have a war. the other sisters are with her and it's very strange for a woman to come to afghanistan by choice assuming she could be

anywhere in the world. it's also very strange of my father to allow it, they think. this is what you do with your life, the sister continued. don't you want a family to have children? she shouldn't wait too long to get married. he you will be too old to have children. yes, i navy too old already i say. all look around before one speaks again. with a question they want an answer to. then what is the purpose of your life how is the meaning? you might as well have been born a man, said the other. you have your freedom, the first said again. you can walk out when you want as we also feel sad for you. she glanced over. we know our sister is sad

sometimes. she looks embarrassed with earrings in one ear and a jumpsuit. she maneuvered herself. she adjusted her position on the floor to hold her knees with both hands. she put her hands down "-end-quotes tries for a moment. i told them to save one for me, she said putting her head to the sisters. they have so many. we can pretend one of them is mine. her sister's nod. they can all agree on that. when we maneuver through the neighborhood on the way home she suddenly has an announcement. i will take you there.

she tosses her phone from the front seat. we stick our heads together to see what she wants to show us. and they're in the middle of a tiny cell phone shop she has her arms around the shores of two teenagers both of them dressed in suits. they have blowing faces. they are not trying to be cute or do they look down like most afghan women. they are all grinning and exposing their teeth. she turned around to see the reaction. she tells us they are her protégés. she has no children but she has already begun to build her legacy. they are her boys in training to become the next generation of the refusers. [applause]

>> if you want to ask one question. or not. >> i will ask one question. maybe you could start by explaining what it is. it means dressed up like a boy.

so in the sense that you have a son or a daughter or a daughter dressed like a son. it's almost like a third gender created you cut off her hair and put her in pants and she will pass as a boy to the outside world. [applause] >> sorry i was running behind. >> this is a little section from the book and it comes toward the end of the book actually.

i spent six months teaching that delete and i was always trying to implement a western concept. it was a dreaded word among my students that fall. they were very stressed about having to write one. they were to come up with their own topic and outlined. when i asked them how they were going i would emphasize the importance to want one day after the papers to prove the theory and nothing was ever proven in the world world since everything was at the whim of the great leader. the skills for writing inevitably consisting of the end of this repetition of these achievements none of which which

were ever verified because they lack the concept of backing up the claim with evidence. a quick look at the articles in the paper revealed the same tone from start to finish with neither piecing. there was no beginning and there was no end. as is the basic three or five paragraph essays are the pieces come introduction, the paragraph of the supporting details and the conclusion that was entirely foreign to them. they had a difficulty understanding the introduction. i would've told them that it was like waving hello. how do you say hello and hello in an interesting way so that the reader is helped? i offered many samples but they didn't show up during office hours shaking their heads and asking what is that? so it goes on and on. i'm going to skip along a little bit. i am trying to just read little sections from one chapter.

instead of the lesson a lesson on sources which wasn't possible here i ask that they read a simple essay from 1997 that protect president bill clinton and how important it was. i got it approved by the counterparts. counterparts were the people of the staff that looked over. because it related to the current text book theme of the college education i hope that they would craft how far behind they were and also gave them articles from the princeton review, "new york times," financial times in harvard magazine. it mentioned mark zetterberg -- zuckerburg. earning this money for something he trained his college dorm and was possible that they reading were lies but perhaps the

capitalist angle would tell them. the next day they stopped by during office hours and they all wanted to change their topics. the new topics had to do with the ills of american society. one said he wanted to write about corporal punishment in japanese middle schools and another one argued that the american government policy of deciding the future should be forbidden. one wanted to write about the evil of allowing people to own guns so freely in america. a fourth one said that biofuels is toxic and america was the biggest producer. i wanted to change the topic to divorce. there was no divorce. but in america it was more than 50% and it led to crime and mental illness. so what happens when people are

unhappy after being married and they looked at me blankly and still another student wanted to write about how mcdonald's was horrible. another asked me what kind of food do they make. one asked me what produces the most computer hackers and they have been taught that it was america. the question came to me especially since i had seen the news item about crying in north korea. instead i told them computer crimes could be by anyone so it would be hard to pinpoint one as the source. when it came in i saw that one student had written despite the nuclear weapons into some such as the united states keep developing nuclear weapons. the idea that the development testing of nuclear weapons was an international concern. another was an impossible problem to solve especially in

africa especially in places like england and america with starvation problems. on another topic was money and how it made the societies do unethical things. one thing was clear. they would condemn america having been compelled by the articles by steve levin. what i had intended they must have viewed. the nationalism for so many generations have produced the citizenry whose evil was so fragile that he refused to acknowledge the rest of the world. the efforts to expand the awareness kept backfiring. i had almost half the students

claim all the nations were envious of it. one wrote that the american government named the official government pick. [laughter] when i questioned him he said everybody knew this fact and he could prove it since the textbooks had so. the search revealed that they had internet students didn't. a quick search revealed that the japanese manufacturer has acclaimed they had proposed it as an official olympic food that had been the night. somehow this had been related event and was to treat it as a general knowledge. to correct each bit of information was taxing and somewhere in dangerous territory. another teacher said no way. you cannot tell them that it is a lie.

