Muslim Imam K1lls Daughter for Converting to Christianity

I want to tell you a story of how I lost my only sister, my blood sister from my mother.

Her name was Parana and she died because she loved Jesus Christ.

I am telling you this story from a place of safety.

Now though safety still feels strange to me even after all this time.

There are moments when I wake up in the night and forget where I am.

I reach for Paruana in the darkness expecting to find her sleeping beside me like she did for so many years.

But she is not there.

She will never be there again.

And the way she died, the reason she died is something the world needs to know.

My father was an imam.

I need you to understand what that meant for our family, for our lives, for everything we did from the moment we woke until the moment we slept.

An imam is not just a religious leader in our community in Afghanistan.

An imam is everything.

He is the voice of God to the people.

He is the keeper of morality.

Like he is the one who decides what is right and what is wrong, what is permitted and what is forbidden.

And my father took this role very seriously.

We lived in a large compound with high walls.

This is normal in Afghanistan.

But our compound was larger than most because my father had three wives.

My mother was his second wife.

She married him when she was 16 years old and she gave him two daughters, Parana and me.

His first wife had given him four sons.

Uh his third wife had given him three more sons and two daughters.

So So we were many children in that house, but Parana and I only had each other in the way that mattered.

I need to tell you about Parana.

So you can understand what was lost when she died.

She was four years older than me, which meant that for as long as I can remember, she was the one who took care of me.

Our mother loved us.

I know she did, but she was often tired and often sad.

Life as a second wife is not easy.

Uh the first wife had authority over her.

The third wife was younger and prettier.

My mother existed in a strange middle place where she belonged to no one fully, not even to herself.

So Paruana became like a mother to me.

When I was small, she braided my hair in the mornings.

She made sure I washed properly.

She helped me memorize the Quran verses we were required to learn.

She protected me from our half brothers when they were cruel, which they sometimes were.

Or she took blame for things I did wrong.

She gave me her food when when there was not enough.

She told me stories at night to help me sleep when I was afraid.

Our room was small.

We shared a sleeping mat.

And in the winter, we shared blankets because there were never enough to keep warm.

But I loved that room.

It was the only place in the whole compound where we could whisper to each other freely, where we could be ourselves instead of the quiet.

Obedient daughters, we were required to be everywhere else.

Life in our house revolved around my father’s schedule and my father’s rules.

He led prayers at the mosque five times a day and our entire household had to pray at the same times.

He studied the Quran and the Hadith constantly and he expected his children to do the same.

He had strict ideas about how his daughters should behave, how we should dress, how we should speak, where we could go, who we could see.

We were never alone outside the house.

Never even to go to the market with our mother.

We had to wear full burka and we had to stay close to her.

School was permitted but only the girls school and only until we were 14.

After that there was no reason for more education.

We were being prepared for marriage and marriage did not require us to know mathematics or literature.

It required us to know how to serve a husband, how to keep a house, what how to raise children in the proper Islamic way.

I remember our daily routine very clearly.

We woke before dawn for fudger prayer.

My father would lead the prayers and we would all line up behind him, the men in front, the women behind.

Then the boys would leave for school and my father would leave for the mosque.

We girls would uh help our mothers prepare breakfast.

We would clean the house.

We would study Quran.

In the afternoon, we might have a few hours to ourselves.

Uh but we were always being watched.

The older wa wives watch the younger wives.

The boys watched the girls.

Everyone watched everyone making sure no one stepped out of line.

No one brought shame to the family.

Shame.

That word ruled our lives.

It was worse than pain, worse than hunger, worse than anything.

To bring shame on the family was the worst thing a daughter could do.

And what brought shame? So many things.

speaking too loudly, laughing in public, looking at a man who was not family.

I’m being seen by a man who was not family.

Disobeying, questioning, wanting anything beyond what was permitted to want.

My father used to say that his daughters were like glass, beautiful but fragile, valuable but easily broken, and once broken, worthless.

He said this to us many times.

He said that our honor was the family’s honor and if we damaged it, we damaged everyone.

He said it was his duty to protect us, to keep us pure, or to make sure we became good Muslim wives who would bring honor to whatever families we married into.

But despite everything, despite the walls and the rules and the constant watching, Parwana and I had moments of happiness, we had each other.

And that was not a small thing.

At night, after the last prayer, after our father had gone to sleep with whichever wife was his turn, that night, after the compound grew quiet, Parana would whisper to me, “Uh, we would lie on our mat in the darkness, and she would tell me her thoughts.

Not big dangerous thoughts at first, just small things.

Observations about our family, stories from her day, dreams about what life might be like when we were older.

She wanted to be a teacher.

She told me this many times.

She loved learning and she loved helping me learn.

