Her mother, having been forced out of her job as an English teacher by the Taliban, had fled Afghanistan with her two small children, hoping to begin a new life in North America. “I think my life and my memory really started in Canada,” she says. Wahedi was thrilled, but her mother was fearful for her daughter’s safety: “[She said]: ‘I sacrificed my life to leave, and now you’re going back? How could you do that?’After her internship, Wahedi stayed in Kabul and became a policy aide for the Afghan government. The Afghan government was so good at keeping up this mentality that they would beat the Taliban,” she says.