after several lessons a strange thing happened in our class one afternoon. it was a north korean philosophy and they took this class every day. they never volunteered information so i listened intently and they continued to have to write an essay. he said he'd never thought of them as essays before but now he did and it made him feel strange. what was so strange, i asked. he said i don't know but i realized that it was different now. writing in english and korean are different but then it is also the same and i kept thinking of the infrastructure

as i was writing it and it made me feel strange. i didn't question it further. i thought i understood that must have been deeply confusing to approach the writing in the country there was no proof, no checks and balances. they wanted to prove that he had single-handedly written dozens of books and saved the nation and the dracula -- bharat jiles number of things, so the four of an essay which the pieces had been proven was antithetical to the entire system. the divider of an essay acknowledges the thesis and refuses them here and opposition wasn't an option. i stared across at him and i felt a familiar feeling. perhaps this was only the beginning. the questions they would have to

have the questions they would be asking and they would realize they haven't been asking because they didn't imagine that they could or because asking meant that they could no longer exist in the system. [applause] >> it is such a privilege to be here with these two fantastic writers who are so adventurous to have gone to the far end of the year didn't come back with such fascinating stories. i read both of these books as if they were mystery stories or volumes of the game of thrones. so fascinating. i learned so much.

i'm going to ask each of you a few questions about your own books than i want to ask questions relevant to both of you about your writing practice. afghanistan has been called the worst place 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. we read books about women starting small businesses and breaking out of their home. is it still the worst place? in terms of being one of the most conservative on earth women have very few rights. there is rampant domestic

violence. women will burn themselves to death. yes it is true that has it's been modest progress mostly concentrated in the urban areas where women have been able to get out of the house and to get an education but according to the organization when they were in the more rural areas things were the same following traditions that have been around a very long time regardless of the regime. so do you think there are restrictions back to the culture where they should be protected and sheltered and they remain in

place and i read from my books they cannot decide anything over their own bodies as they get married to whether they leave the house essentially so that's the story we want to hear is how great everything has become. it's been modest and easily reversible. >> you talked in the end of the book how billions of dollars have been sprinkled all over the country producing little effects to create a class of an elite and then you see something interesting that is because

women's rights have been promoted in this way but now it is identified with a new elite so does that suggest to you that it will be dismantled? >> i would never dismiss any effort but does it get there first of all it is the number one corrupt country in the world. a story that is told in the beginning of the war is how we were to liberate the women there. so one was to the poverty but it

was also the specific idea of bringing women out from their homes and helping them to develop an education. so, again there has been politics to that end but unfortunately we see this in our history as well those that have power want to hold onto that and will make any excuse to say when it's right and education for instance is on islamic and all those things so these are arguments that have been used by the afghan society and sometimes they haven't been carried out very well either but this is the contradiction in the consequence of coming in to teach another culture about our version of the

human rights. some of what i read it to you is about how women are supposed to be -- we are supposed to be the most = 80 on earth but instead i'm being taught about gender and how fluid gender is and what the difference between men and women is and when we come in with the women in parliament and we try to explain and to say we are going to empower you many times they are reluctant to cut version of what it should be.

but it's also difficult when there are no roads to travel on and why does this become such a parody sometimes it can also be a provocation. is it a stand against man but it's very controversial. >> i want to get back to that 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 infrastructure but then there is a little bridge that you can cross and then in

turning a girl into a boy serves so many purposes because maybe you can tell us about that. i was struck by that. the boy can work errands working the store when they go out and protect them and also this fascinating saying of how important it is and how it is almost a magical way of encouraging the next bb to be a boy and you find a doctor who seems to put some faith in that. can you talk a little bit about that how tall a smart about how

it works in the family. >> it's very divided. they look different. men can inherit property and support the family. when men are inside of the house. women are told that they have this capability. there would brains are weak. then they are told it's dangerous for women to be educated. so, the thing is then the irony is that they have such a rigid

system people think of creative ways to back out and get around to that end one such way is if you don't have a fund in the family but you have daughters you can make one in the outside world. so it isn't so much about actually fooling anyone. it is a practical way of coping with a dysfunctional system so that it will raise the status of the family because others would see us on because otherwise you are seeing no one able to inherit and carry on the name so they are in the society and one can also provide an economic advantage for the family. this could be child labor and

another reason could be to give the girl in education if she lives in a dangerous area and you can't travel to school for instance it might be easier. there's also that component of the manifestation and what we think of as the secret almost. it's sort of a don't ask don't tell. it's largely accepted when it is about children. >> you have several examples of women that refuse to go back.

