The Dressmaker of Khair Khana: Five Sisters, One Remarkable Family, and the Woman Who Risked Everything to Keep Them Safe

By Gayle Tzemach Lemmon

Categories: Biographies & Memoirs, History

In The Dressmaker of Khair Khana (2011), journalist Gayle Tzemach Lemmon tells the true story of Kamila Sidiqi, a young woman in Kabul whose life changed when the Taliban took the city in 1996. Barred from school and work and with her father and brother forced to flee, Sidiqi taught herself to sew and built a dressmaking business from her home with her sisters. The business supported her family and gave work to dozens of other women in her neighbourhood.

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• Melinda French Gates: “I was captivated by the true story of Kamila Sidiqi, an Afghani entrepreneur who built a successful dressmaking business under the draconian strictures of the Taliban.”