″Everyone says I have too much intelligence!” That’s what 14-year-old Faranoz said to me 10 years ago in Kabul. We were sitting on the floor of a room with low ceilings, so packed with women there was no walking space between them.

It was a women’s literacy class, held in the home of a woman who was once married to a member of the Taliban. I was in Afghanistan interviewing children for a book about their post-Taliban lives, Kids of Kabul. A wood stove kept the winter chill away as we talked.