She was patient and kind and she would have been a wonderful teacher, but we both knew it would never happen.

At our father would arrange marriages for us with men he approved of, men from good families, men who were proper Muslims.

We would leave his house and enter our husband’s houses, and we would live there until we died.

That was our future.

and we accepted it because we did not know we could want anything else.

I want to be honest with you about my feelings toward Islam at that time.

I was not angry at my religion.

I did not hate it.

It was the only thing I knew.

The Quran was beautiful to me.

Uh the prayers gave structure to my days.

I believed in Allah.

I believed that Muhammad was his prophet.

I believed that if I was obedient and modest and good, I would go to paradise when I died.

I had no reason to question any of it.

But there were small things that bothered me.

Even then, small questions I could not ask.

I wondered why Allah loved boys more than girls.

That is what it seemed like to me.

Boys could go to school as long as they wanted.

Boys could go outside freely or boys could choose what they wanted to do with their lives.

Boys were treated like they mattered.

Girls were treated like we were problems to be solved, burdens to be endured until we could be passed to husbands.

I wondered why my mother was sad all the time.

She prayed five times a day.

She fasted during Ramadan.

She obeyed my father in everything.

She wore hijab.

She was a good Muslim woman.

But she po was not happy.

None of the women in our compound were happy.

Um they were tired and sad and jealous of each other.

Was this really what Allah wanted for women? I wondered about heaven.

We were taught that paradise had rivers of milk and honey, gardens and fruits, beautiful things beyond imagination.

But we were also taught that men would have hurries in paradise, beautiful women created just to please them.

What would women have? Would my mother finally matter in paradise? Would she finally be first instead of second? Or would heaven be just like earth at with her watching her husband love some someone else? These were small questions and I felt guilty even thinking them.

I never spoke them aloud.

I pushed them away when they came.

But they were there like seeds planted in my heart waiting.

Parana had questions too.

I know she did, though she rarely shared them with me when we were very young.

She was trying to protect me.

I think trying to keep me innocent, but I could see her thinking sometimes, see her struggling with something in her mind.

And as we got older, as I turned 10 and she turned 14, she began to share more.

She would ask me what I thought about things.

Did I think it was fair that our halfb brothers could play outside while we had to stay in? Did I think Allah really cared if a woman showed her hair? Did I think our father loved us as much as he loved his sons? I did not know how to answer these questions.

They frightened me.

But I also felt relieved that she was asking them why because it meant I was not the only one who wondered.

When Parana turned 14, she had to stop going to school.

She cried the night before her last day.

We were lying on our mat and I felt her shoulders shaking.

Felt the wetness of her tears on the blanket we shared.

I asked her what was wrong and she said she did not want to stop learning.

She said it felt like dying.

I did not understand then.

I was only 10.

I still had four more years of school ahead of me.

Um but I held her hand in the darkness and I felt her pain even if I could not fully understand it.

After that, Paruana was home all day, every day.

She helped our mother cook and clean.

She learned to sew.

She was being prepared for marriage, though my father had not yet chosen a husband for her.

She grew more quiet.

The light in her eyes grew dimmer.

I missed the old parana, the one who smiled sometimes, who whispered dreams to me at night.

Our mother noticed too.

I saw her watching Parana with worry in her eyes.

One day, I heard her speaking to my father, asking if Parana could continue school for just one more year.

My father’s response was sharp and immediate.

The discussion was over.

Our mother did not ask again.

I think that was when Puana began to realize that her life would never be her own.

That she had no choices, no control, no future beyond what my father decided for her.

And I think that realization began to change something inside his hair.

That the compound where we lived was not completely isolated.

We had neighbors and sometimes people came to visit my father for religious guidance or to settle disputes.

There were workmen who came to fix things when they broke.

There were women who came to see our mothers.

And though we were supposed to stay away from these visitors, sometimes we saw them, sometimes we heard them talking.

One of our neighbors was an older woman named BB John.

She was a widow.

Uh which meant she had more freedom than most women.

She did not have to answer to a husband.

Her sons were grown and they gave her respect but did not control her the way my father controlled his wives.

She came to visit our mothers sometimes, bringing bread or helping with sewing.

She was kind to us girls, kinder than most adults.

BB John had worked for foreigners once before the Taliban returned to power in some areas.

She had worked for an aid organization, a helping distribute food and medicine.

She had learned some English.

She had seen how people lived in other countries.

And though she was careful about what she said, sometimes small things would slip out.

Comments about women who were doctors, stories about girls who went to university, mentions of ideas that seemed impossible to us.

My father did not like BB John.

He thought she had been corrupted by western influence.

He said the foreigners had poisoned her mind with their godless ideas.

Hagi told our mothers to limit their contact with her.

