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'The Last Free Women' depicts life in America for those who escaped the Taliban

WBUR
Published October 2, 2026 at 9:05 AM PDT
The cover of "The Last Free Women" and (L-R) Mursal Rahim, Rebecca Blumenstein, Diana Kapp and Marwa Rahim. (Courtesy of Shutterstock and Haley Lowenthal)
Courtesy of Shutterstock and Haley Lowenthal
The cover of "The Last Free Women" and (L-R) Mursal Rahim, Rebecca Blumenstein, Diana Kapp and Marwa Rahim. (Courtesy of Shutterstock and Haley Lowenthal)

Haley LowenthalA new book offers an inside account of the New York Times’ mission to evacuate more than 200 Afghans in the wake of the fall of Kabul to the Taliban in 2021.

“The Last Free Women” by journalists Rebecca Blumenstein and Diana Kapp follows the lives of four young women as they start a new life in America — learning English, repeating college and forging new identities — while back home, the Taliban ends most opportunities for women outside the home.

Here & Now‘s Indira Lakshmanan speaks with Blumenstein, president of editorial at NBC News and a former senior editor at The New York Times, and Mursal Rahim, who recently graduated with a masters of public administration from Cornell University’s Jeb E. Brooks School of Public Policy.

This article was originally published on WBUR.org.

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