The Last Free Women

A Daring Escape from Afghanistan and Coming of Age in America

De: Rebecca Blumenstein, Diana Kapp

An inside account of the extraordinary effort by The New York Times to evacuate more than 200 Afghans after the fall of Kabul, highlighting four exceptional young women as they forge a new life in America.

Kabul; August 15, 2021: The Taliban were coming.

The world watched in shock: After the longest war in American history, the Taliban swept into Kabul in a morning. Desperation reigned as the US pulled out. Some clung to the wheels of departing airplanes, only to fall to certain death. Reprisal was near-certain for anyone who had worked with Americans.

Marwa, the 21-year-old sister of a Times reporter, was in the vanguard of a fast-modernizing Afghanistan. That morning, she had ironed her pink dress for the first day of medical school. Instead, she had 30 minutes to pack her life into a backpack and flee.

Across the world, Rebecca Blumenstein, a top Times editor, and a determined team scrambled to evacuate Kabul bureau’s Afghan employees and families. After a harrowing two-week ordeal, the FIRST WAVE OF refugees landed in Houston, and became part of the largest wave of refugees since the Vietnam War.

THE LAST FREE WOMEN is an intimate portrait of the journey of four brave young women as they seek to rebuild their lives. Marwa, Maryam, Mursal and Samira try to make the most of their precious freedom in America. They start over -- learning English, repeating college and forging identities – while back home, the Taliban bans the education of girls past sixth grade and women from leaving their homes alone.

“Why is it always about the women?” Mursal despairs. Their gripping account wrestles with women’s rights to basic freedoms and aspirations. It is also a meditation on duty – what we owe to those who work with Americans abroad, those who seek freedom, and the humanity that links us all.