But our mothers liked her and so she still came sometimes less often but still regularly.

I remember one day when I was 10 or 11, BB John was visiting and she saw me reading a Quran.

She asked me what surah I was studying and I told her.

She nodded and then she said something I never forgot.

She said that reading was the most important thing a girl could do because reading meant thinking and thinking meant freedom.

Ducky.

My mother quickly changed the subject, nervous that my father might hear.

But I thought about those words for days afterward.

Reading meant thinking.

Thinking meant freedom.

What did that mean? What kind of freedom? I asked Parana about it that night and she was quiet for a long time before she answered.

Then she said that maybe BB John meant that when you read and think for yourself, no one can completely control your mind.

They can control your body, where you go and what you do.

Uh but your thoughts are your own.

This idea was both uh exciting and terrifying to me.

I had never considered that my thoughts were my own.

I had always assumed that I should think what I was told to think, believe what I was told to believe.

But maybe there was a space inside me that belonged only to me, where I could question and wonder and dream without anyone knowing.

Our lives continued in their routine way.

The seasons changed.

I grew older.

Paruana grew more quiet and more distant.

My father became stricter as the political situation in our area became more unstable.

There was fighting sometimes in nearby villages.

There were rumors of Taliban coming back to enforce their rules.

My father approved of this.

He said Afghanistan had lost its way, that people had become too liberal, that women had forgotten their place.

He said the Taliban would restore proper Islamic values.

I was afraid of the Taliban, though I did not fully understand who they were or what they did.

Uh I just knew that when people spoke of them, their voices changed.

Even my father’s voice, which was always stern and serious, became harder when he spoke of them.

When I was 11, my father stopped allowing me to go to school.

He said the school was teaching improper things, that the teachers were not following correct Islamic principles.

My mother tried to argue with him, but he would not listen.

So I joined Paruana at home and my education ended.

I cried for days.

I loved school.

I loved reading and learning.

I loved having somewhere to go outside the compound, even if it was just the girls school with its strict rules and covered windows.

I loved having something to do with my mind besides memorize Quran verses and think about housework.

Parana held me while I cried.

She understood.

She told me it would be okay, that we would find ways to keep learning on our own.

And she kept that promise.

She borrowed books from BB John who somehow always had books or we read them together in secret, hiding them under our sleeping mat.

They were simple books, children’s books sometimes, but they were windows to other worlds, stories about other places, other people, other ways of living.

It was through one of these book that we first learned about Jesus.

The book was not a Bible.

I want to be clear about that.

It was a story book, a children’s book about different religions of the world.

I do not know how BB John had it or why she gave it to Paruana.

Um maybe she thought we needed to know that other beliefs existed.

Maybe she was planting seeds on purpose.

Maybe she just thought we would find it interesting.

The book had a section about Christianity.

It talked about Jesus, about how Christians believed he was the son of God, about how he taught love and forgiveness, about how he died on a cross and rose again.

It talked about how Christians believed that faith in Jesus was the way to heaven, not good works or following rules.

That I remember reading that section with Parana and feeling confused.

We had learned about Issa in the Quran.

We knew he was a prophet, but this was different.

Christians believed he was more than a prophet.

They believed he was God himself come to earth as a human being.

This seemed impossible to me, blasphemous even.

Allah was Allah far above humans, completely other.

How could God become a man? It did not make sense.

But Paruana was very quiet after reading it.

L she read the section again and again.

I asked her what she was thinking and she said she was trying to understand.

Why would anyone believe something so strange? There had to be a reason.

We hid the book carefully.

If my father found it, we would both be beaten severely.

But we kept reading it, especially the part about Jesus.

And slowly, very slowly, something began to change in Parana.

I could see it, but I could not name it.

She seemed less afraid.

The She seemed to be thinking about something all the time, something big, something she could not share with me yet.

Looking back now, I can see that this was the beginning.

This was where her journey to faith started.

With a children’s book and a curious mind and a heart that was hungry for hope, she was 15 years old, living in a cage, watching her future narrow to marriage and children and a life of serving a husband she did not choose.

And into that darkness came a story about a God who loved enough to die, about forgiveness that was free, about hope that did not depend on being good enough.

I did not understand it then.

I was only 11 and I was not ready for such big questions.

But Paruana was ready.

She was desperate for something beyond the life she had been given.

and she found it in the most dangerous place possible in faith in Jesus Christ.

The change in her was gradual.

She did not wake up one day and announce that she was a Christian.

She could not.

That would mean immediate death.

Instead, she began to pray differently.

I would wake sometimes in the night and see her whispering to herself, her lips moving silently.

When I asked her what she was doing, she said she was praying.

But something about it seemed different from our usual prayers.

She began to be kinder, if that was even possible.

She was already the kindest person I knew.

