The woman with the red veil around her head is still out of breath, she speaks quickly and apologizes for being an hour late for the appointment. "I can't take a taxi anymore," she says. "The danger is too great that the Taliban will drag us out of the car." She walked to the meeting point at the school in the center of the Afghan capital, Kabul, where she taught biology until a year ago. "But I could only use secondary roads to evade Taliban checks." Any woman in Afghanistan who is found in public without a male companion is theoretically at risk of being arrested.

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