The Lovers | Rod Nordland

A story of forbidden love. Zakia and Mohammad Ali are a modern day Romeo and Juliet. Two young Afghan lovers - he a Shia, she a Sunni - who defied their families risking their lives in order to be together.

A riveting, real-life equivalent of The Kite Runner-an astonishingly powerful and profoundly moving story of a young couple willing to risk everything for love that puts a human face on the ongoing debate about women's rights in the Muslim world. "She is his Juliet and he is her Romeo, and her family has threatened to kill them both..." This is the heartrending account of Zakia and Mohammad Ali, a couple from opposing Islamic sects, who defying their society's norms have left behind everything they know and are quite literally risking their lives for their love. She is a Sunni, he is a Shia, but as friends from childhood Zakia and Mohammad Ali could never have predicted that their love would anger their families so much that they would be forced to leave their homes finding refuge in the harsh terrain of the Afghani mountains. Without money or passports they rely on the kindness of strangers to house them for a couple of days at a time as they remain on the run, never deterred. New York Times journalist, Rod Nordland, has chronicled the plight of the young lovers telling their extraordinary story of courage, perseverance and love in one of the world's most troubled countries.
This moving love story is told against the bigger backdrop of the horrific but widespread practices that women are subjected to in Afghanistan.