Uh but something deepened in her.

She was more patient with our difficult half brothers.

She served our mothers without complaint.

She even spoke gently to the first wife who had always been cruel to our mother and to us.

And she began to talk to me about love, about how God loved us, not about how we needed to earn God’s favor through God uh good works and obedience, but about how God already loved us completely and perfectly no matter what.

This confused me.

Uh everything I had been taught said that Allah’s love had to be earned.

We had to follow the rules, pray the prayers, fast during Ramadan, wear the right clothes, say the right things.

We had to be good enough.

But Paruana was saying something different.

She was saying that God’s love was a gift, free, unearned, already given.

I asked her where she learned this and she said from thinking, from reading, from praying.

She was being careful with me.

She knew I was not ready to hear the full truth from and she was protecting me.

The less I knew, the safer I would be.

But I knew something was changing in her.

I could feel it.

And it made me both happy and afraid.

Happy because she seemed lighter somehow, less burdened, afraid because I did not understand where this change was coming from.

And anything I did not understand felt dangerous.

Our father noticed too.

I saw him watching her sometimes with narrowed eyes.

She was too peaceful, too content for a girl who should have been anxious about her approaching marriage, about her lack of control over her future.

She seemed strangely at ease.

This was suspicious.

He began to question her more, ask her what she was thinking about, what she was reading, what she and I talked about at night.

Parwana always had careful answers ready.

She quoted Quran.

She spoke about wanting to be a good Muslim wife.

She said the right things.

But I could see that my father was not fully satisfied.

The pressure in our house began to build.

My father became stricter about prayers, about modest dress, about our interactions with anyone outside the immediate family.

He stopped allowing baby John to visit.

He said she was a bad influence, that she had been contaminated by cafir ideas.

Our mothers were sad about this, but they said nothing.

And then my father announced that he had found a husband for Paruana.

She was 16 now, old enough to marry.

The man was 43, a widowerower with grown children, a merchant who lived in another province.

He was a good Muslim.

My father said, a strict man who would keep Paruana on the right path.

the marriage would happen in 3 months.

Paruana said nothing when my father made this announcement.

She kept her eyes downed and nodded.

But that night on our mat in the darkness, she wept.

She wept like I had never heard her weep before.

Deep sobs that shook her whole body.

And between the sobs, um, she whispered one word over and over, “Jesus, Jesus, Jesus.

” That was when I knew for certain that something had changed in my sister.

She was not just curious about Christianity anymore.

She believed it.

She had faith.

And that faith was going to get her killed.

The next morning, Paruana seemed calm again.

Too calm.

She went about her duties with the same quiet grace she always had.

She helped prepare breakfast.

She cleaned.

She swed.

She memorized Quran verses when my father required it.

But I could see that something inside her had shifted.

She had made some kind of decision during the night and whatever it was, it gave her a strange kind of peace.

I wanted to ask her about it, but there was no privacy during the day.

We were always surrounded by family members, always being watched.

So, I waited until nighttime, until we were alone on our mat in the darkness.

When I finally asked her what she was thinking, what she was planning, she turned to me and took my hand.

on.

She said she did not know what would happen with the marriage.

She said she could not marry a Muslim man while believing in Jesus.

It would be living a lie.

But she also could not refuse the marriage without giving a reason and the truth would get her killed.

I asked her if she had really left Islam, if she really believed in Jesus now.

She said yes.

She said she had been fighting it for months, trying to convince herself it was not true.

I trying to go back to believing what we had always been taught, but she could not.

She said Jesus was real to her in a way that Allah had never been.

She said she felt his presence, his love, his peace.

She said she could not deny him no matter what it cost her.

I did not know what to say.

Part of me wanted to beg her to be sensible, to just pretend to do whatever she had to do to survive.

But another part of me understood.

I had seen the change in her.

I had seen the peace.

Uh, and I knew that peace was real, even if I did not understand where it came from.

She asked me if I hated her.

I started crying and told her I could never hate her.

She was my sister.

She was everything to me.

I did not care what she believed.

I just wanted her to be safe.

She held me while I cried.

She told me she loved me more than anything in the world.

She told me that whatever happened I should remember that she told me to be strong.

Looking back now was I think she already knew what was coming.

She knew that her faith to would be discovered eventually.

She knew that my father who would never allow her to marry while believing in Jesus.

She knew that she was walking toward her own death, but she also knew that denying Jesus would be worse than dying.

And so she had chosen to remain faithful, whatever the cost.

The three months before the scheduled wedding were strange.

Life continued normally on the surface.

Preparations were made.

Paruana’s uh wedding clothes were sewn.

Relatives came to visit and offer congratulations.

My father spoke with the groom’s family and finalized arrangements.

