When the Taliban swept back into Kabul in August 2021, hundreds of Afghans who had worked with The New York Times and their families suddenly found themselves in danger. Rebecca Blumenstein, then a top editor at the Times, helped lead a frantic effort that ultimately evacuated more than 200 people from Afghanistan — and then became deeply involved in helping them rebuild their lives in the United States. Her new book with journalist Diana Kapp, The Last Free Women, follows four of those young women — Marwa, Mursal, Maryam, and Samira — over the next five years as they navigate college, work, family, faith, and a culture that can be both liberating and bewildering.
These women’s stories also raise some complicated questions about what “freedom” actually means: Escaping the Taliban may have made them safe, but building the lives they imagined for themselves has proved much harder. We asked Blumenstein about the barriers refugees face in America, and what we owe the people who risked their lives alongside Americans in Afghanistan.
Katie Couric Media: You followed these four women for five years, through some very ordinary moments as well as life-changing ones. What did you understand about them by the end that you completely missed when you first met them?
Rebecca Blumenstein: I would say that I underestimated their tenacity. I knew these young women wanted to resume their education, to try to make something of themselves in America after seeing their accomplishments crumble with the Taliban’s takeover of Kabul. They were so discouraged when they were initially told that it would be nearly impossible for them to continue their education here in the U.S. But they had already worked so hard to get to this point, and seemed to have an innate sense that they couldn’t give up now.
One of our young women, Samira, grew up with a mother who literally burned her books on a number of occasions. She fled to India to get an MBA, and was working in Kabul when it fell. Mursal and Marwa, two sisters, struggled to even learn how to use a computer and how to toggle between applications. They initially didn’t know how to turn in homework, or fill out applications. But that doesn’t mean they weren’t smart. Without fluent English, they would stay up much of the night translating assignments into Dari, their native language.
Mursal, intent on getting a UN internship she’d been told was impossible to land, filled out more than 30 lengthy applications, editing every required essay with ChatGPT. One of our young women was sent back two or three grades and given no support in her high school. Despite so many challenges, they have never hesitated. They seem to have an innate sense that they need to work hard to take advantage of their freedom here, to honor the Afghan women who have lost so many freedoms in Afghanistan that many can’t even leave their homes alone.
Afghan families walk to a bus that will take them to a refugee processing center at Dulles International Airport on August 24, 2021 in Dulles, Virginia. According to the U.S. State Department, between Sunday morning and Monday morning, 10,400 people were evacuated from Kabul on military flights and approximately 5,900 more people were evacuated on 61 coalition aircraft.(Photo by Joshua Roberts/Getty Images)
One of the most striking tensions in the book is that these women are finally “free” in America, but that freedom doesn’t automatically give them the lives they want. What did reporting their stories teach you about the difference between being safe and actually having opportunity?
This dichotomy runs throughout their story. A refugee coordinator we hired to help us navigate the resettlement landscape challenged my insistence that the young people in our group should return to university. He maintained that success was living free of danger, and tried to convince me to accept that most refugees settle into poverty.
I pushed back on that norm, as have the young women. They were in the vanguard of a fast-modernizing Afghanistan, highly ambitious, and with big plans for themselves. Despite what they are up against, they all notice and appreciate the expansive possibility life here holds. Their instinct is to focus on the incredible opportunities they have, rather than fixate on what is closed to them.
The women have very different reactions to American culture: some embrace parts of it, while others are much more resistant to assimilation. Did following them change the way you think about the expectation that immigrants should “become American”?
Each of the young women approaches assimilation differently. Our pair of sisters have gone opposite ways: Mursal holds tight to Muslim culture, refusing to shake men’s hands and stressing about swallowing pool water during her Ramadan fast. When an Uber driver challenged her decision to wear her headscarf in America, pressing her, “Don’t you want to be free?” she shot back, “I am free, which is why I choose to wear it.” Marwa, however, ditched her headscarf upon arrival, wears form-fitting tops, and regularly goes to the gym. Samira, the most American-seeming, drank two cocktails at her husband’s birthday dinner; the other three would never touch alcohol.
They are an important reminder that there are myriad ways to be an American. Here, unlike in Afghanistan, the individual can choose. We are a nation of immigrants, and the level of assimilation is different for every single one. This is precisely what makes our country so unique, and wonderful.
Education runs through almost every part of this book: The women escape a country where the Taliban is taking education away from women, only to encounter a completely different set of obstacles in the American system. What surprised or frustrated you most about trying to help them continue their education here?
