The anger and agony in Mejgan Massoumi’s voice are palpable even when a cell phone connection falters.
“I happen to be of Afghan origin,” Ms. …
The anger and agony in Mejgan Massoumi’s voice are palpable even when a cell phone connection falters. “I happen to be of Afghan origin,” Ms. Massoumi, age 41 and a June 2021 doctoral graduate in modern Afghan history from Stanford University, said. “My family left in the early 1980s because there was another war,” she added, referring to the failed attempt by the Soviet Union to take over the country. Ms. Massoumi is now a teaching fellow in the school’s Civil Liberal and Global Education program. In a telephone interview from San Carlos, California, she described the violently changed circumstances in the nation. “My cousin tells me of a woman whose cousin in one of the provinces was approached by a Talib soldier who told her, ‘You need to come with me and get into a nikah, which is the Islamic marriage. And she said, ‘What are you talking about? Get out of here. Can’t you see that I have a husband and children.’ A Talib soldier point-blank pointed his gun at her husband and killed this husband. And he said, ‘Now you can come and marry me.’” Ms. Massoumi insisted the Taliban takeover of the Afghani capital of Kabul in recent days that prompted President Ashraf Ghani to flee the country was “very much a staged coup.