Everything moved forward as if nothing was wrong.

But I knew better.

I watched Paruana carefully, looking for signs of fear or desperation.

But she seemed almost serene.

She did her work.

She spoke politely to everyone.

She accepted the wedding preparations without complaint.

And that night she prayed to Jesus.

I started asking her more questions about her faith.

What did she believe exactly? Why Jesus instead of Muhammad? How could she be sure Christianity was true? She answered my questions patiently.

She told me about grace, about how Jesus offered forgiveness as a free gift instead of something you had to earn.

She told me about how Jesus treated women with dignity and respect.

How he valued them as people instead of property.

Uh she told me about how he died for our sins so we could be reconciled to God.

I listened to all of it with a mixture of curiosity and fear.

It sounded beautiful.

It sounded too good to be true, but I could see that it was real to Parana and I could see that it had changed her in fundamental ways.

I asked her if she was afraid of dying.

She admitted that yes, she was terrified.

She did not want to die.

She did not want to leave me.

Uh but she said that her fear of denying Jesus was greater than her fear of death.

She said Jesus had given her something worth dying for and she would not throw it away to save her life.

I could not understand that kind of faith.

Not yet.

I was only 12 years old.

I wanted my sister to live.

I did not care about theology or truth or any of it.

I just wanted Parana to survive to find some way out of this impossible situation.

But there was no way out.

I could see that now.

Or Paruana was trapped between her faith and her father, between Jesus and survival.

And she had already chosen which one which one mattered more.

I need to tell you how Paruana truly found Jesus because it was not just from a children’s book.

That book planted a seed, but someone watered it.

Someone helped it grow.

Someone gave her the actual words of scripture that transformed her faith from curiosity into conviction.

Her name was Leila and she was our cousin.

She was the daughter of my mother’s brother Horn and she lived in Kabul with her family.

We did not see her often, maybe once or twice a year when her family would visit, but Paruana had always been close to her.

They were the same age, born just two months apart, and they had been friends since childhood.

They wrote letters to each other sometimes sharing news and thoughts.

My father allowed this because Leila’s father was a respected man, a businessman with proper Islamic credentials.

There seemed to be no danger in two cousins exchanging letters about family matters and daily life.

But Leila’s letters were not ordinary.

I did not know this at first.

Parana kept them hidden and she never told me what was in them.

But after my father announced the marriage, after that night of weeping and calling on Jesus, Parana finally showed me the truth.

We were alone in our room in the afternoon.

The house was quiet.

Most of the family was resting after the midday meal.

Paruana pulled out a small bundle from a hiding place under a loose board in the floor, a place I had not known existed.

Inside were letters, maybe 15 of them, written in Leila’s handwriting on thin paper.

There were also several small pieces of paper covered in careful script that I did not recognize.

Parana told me to read the letters, and I did.

My hands shook as I unfolded the first one.

The date showed it was from almost two years ago from when Parana was 14 and I was 10.

The letters were about Jesus.

Not obviously, not at first.

Leila was clever.

She wrote about ordinary things at the beginning of each letter.

Things that would seem innocent if anyone else read them.

news about her family, questions about our family, comments about the weather or the city or daily life, but then carefully woven into the mundane details were other things.

references to a friend who had helped her, mentions of a teacher who had shown her a new way of thinking, uh, descriptions of a book she was reading that was changing her life.

Anyone reading quickly would think she was talking about normal things.

But as I read letter after letter, I began to understand.

The friend was Jesus.

The teacher was the Holy Spirit.

The book was the Bible.

Leila had become a Christian and she was trying to share this faith with Paruana.

The later letters were more direct but still coded.

Leila wrote about finding peace that she had never known before, about discovering that God loved her.

Not because of what she did, but simply because of who she was.

About learning that forgiveness was free and grace was abundant.

About understanding that women were valued and precious in God’s eyes.

And Leila had been sending Paruana portions of scripture.

Those small pieces of paper covered in unfamiliar script were Bible verses copied out by hand the Gospel of John chapter by chapter selected psalms portions of the sermon on the mount from Matthew uh parts of Paul’s letters about grace and freedom in Christ.

Paruana had been reading these in secret for over a year.

Ever since she was 15, she had been studying them, memorizing them, letting them sink deep into her heart, and they had uh changed her.

I sat there with the letters and scripture for portions in my hands, feeling the weight of what they meant.

My sister was a Christian.

My cousin was a Christian.

They were both committing apostasy which carried a death sentence.

And now I knew about it which made me complicit.

If my father found out I had known and not reported it, I could be killed too.

I should have been angry.

I should have been terrified.

But instead, I felt a strange kind of relief.

All those months of watching Parana change, of seeing her peace grow, even as her circumstances became more difficult now made sense.

