She secretly educated herself to escape Afghanistan. Now, she's working to help women still there
Sola Mahfouz stopped going to school in 2007 when she was an 11-year-old living in Afghanistan.
Sola Mahfouz stopped going to school in 2007 when she was an 11-year-old living in Afghanistan.
“A group of men, they came to our door and threatened my father, that if you continue to go into school, they will throw acid on our face or kidnap,” she recalled. So she spent years confined to her home doing domestic chores.
“Over the years, I left home only a couple of times a year and, whenever I did, I had to wear the suffocating burqa that covered me from head to toe,” said Mahfouz, who uses a pseudonym to protect the safety of her family members who still live in Afghanistan. “But, meanwhile, my brothers were going to school and they were thriving academically, and I felt jealous of their lives.”
Once her chores were done each day, she embarked on a secret mission to educate herself. She spent almost six years teaching herself English and math online and eventually made her way to Arizona State University for college.
Today, she works as a quantum computer researcher at Tufts University.
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