Earlier in 2001, Latifa and her parents escaped Afghanistan with the help of a French-based Afghan resistance group. Her voice captures a lost innocence, but also echoes her determination to live in freedom and hope. With painful honesty and clarity, she describes the way she watched her world falling apart, in the name of a fanatical faith that she could not comprehend.

This is Latifa's poignant and highly personal account of life under the Taliban regime. But the teaching gave her a reason to get up in the morning. Latifa knew that she was risking her life for something that could change little. To avoid arousing suspicion, the children were not allowed to attend every day, nor could they keep regular hours. In a step of defiance, she set up a clandestine school in her home for a small number of young girls. Latifa struggled against an overwhelming sense of helplessness and despair. Having never worn even a veil before, she now was forced to wear a chadri. The simplest and most basic freedoms - walking down the street, looking out of a window - were no longer hers. From that moment, Latifa, just 16 years old, became a prisoner in her own home. Then in September 1996, Taliban soldiers seized power in Kabul. Her father was in the import/export business and her mother was a doctor.

She dreamed of one day of becoming a journalist, she was interested in fashion, movies and friends. Latifa was born into an educated middle-class Afghan family in Kabul in 1980.

My Forbidden Face by Latifa