She had found something real, something that gave her strength and hope when she should have had none.

Or I asked her how Leila had become a Christian.

She told me that Ila had met a secret believer in Kabul, a woman who ran a small shop near where Leila’s family lived.

This woman was Afghan from a Muslim background, but she had converted to Christianity years before.

She was part of an underground church, believers who met in hidden places to worship.

Leila had somehow found her way to this group and they had shared the gospel with her.

They had given her a Bible.

Uh they had taught her about Jesus and she had believed.

After Leila became a Christian, she knew she had to be very careful.

Kabul was more liberal than our province, but it was still Afghanistan.

Converting from Islam to Christianity was still apostasy.

It could still get you killed.

So Alila told no one in her family.

She lived a double life, practicing Islam outwardly while following Jesus in secret and she began to share her faith with Parana through these coded letters.

Y Parana has said that at first she thought Leila had gone crazy.

The idea of leaving Islam for Christianity seemed insane, but Leila was persistent.

Letter after letter, she shared more of what she had discovered and slowly Parana began to read the scripture portions with an open mind instead of a defensive one.

She said that reading the Gospel of John had changed everything for her.

The way Jesus spoke, the way he treated people, the things he claimed about himself, it it was so different from anything she had learned about God before.

Jesus seemed personal and close and loving in ways that Allah never had been.

The verses about Jesus being the way, the truth, and the life had struck her deeply.

The promise that anyone who believed in him would have eternal life, not because they earned it, but because Jesus gave it freely, the assurance that God loved the world so much that he sent his only son to save it.

So these things had planted themselves in her heart and grown.

She had tried to resist.

She really had.

She knew the danger.

She knew what it would cost her if she left Islam.

She knew that she would lose everything, possibly even her life.

So she had argued with herself.

She had tried to find flaws in what Leila was telling her.

She had tried to convince herself that Islam was true and Christianity was false.

But the more she read the words of Jesus, the more she prayed to the more she felt something shifting inside her, a presence, a peace, a love that she could not explain but could not deny.

Jesus became real to her.

Not just an idea or a prophet from long ago, but a living presence who loved her personally, who knew her completely, who accepted her fully.

One night about six months before the wedding announcement, Parana had given her life to Christ.

She was alone in our room reading one of the scripture portions by the light of a small lamp.

Oh, she came to the verses in John where Jesus said he was the good shepherd who laid down his life for his sheep.

And suddenly she understood Jesus had died for her.

For her specifically, not for humanity in general, but for her Parana, a girl trapped in a compound in Afghanistan with no hope and no future.

He loved her that much.

He valued her that much.

She said, she started crying and she could not stop.

She whispered a prayer asking Jesus to forgive her sins, to save her, to be her Lord.

And when she finished praying, everything felt different.

The fear she had carried her whole life was gone.

The burden of trying to be good enough was lifted.

She felt clean and free and loved in a way she had never experienced before.

That was when she became a Christian.

That was when she crossed the line from which there was no return.

I asked her if she ever regretted it.

She looked at me with such intensity and said, “No, never.

Not for a single moment.

” She said that even knowing what it might cost her, even knowing that she might die for it, she would make the same choice again because Jesus was real and his love was real and nothing else mattered as much as that.

I did not know what to say.

I had never heard anyone speak with such certainty about anything.

Parana believed in Jesus the way most people believed in the ground beneath their feet.

It was foundational.

It was unshakable.

It was the truth around which everything else in her life now revolved.

She asked me not to tell anyone.

Of course, I would not tell anyone.

But she also asked me to think about what she had shared to read the scripture portions myself to consider whether what Ila had found and what she had found might also be true for me.

I took one of the papers from her hands.

It was a section from John chapter 3 about Nicodemus coming to Jesus at night.

I read the words about being born again, about God loving the world, about whoever believes in Jesus not perishing but having eternal life.

The words were simple but they carried weight.

They felt important in a way I could not explain.

I told Parana I would think about it and I would keep her secret and I would do whatever I could to protect her.

though I had no idea what that would be.

Over the next several weeks, as the wedding preparations continued, Parana shared more of her faith with me, not pushing, not demanding that I believe, just sharing what she had found.

She would tell me about the passages she had been reading.

She would explain what different things meant.

She would describe how prayer to Jesus felt different from the ritual prayers we had always done.

She told me about worship, how the Christians she learned about from Leila sang songs of praise to Jesus.

How they talked to God as if he was their father, not a distant and demanding judge.

Oh, how they gathered together not out of obligation but out of love and joy.

She told me about grace.

This was the concept she kept coming back to.

The one that seemed to mean the most to her.

Grace meant getting something you did not deserve.

It meant God’s love was free, not earned.

