Lives and Hopes: Women and Girls in the Pankisi Gorge

The lives of women and girls in the Pankisi Gorge are not all the same. Their voices, as they find them, speak of lives:

as a mother trying to feed her children

as a woman who believes in integrity but knows that telling the truth can get her killed

as a woman adored by her husband

as a girl who wants a better education and a better life than her mother had

amid great natural beauty

as a woman who long ago stopped questioning out loud

as a Muslim in a fiercely Christian country 

as a girl who questions tradition

as a woman who because of poverty had to give up a child

as a woman who is asked to silence herself, even as her sons die in Syria or her daughter is bride-napped

as a refugee

as a woman in a patriarchal culture

as a woman in the friendship of women

as a wife who must support her family on her own because her husband abandoned her or has a serious illness or can't find work