Afghanistan, those burkha days...

I just finished A Thousand Splendid Sons (Khalen Hosseini). It is by the same guy who wrote The Kite Runner. It was so sad and so good. It ended leaving you invested in the characters so that you wanted to know more about what happened to them. I do not know what it would be like to live in that kind of a culture, where women are chattel and valued only as bearers of sons. This book, if it is a true telling, confirmed for me my fears about what the burkha means. If just one woman is wearing it because her husband/father has made her then that is one woman too many. I realize some may wear it because they want to. But how can we be sure the choice is a free one? How can we not fear that the cloth covers bruises and broken teeth? It would be one thing if the men were also wearing such things, but it is clearly so one sided. Shiver. What will those men do with the parental rights granted by Bill 44? Will they keep their daughters home and prevent them from being educated? That is the fear I have.