One day in October 2001, shortly after the U.S. invaded Afghanistan, I stood at the front of a private high school classroom. As a new social studies teacher, I had been tasked with describing violence against women in that country. I showed the students an article from the front page of the New York Times featuring Afghan women casting off their burqas as they bathed in a stream near Kabul.
The implication of the piece was that the U.S. would liberate — had already, in fact, begun to liberate — such women. I soon realized, though, that my students weren’t really paying attention. They hadn’t, in fact, been fully capable of focusing for the previous three weeks, ever since the 9/11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington. They squirmed in their seats, watched the clock, or stared out the window at California’s rolling hills as if something bad was about to happen.