This work presents the stories of great beauty from a land lost to war. It also presents fifteen true dramatic stories of ordinary men and women living in Northern Afghanistan. In a quarter-century of uninterrupted war, the people of Afghanistan have endured foreign invasions, ethnic strife, a fundamentalist Islamic totalitarian regime and the unending crossfire of rival warlord factions. Young lovers who elope against the wishes of their kin; a mullah whose wit is his only defence against his armed captors; a defector from the Soviet army; a woman who is forced to stand up to gangsters in Tajikistan - their extraordinary stories emerge in their own unforgettable words. Whether in the sudden awakening of mercy in a Taliban militiaman, the lingering contempt of a woman for her husband’s first wife, the pain and confusion of flight into exile or the resourcefulness of a child who must provide for an entire family, the real focus of these narratives is the strength of solitary individuals faced daily with their own vulnerability.