>> when you grow up in the gender that you know and you move around and you can play outside and ride a bike and claim on trees, you have access to the world. it comes down to this idea that a girl needs to be cured to cope your. she cannot be in a voice. you have to keep her insight and keep her restraint. having been on the other side of that many times they don't know what other girls do or how they live. they just know they can't be outside much and they prefer not to. she said i see how women are treated here. why would i want to be one of them said that there is a reluctance to go back.

it is a fascinating book and we are selling it out there along with the other books. and i really recommend it to everybody. i want to ask you a couple of questions for finite. one thing i didn't quite understand is how you got to teach at this technical college run by evangelical christians where everyone was in it "-end-double-quote christian but you. how did they come to think that you are one of them? >> it was by the evangelical christians who were educators they had a long history. but i applied for a job and when i found out i was covering in

2008 for harvard magazine and i went back to school and applied and amazingly i got an interview and they didn't ask about my faith so i think that it was sort of assumed. i thought that bypass might get in the way that i told the president of the school that i was a novelist and he seemed okay with it. i did a lot of waiting for the visa. no one ever asked me about my faith and i never explained. >> there is a fascinating strand in the book in which you are living in a duel self-censorship

you have to be very careful not to reveal any information that would undermine the worldview of the students like what the internet is for example. i was fascinating. that was fascinating. they had the same kind of intranet where they could download information like a dictionary on the computer and they thought that was the internet. >> it seems everyone was kind of undercover in a way because they knew who they were, but the deal they made cost $35 million was not proselytized. of the ones that got detained

that's very different. but it was to not be proselytized. >> they were never allotted to choke on it. they didn't know what the internet was. the teachers had it but they had a thing called in intranet like you have at the library to download information. they had thought that was the internet. they. they had so many things they were not allowed to discuss and so many things we could not reveal. telling about the internet is one of them. >> host: what is also fascinating is that while you are having to withhold all of this information from the students, you also have to pretend sort of to be a

christian a little bit. you're colleagues were a little worried when they thought you didn't have enough and there was a funny incident where the counterpart who was a korean staff had said that it was okay for you to show one of the hairy potter movies to your students and your colleagues had a fit because that's witchcraft. so it must have been a challenge to you to have to preserve both worlds separately and together in your relationships with both of them. >> that question had been raised and it had gone under the permission of the government or the missionaries.

there was no way that i could have written a book about that because it has never been given. it was the propaganda of the regime. so you walk out basically selling their agenda. >> the only way i think after the third time i realized i could only write about this place if i were to be indicted. that is the only way. so they did provide that opportunity to get to know the students but it did come with a price. i think another thing that was -- the book is incredibly personal. it was by choice because i needed to humanize south korea. i thought that was lacking.

by telling the story there are reports from inside north korea that are basically propaganda. you can't really see anything or talk to any north koreans. so this gave us a chance to get to know the students and we were in a compound that none of us were allowed out so the personalities start coming out of what they really think in a very guarded way. and i think that was important to have that personalized portrait. and you love your students. you say that so often. and you are caring and bigger so grateful for your affection.

>> first of all we were -- we didn't have anything. they didn't know the outside world. they knew nothing. >> they seemed out she under an american gets today. >> they were. but they were also young man. the most eligible bachelors of north korea these were the young men and it was really thinking through and being there they lie about everything that they were so honest so is such a paradox.

it was so sincere but so corrupt and i realized why because it was confused about being there. they ate all of their meals together and they had assigned seats and then one student wouldn't be there. they would say he had a stomach ache. was it a stomach it for a haircut and then right away they would say he had a stomach ache that then he went and got a haircut. [laughter]

spinnaker that was the amazing thing about being there. they were to protect the system because everything about the leader is a lie they had to constantly protect but because they are so rampant that they became a habit. so yet they yes they were really innocent and i think they were young men just innocent. >> i think that i got the message that we should open up the questions. i know that you have a lot of them out there so let's do that

