Zoya grew up in Kabul during the wars that ravaged Afghanistan and escaped to Pakistan as a teenager, devastated after the death of her parents on the orders of fundamentalist Mujaheddin 'holy warriors'. She joined the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA), which challenged the edicts of the Taliban government. She made frequent dangerous journeys back to her homeland to help the women oppressed by a rule that enforced the wearing of the stifling burqa and condoned public stoning if a woman ventured out without a male chaperone. Zoya was a witness to the horrors perpetrated by the Taliban and the Mujaheddin warlords, but her memoir is a powerful message of optimism against all the odds.

Zoya grew up during the wars that ravaged Afghanistan and lost both her parents in a bombing raid on Kabul. Zoya's story is of a young woman fighting a clandestine war of resistance against the Taliban at the risk of her own life.