It meant that no matter how many times you failed, no matter how imperfect you were, God still loved you completely.

You could not lose his love because you had not earned it in the first place.

Uh this was so different from Islam.

In Islam, everything was about earning.

earning Allah’s favor, earning paradise, following enough rules, doing enough good deeds, being good enough.

There was always the fear that you had not done enough, that your bad deeds outweighed your good ones, that you would end up in hell despite your best efforts.

But Christianity, as Paruana described it, was different.

Jesus had already done the work.

He had already paid the price for sin.

All you had to do was accept the gift.

Believe in him.

Trust him and you were saved.

Not because of anything you did, but because of what he had done.

I wanted to believe it.

It sounded beautiful.

But it also sounded too easy.

How could salvation be free? How could you get to heaven without earning it? It seemed like there had to be a catch.

Parana said there was no catch.

The only requirement was faith.

Believing that Jesus was who he said he was.

Accepting his sacrifice on your behalf or giving your life to him.

That was it.

No complicated rules, no endless rituals, just faith and love.

She also told me about what it meant to follow Jesus even when it was hard.

She said that Jesus himself had suffered.

He had been rejected, beaten, mocked, crucified.

He understood suffering and he promised to be with his followers through their suffering.

He did not promise to take it away, but he promised to walk through it with them.

This made sense of her peace.

to Paruana was facing an impossible situation.

She was about to be forced into marriage with a stranger, taken away from everyone she loved, locked into a life she did not choose.

She should have been desperate, but instead she was peaceful because she believed Jesus was with her.

She believed that even in the worst circumstances, she was not alone.

I asked her what would happen with the marriage.

What was she planning to do? She said she did not know.

She had been praying about it constantly.

She could not marry the man as a Christian.

That would be living a lie.

But if she refused the marriage, my father would demand to know why.

And if she told the truth, she would be killed.

She said she had thought about running away, about trying to escape to Kabul and finding Leila and the underground church there.

But she did not know how she could do that.

We had no money, no connections, no way to travel alone.

And if she tried to run and was caught, the punishment would be severe.

Um, so she was praying and waiting, asking Jesus to show her what to do, trusting that somehow he would make a way.

I wanted to help her, but I was 12 years old and powerless.

I had no resources, no influence, no ability to change anything.

All I could do was be there for her, keep her secret, and watch as events unfolded.

Two months before the wedding, Leila came to visit.

Her family made the trip from Kabell, saying they wanted to help with wedding preparations.

My father was pleased to have them.

Leila’s father was wealthy and respected, and his presence brought honor to our family.

Leila and Paruana spent every possible moment together during those three days.

They said they were planning wedding details, choosing decorations, discussing traditions.

No one questioned this.

It was normal for the bride and her cousin to spend time together before such an important event.

But I knew they were not just talking about the wedding.

Well, they were talking about Jesus, about faith, about what Parana should do, about whether there was any way to escape the impossible situation she was in.

I tried to find moments to be with them, to hear what they were saying, but they were careful.

They did not speak openly when anyone else was around, even me.

They knew that the more people who knew, the more danger there was.

On the last night of the visit, Leila found a moment alone with me.

We were in the courtyard or supposedly cleaning up after the evening meal.

The other women were inside.

We had maybe five minutes before someone would come looking for us.

Leila looked at me with kind eyes and asked if Parana had talked to me about her faith.

I nodded, too afraid to speak.

She asked me what I thought about it.

I said I did not fully understand it.

I said it seemed dangerous.

I said I was afraid for Paruana and for her.

Leila smiled sadly.

She said that yes, following Jesus was dangerous.

Uh especially for people like us.

In some countries, Christians could worship freely.

But in Afghanistan, in Pakistan, in Iran, in so many places, being a Christian could cost you your life.

But she said the danger was worth it because Jesus offered something that nothing else could give.

I asked her what that was.

She said freedom.

Not political freedom or physical freedom, but freedom of the soul.

Freedom from fear.

Freedom from the crushing weight of trying to earn God’s love.

Uh freedom from shame.

freedom to be yourself, to be loved as you are, to have hope beyond this life.

She said that before she became a Christian, she had felt like she was drowning.

Going through the motions of Islam, but feeling nothing, praying five times a day, but never feeling heard.

Trying to be good enough, but always failing.

living in fear of judgment, fear of hell, fear of disappointing God and family and everyone.

But when she found Jesus, all of that changed.

She said it was like someone had pulled her out of the water and let her breathe for the first time.

She was free.

not free from difficulty or danger, but free inside in the place that mattered most.

I asked her if she thought she might die for being a Christian.

She said yes, it was possible.

If her family found out, they might kill her or they might turn her over to religious authorities who would kill her.

She lived with that reality every day.

Uh but she said that dying for Christ was better than living without him.

