Shirin-Gol was just a young girl when her village was levelled by the Russians' bombs in 1979. After the men in her family joined the resistance, she fled with the women and children to the capital, Kabul, and so began a life of day-to-day struggle in her war-torn country. A life that includes a period living in the harsh conditions of a Pakistani refugee camp, being forced into a marriage to pay off her brother's gambling debts, selling her body and begging for the money to feed her growing family, an attempted suicide, and an unsuccessful endeavour to leave Afghanistan for Iran after the Taliban seized control of her country. Told truthfully and with unflinching detail to writer and documentary-maker Siba Shakib, and incorporating some of the shocking experiences of Shirin-Gol's friends and family members, this is the story of the fate of many of the women in Afghanistan. But it is also a story of great courage, the moving story of a proud woman, a woman who did not want to be banished to a life behind the walls of her house, or told how to dress, who wanted an education for her children so that they could have a chance of a future, to live their lives without fear and poverty. .

Born in Iran, Siba Shakib grew up in Tehran and attended a German school there. A writer and maker of documentaries and films, she has travelled to Afghanistan many times over the last five years, visiting the north as well as the territory that was commanded by the Taliban. Several of her documentaries have won awards, including the moving testimonials she has made of the horrors of life in Afghanistan and the plight of the Afghan women. She is currently writing the script to a film about Afghanistan, and when not travelling the world with her work, she lives in New York and Germany.