It struck me from the very start that the best place for our young people to get a new start was on a college campus. Many of them were either students at or graduates of Afghanistan’s universities. Their education had been cut off, and what they had completed was largely not recognized by U.S. institutions. They had worked their whole lives to be doctors and lawyers. And since they were here because of U.S. actions, I felt it was our duty to help them avoid a lifetime of poverty, which is what many refugees face. It seemed to us that the role of a university was to help in such a dire situation.
Since the start, AG Sulzberger, the publisher of the Times, encouraged us to do “a bit more” for our group. We wanted to get our young people onto a track that did not end with them becoming Uber drivers and retail clerks. And in America, that generally means college (My determination grew when we were told by one refugee consultant that older teens and young refugees often ended up joining gangs).
But outreach over months to dozens of schools produced only no’s. School after school said that their English wasn’t strong enough — that they didn’t have a high enough score on English proficiency tests. And besides, how would we pay for it? One administrator even responded, “We had an Afghan student previously, and it didn’t work out.” Other schools only wanted students with a clear path to citizenship or high scores on English proficiency tests.
Along with a team at the Times, we refused to take no for an answer. We called dozens of schools and finally found a promising situation in Pittsburgh, where the colleges came together and came up with a plan and a solution: to give them intensive English in the first year, and return to their original studies afterward. That is how Chatham University stepped up and took five of our students. The generosity of Chatham continues to astound us, and it has been a remarkable springboard for our group.
July 21, 2026: Afghan girls taking their midterm exams at a primary school in Kabul. Father after father AFP spoke to in Afghanistan about the education ban that stops their daughters going beyond primary school choked up in despair. The pain and anguish it is causing behind closed doors is clear from interviews AFP conducted across the country, with even deeply religious fathers questioning the ruling. (Photo by AFP via Getty Images)
I’m also grateful to Lynette Clemenson, who runs Wallace House at University of Michigan, home of the Knight-Wallace Fellowship for Journalists. Soon after we arrived, she decided to accept two of our journalists as fellows and their families, and then went about convincing administrators that it was the right thing to do. Other schools like Bard and Cornell stepped up and accepted and funded the education of Afghan students. This was the largest influx of refugees since the Vietnam War, and I was surprised that more colleges and universities didn’t step up with creative solutions and funding to help young people restart their lives. To me, that was especially true for the young Afghan women who made it to the U.S.: Given that the Taliban immediately banned the education of girls past the sixth grade in Afghanistan, we felt that we had a special obligation to help them continue their education in America.
To fill the gap, a group from The New York Times founded a non-profit, the Journalism Refugees Education Fund (JREF), to help subsidize the cost of education for the increasing numbers of exiled journalists, and their families. We have supported more than 30 students to date, and proceeds of the book are dedicated to supporting the continued work of JREF.
You’re both a reporter and a participant in this story — you helped these families escape and then became deeply involved in their lives here. How did you decide where the line was between helping someone and reporting on them, and did that line ever become uncomfortable?
I never planned to write a book. I was all in the moment I first started working on their evacuation, but never met any of them until I joined them in Mexico City and flew with them into Houston. I resolved to help them in every way I could, and took great pride in the fact that the Times organization had a mantra to always do a bit more than was typical in resettlement.
This became a story I could not shake. This was never going to be a typical reporter-subject relationship. From the start, I was there to help them restart their lives. I did not struggle with that fact, and acknowledge that in the book. We reported their stories through forming deep relationships and spending time over five years. They knew we were documenting their journey the entire time, and we communicated with them about the process of the book. We also went through each fact about them in the book to avoid any surprises. Their story deserves to be told, and we wrote it with great honesty and admiration.
There’s a painful irony near the end of the book: These women fled the Taliban believing America represented safety and freedom, and now some are once again anxious about whether they’ll be allowed to stay. What do you hope American readers understand about what we owe people who were forced to leave Afghanistan because of their connection to us?
A core theme of the book is the imperative of duty: that of humans to one another, and that of institutions and governments to their people. News organizations, and many others, rely on local knowledge, contacts and talent to operate in war zones. That assistance often comes at great risk to locals, and it is critical that we protect them, and repay loyalty with loyalty. We hope readers will also recognize the incredible generosity exhibited by Americans with no connection to these Afghans once they arrived in the U.S.
Near strangers replaced bald tires, waived the requirement of months of pay stubs for apartment rentals, and in Samira’s case became her surrogate family. The giving spirit of so many in this country is alive and well, which we hope is an overwhelming takeaway of our book.
The Last Free Women is available for purchase now.