She said that death was not the end for Christians.

It was just the doorway to being with Jesus forever.

I did not understand how someone could be so calm about the possibility of death, but I could see that Leila meant what she said.

She was not being dramatic or exaggerating.

She could truly believed that Jesus was worth dying for.

She told me that Jesus loved me too, that he was waiting for me, that when I was ready, we all I had to do was call on his name and he would save me.

She said she was praying for me every day, asking God to open my eyes and my heart.

Then someone called for us from inside the house.

Our private moment was over.

Ila hugged me quickly and whispered that I should be strong, that I should take care of Parana, that I should remember what she had told me.

The next day, Leila’s family left.

I watched Paruana say goodbye to her cousin.

Watch them embrace or watch the tears in both their eyes.

I wondered if they knew this might be the last time they saw each other.

I wondered if Leila had given Parana any advice about what to do.

I wondered if there was any hope at all.

After Leila left, Parana seemed different, more settled, more at peace.

I asked her what Ila had told her.

She said that Leila had encouraged her to remain faithful no matter what happened.

That suffering for Christ was an honor.

That even if she died or she would be with Jesus immediately in paradise.

That her death would not be the end but the beginning.

I asked if that was comforting.

She said yes and no.

She did not want to die.

She was 16 years old.

She wanted to live.

She wanted to see the world to learn to experience life beyond the walls of compounds and the control of men.

But if the choice was between denying Jesus and dying, she would choose death because Jesus was real and denying him would be denying the truth.

And she could not do that.

The wedding was now six weeks away.

My father had increased the preparations.

There were constant visitors, constant planning, constant activity.

Parana moved through it all calmly, doing what was required of her, speaking when spoken to, never complaining.

But I could see the strain in her eyes.

I could see the weight she carried.

And I began to pray.

Not the ritual prayers I had been taught, but real prayers, desperate prayers.

I prayed to Allah.

I prayed to Jesus.

I prayed to whoever might be listening.

I begged for parana to be saved.

I begged for a way out.

I begged for a miracle.

But no miracle came.

Instead, disaster came.

Four weeks before the wedding, something happened.

I still do not know exactly what.

I do not know if someone saw something they should not have seen or if one of our half siblings searched our room and found the hiding place or if someone intercepted a letter or or if God himself decided it was time for Parana’s faith to be tested.

But somehow my father found out.

I was not there when it happened.

I was in another part of the house helping my mother with laundry.

But I heard my father’s voice roaring through the compound like thunder.

I heard crashing sounds, things being thrown.

I heard Parana scream.

I dropped the wet clothes and started running toward our room.

But one of my halfb brothers grabbed me and held me back.

He said my father had forbidden anyone to interfere.

He said Parana was in serious trouble and I should stay away unless I wanted the same.

So I stood there held back by my brother’s strong grip, listening to my father rage at Parana.

I could not make out all the words, but I heard enough.

apostate kafir Christian betrayal shame death then I heard the sound of him hitting her once twice three times more I heard her crying out in pain I heard her trying to speak trying to explain I heard my father tell her to be silent to shut her lying mouth the first wife went into the room I could hear her voice joining my fathers accusing Parana, calling her terrible names, saying she had always known there was something wrong with her, that she was corrupted and evil.

My mother tried to go in, but my father shouted at her to stay out.

So, my mother stood near me, shaking violently, tears streaming down her face, unable to help her daughter.

Uh when my father finally came out of the room, his face was terrible, dark with rage, hard as stone.

He called for all the family to gather in the courtyard.

We came, all of us, the wives and children.

We stood there silent while my father made his announcement.

He said that Parana had committed the worst sin imaginable.

She had left Islam.

She had betrayed Allah and the prophet.

She had embraced the religion of the kafir, the religion of the enemies of Islam.

She had become a Christian.

Um, he said he had found evidence, letters from Leila filled with Christian blasphemy, papers with Bible verses written on them, a cross made from pieces of wood, all hidden in our room, proof of Parana’s apostasy.

He said that according to Islamic law, the punishment for apostasy was death.

An apostate was worse than a non-Muslim.

A non-Muslim had simply never accepted Islam.

But an apostate had known the truth and rejected it.

There was no mercy for such a person.

But he said to because Paruana was his daughter, he would give her a chance, one chance to repent, to renounce this Christian foolishness, to return to Islam, to beg Allah’s forgiveness.

If she would do this, he would spare her life.

The marriage would be cancelled, but she would live.

He ordered my brothers to bring Parana out.

They dragged her into the courtyard.

She looked terrible.

Her face was already swelling from where he had hit her.

Her lip was bleeding.

Her clothes were torn, but her eyes were clear.

Oh, focused.

She was not broken yet.

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