For the love of the son

From a young age, Mariam rebelled against her fate as a second-class Afghan woman. Witnessing the miserable fate of her grandmother and three aunts, she longed to be born a boy. As a fearless teenager in Kabul, she was outraged when the Russians invaded her country. After a public display of defiance, she was forced to flee the country for her life. A new life of freedom seemed within her grasp, but her father arranged an arranged marriage to another Afghan, who turned out to be a violent man. Beaten, raped, and abused, Mariam found happiness in giving birth to a baby boy. But her brutal husband snatched her son away from his mother. For years, she searched for her missing son, while civil war and Taliban oppression raged in her native Afghanistan. In a landscape filled with tragic tales of horrific suffering, Jean Sassoon, author of The Princess, tells the story of one determined but tormented woman determined to achieve freedom and equality with men.