Bozeman Magazine

Fayezeh Haji Hassan and Fatima Heravy will be at the Bozeman Public Library to tell their stories of living under Taliban rule in Afghanistan. It is a story of human rights; conflict and suffering; redemption and courage; friendship and faith. The presentation will be in the Bozeman Public Library’s community room on Friday, April 21, at 3:00 p.m. Hassan and Heravy are in Bozeman as part of a brief tour of Montana, with stops at the University of Montana in Missoula and Helena’s Carroll College too. Haji Hassan, an Iranian immigrant and a Muslim, is finishing her last year of law school at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Her family was forced to flee to Afghanistan and live under the Taliban because of the constant death threats her father received from the Iranian government for defending religious minority groups. Fayezeh is now in America studying law because of the human rights violations she has personally experienced. She escaped the threats of one dictator regime in Iran to endure the curtailing of her dreams under another one in Afghanistan. The Taliban forbade women from going to school; this was the most traumatic life experience for her because all she wanted to do was to study. This didn’t stop her: she opened a home school and taught younger girls Fatima Heravy was one of Fayezeh’s students in Afghanistan. She is now is a graduate student at Thunderbird School of Global Management in Phoenix, Arizona, where she works as Project Coordinator with Thunderbird For Good, assisting Afghan businesswomen in Afghanistan to grow and sustain their businesses. Fayezeh and Fatima will discuss their past in Afghanistan as well as their experiences as immigrants in America today. This program is sponsored by the Bozeman Public Library Foundation and is free and open to the public.