>> should i call on people? >> is my microphone on the >> i follow you on twitter and i'm so glad you are here. i have done work in cuba and sometimes i use the strategy it's better to ask for forgiveness afterwards then permission. i am a sociologist and i wonder from both of you could you speak more about your methodology and doing this work in the country and then present the port to an

english-speaking audience because you said before about don't ask don't tell that you are asking lots of questions about the taboo subjects and now you're sharing that later and so methodologically how did you and how do you deal with that in your work? >> it was a difficult experience for me as a journalist. i just stuck to the basic journalism 101 where i always identified myself and what i was doing and sometimes exaggerating i wrote a newspaper piece first of all and said is it on the internet yes. well fine.

many times it was a reverse negotiation and maybe we should talk about this. baby it's the second conversation after. and so i was trying to get her to take the story back and she said no i think that we should tell it like it is. it would be interesting for people. i said are you sure and she said yes. so then we had many versions of the conversation that conversation when i said are you sure that we should disclose this and we want to protect the family and maybe not call through these details. what was damaging was also a cultural issue many times. i would say do you want to talk about how your husband beats

you? you cannot write about menstruation or instance because that was a taboo. so i'm in touch with my subjects and one of them i went back to go over it with them and they again could make a decision knowing exactly what was written about them and their families and sometimes we changed a few details to protect children and we did that whole process in a collaborative manner and that was the only way i could do it. but it was still hard and i'm sometimes so afraid because at some point you just have to present it to the world. but so far there has been no

repercussions and the woman in my book is told of their innermost secrets they've never told anyone about it before and they take great pride in this book. one was a push by the u.s. embassy and they said how could you talk to the reporter about this and why did you do that? she explained to them that she had made a very conscious decision early on to talk about this because it is a window into how afghanistan was in the afghan culture. >> next, being undercover. the only thing that i could do is pick sure that what would happen to the students.

i changed obviously the students names. they were all blurred so this made a difficult task to cause the whole book is about how unique they were and i have to make them blurry so you couldn't single out and generally they also come across and maybe only in two instances we made them impossible to identify. so i felt confident that i had protected them because any other group and they would not be published as a punished. i knew that they would be unhappy that they would have never allowed me to write the book if i told them what i was

doing. it isn't going to hurt them in the same way. i couldn't guess that it would be that kind of punishment. it might be financially more for school or something. but beyond all of that i thought it's a unique situation where there is no insight or report and its being sent to the international. the 25 million people are in the level of citizens is unthinkable that this country is about to exist. and i think people ask is there

another way of having gotten in there? there's literally no insight report coming out of north korea. so, i think that how i feel about all of this and getting the messages like there's there is blood on your hands for writing this book. i feel like it is on all of our hands because they've been this way for 60 seven years and millions of died from prosecution and political prisoners. none of us are doing a single thing to bring change to north korea. so i don't know how much longer we can sit around and wait for

them to decide for another feel-good propaganda concert. >> let's take another question. >> how about in the white sweater. >> i have seen pictures from kabul of women in skirts in the 60s at the universities. and to my mind that is a memory so i wonder if anybody that you spoke to reference a path like that. i don't think it happened in the world. but in the cities where there was more gender equal with the parity. if they remembered that were brought it up after. >> that is a short golden moment that many refer to.

this is an attempt to do essentially what we tried to do now. and this is before that it was very limited and it wasn't like that was the time that women were free and it was also different because they ruled. it would be referred to as the russian times many times and it was a brutal war. so at least -- we hated the russians but at least in some ways you see the buildings into. so it is a conflict of romance

at the time because they died. but it's largely referred to as a more short period of time where the women in their overall areas could do that to some extent depending on who they were. >> the mother -- the father is a professor and they end up just being total gender reactionaries in the country and selling for the bride price. >> it will hurt women in a very direct way.

was the argument for taking a couple out of school that is the precarious moment when you see women getting an education will that be allowed to continue because from the urban centers. the hope that it will but also in the time of increasing security post people would leave the country but then you would have another wave coming in into and that's sort of what we are seeing now. any afghan who can will find that out and that's the immediate thing that you hear when you land in kabul is what is the rate and what way do we take now. we are building our future here.

>> one more question. >> this question is also for jenny. granted this phenomena is surreptitious i'm wondering if you have any ballpark or how widespread is this? >> any afghan that is not an elite will offer an example of someone in their extended family and neighbor or great-grandmother that did this there's usually one in the school that we refer to because they bring a broad voice.

it cuts across geography, education, class, ethnicity. it is not uncommon. many times they won't even say how many children they have so they certainly don't develop if they have a daughter dressed as the sun then there are no statistics. >> are we out of time? >> br. >> i would like to think you and [inaudible] [applause] >> wonderful. thank you. it's graphic. i have so many questions. i would like to ask you one

question. these are the kids of the elite.

.. >>