General Khatool Mohammadzai is 45, is a parachutist with 572 jumps, and has been wearing the Afghan Army’s uniform for 30 years. And, most of all, she is a woman. During her career, she has faced death more than once, she had to spend years confined at home during the Taliban regime, she had to bury her husband, killed during the Soviet war. Yet, she managed to become the country’s only woman general. Today, she has a desk job at the Ministry of Defense in Kabul. When she goes home every night, she changes in civilian clothes, buys rice and groceries at the local bazaar, and she cooks dinner for her son and her nephews, who sometimes spend the night at her place. She made her last parachute jump in 2006, during a military parade in Kabul, and ever since she’s been longing for the time “when I will be able to jump again in security”.
