The Favored Daughter by Fawzia Koofi

This is a ghost written book, with a named ghost, but the story has the same limitations, problems, and pluses that you would expect--the story is not the one the writer would tell, but it is better written than the one that the subject would write.

That being said--that it is not a book of great artisanship--does not detract at all from the fact that it is a story worth listening to, and listening loud and clear, because this is about the country that we are about to pull our troops out of.  There is a lot said here that might lead you to think it was foolish to have entered in the first place (if you didn't already think that post-Russian invasion--but then we were never all that great at learning from the mistakes of others, and we have yet to find our post-Cold War place in the world). There is an equal amount said here that would make you think someone should stay and monitor the recovery.  Is democracy possible to create?  Can Afghanistan sustain a democracy after centuries of tribal culture and decades of political corruption.  The subject of this book would persuasively say that they should be given that chance.

The origins of the name of the book are a little unclear.  By her own telling, her father spoke only once to her in her life, and that was to tell her to go away.  Her mother shunned her at birth, leaving her unattended for 24 hours after her birth, essentially to die.  Girls are not valued in Afghani society, and even Koofi's forward-thinking husband refused to see her or her second daughter after she gave birth, such was the anger that it was not a son.

Koofi's stories of her mother, whom she says was her father's favorite wife, are quite shocking--she was regularly and severely beaten. Her hands had been crushed by her husband in his beating of her.  So deep was her pain that her mother considered leaving him, but that would mean leaving her children, so she remained--and he was assassinated by political rivals soon thereafter, leaving Koofi's mother a widow--which seems to be the best role a woman in this culture can attain.  Remarry and you lose once again, and your new husband does not have to take care of your children from your previous marriage.  Your new husband may have more wives, and your personal fate is not in good hands.  Best is that your husband has money and then he dies.  That way you are not left to starve, and you have some personal choices.  This is a bleak story at best--Koofi has hope for the future, but I held out very little by the book's end.