WAUKESHA – For more than a quarter century, Farooka Gauhari has been wondering what happened to her husband, Saleem, after he walked out the door one morning in1978. There had been no spat, but their homeland of Afghanistan then, as now, was an embattled country.
She published her memoirs, Searching for Saleem, in 1997 and will speak at the University of Wisconsin-Waukesha on Wednesday, April 28, on “An Afghan Woman’s Odyssey and the Present Condition of Women under the Karzi Government.”
Sponsored by the campus University Convocations Committee, the Distinguished Lecturer presentation will be held at 7:00 p.m. in the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre on campus at 1500 N. University Dr. Tickets are $5 ($1 for UW-Waukesha students with ID) and available at the door or by phoning (262) 521-5212.
The first Afghan woman to publish a book in English telling of her struggles in Afghanistan, Gauhari recounts her experiences, from the active search for her missing husband, to watching her homeland topple with its women gradually being excluded from politics and the government institutionalizing repression. She made the wrenching decision to leave, and snuck out of the country, where she once had been flagged as an American agent, only to create a new life in America, where she fears retaliation for her Afghan and Muslim ties.
Providing insight into Afghanistan’s bloody recent history, this biology professor tells a common story for countless gagged or killed Afghanis. In addition to abiding by the rigid set of rules imposed on women, she had to keep her sons hidden at home, for the Russians were taking boys out of schools and off the streets to conscript them into the army. Her daughter was sick and could not get medical aid. Gauhari fled first to India and then came to the US, where she has taught at the University of Nebraska, Omaha.
Copies of her book will be available for sale before the lecture.
UW-Waukesha has the largest enrollment among the 13 freshman-sophomore University of Wisconsin Colleges campuses. For information about programs, admission, or financial aid, contact the Student Services office at (262) 521-5200 or visit the Web at waukesha.uwc.edu. |
