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Free from the Taliban, Afghans still struggle
Monday, November 12, 2001
(1:18 PM)
By Kristen Mack / Houston Chronicle

Her degree was in the clinic when she escaped. She didn't think to grab it. Without it, she said, she cannot be recertified for a medical license here.

In Afghanistan, Shamal Fatima lived dangerously.

A physician, she was educated well beyond most of her countrymen. She worked outside the home before the Taliban gained control. But she was then required to shut down her family-owned clinic. She was virtually locked in her own home, unable to leave unless accompanied by a man -- and then, she had to be covered under the traditional heavy robes from head to toe.

After her husband was killed, Fatima had no man in her immediate family. She therefore faced persecution for trying to earn a living to support herself and her four children.

But Fatima got out.

She and 18 other women with children have arrived in Houston as political refugees over the past four months. They all left Afghanistan before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the East Coast triggered the U.S. bombardment of their country.

Now, safe in Houston, they face a new kind of struggle, trying to find work and make lives for themselves.
(More: Chron.com News Source)
2001 © The Houston Chronicle.

Dan