Politics & Government
![Mitchell Zuckoff - [object Object] author](https://res.cloudinary.com/readsomnia/image/upload/authors/a_B001H6TW6O.jpg)
The Secret Gate: A True Story of Courage and Sacrifice During the Collapse of Afghanistan
The incredible true story of a breathtaking rescue in the frenzied final hours of the U.S. evacuation of Afghanistan-and how a brave Afghan mother and a compassionate American officer engineered a daring escape-from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of 13 Hours
When the U.S. began its withdrawal from Afghanistan and the Afghan Army instantly collapsed, Homeira Qaderi was marked for death at the hands of the Taliban. A celebrated author, academic, and champion for women's liberation, Homeira had achieved celebrity in her home country by winning custody of her son in a contentious divorce, a rarity in Afghanistan's patriarchal society. As evacuation planes departed above, Homeira was caught in the turmoil at the Kabul Airport, trying and failing to secure escape for her and her eight-year-old son, Siawash, along with her parents and the rest of their family.
Meanwhile, a young American diplomat named Sam Aronson was enjoying a brief vacation between assignments when chaos descended upon Afghanistan. Sam immediately volunteered to join the skeleton team of remaining officials at Kabul Airport, frantically racing to help rescue the more than 100,000 stranded Americans and their Afghan helpers. When Sam learned that the CIA had established a secret entrance into the airport two miles away from the desperate crowds crushing toward the gates, he started bringing families directly through, personally rescuing as many as fifty-two people in a single day.
On the last day of the evacuation, Sam was contacted by Homeira's literary agent, who persuaded him to help her escape. He needed to risk his life to get them through the gate in the final hours before it closed forever. He borrowed night-vision goggles and enlisted a Dari-speaking colleague and two heavily armed security contract "shooters." He contacted Homeira with a burner phone, and they used a flashlight code signal borrowed from boyhood summer camp. For her part, Homeira broke Sam's rules and withstood his profanities. Together they braved gunfire by Afghan Army soldiers anxious about the restive crowds outside the airport. Ultimately, to enter the airport, Homeira and Siawash would have to leave behind their family and everything they had ever known.
The Secret Gate tells the thrilling, emotional tale of a young man's courage and a mother and son's skin-of-the-teeth escape from a homeland that is no longer their own.
When the U.S. began its withdrawal from Afghanistan and the Afghan Army instantly collapsed, Homeira Qaderi was marked for death at the hands of the Taliban. A celebrated author, academic, and champion for women's liberation, Homeira had achieved celebrity in her home country by winning custody of her son in a contentious divorce, a rarity in Afghanistan's patriarchal society. As evacuation planes departed above, Homeira was caught in the turmoil at the Kabul Airport, trying and failing to secure escape for her and her eight-year-old son, Siawash, along with her parents and the rest of their family.
Meanwhile, a young American diplomat named Sam Aronson was enjoying a brief vacation between assignments when chaos descended upon Afghanistan. Sam immediately volunteered to join the skeleton team of remaining officials at Kabul Airport, frantically racing to help rescue the more than 100,000 stranded Americans and their Afghan helpers. When Sam learned that the CIA had established a secret entrance into the airport two miles away from the desperate crowds crushing toward the gates, he started bringing families directly through, personally rescuing as many as fifty-two people in a single day.
On the last day of the evacuation, Sam was contacted by Homeira's literary agent, who persuaded him to help her escape. He needed to risk his life to get them through the gate in the final hours before it closed forever. He borrowed night-vision goggles and enlisted a Dari-speaking colleague and two heavily armed security contract "shooters." He contacted Homeira with a burner phone, and they used a flashlight code signal borrowed from boyhood summer camp. For her part, Homeira broke Sam's rules and withstood his profanities. Together they braved gunfire by Afghan Army soldiers anxious about the restive crowds outside the airport. Ultimately, to enter the airport, Homeira and Siawash would have to leave behind their family and everything they had ever known.
The Secret Gate tells the thrilling, emotional tale of a young man's courage and a mother and son's skin-of-the-teeth escape from a homeland that is no longer their own.
Editorial Reviews
"An unforgettable account of a daring attempt to temper the brutality of war. It's all here: the impossible moral choices, the desperation and the ingenuity, the courage to step in and help when most needed, the anguish of those who must uproot themselves and take the struggle for freedom to another shore. The Secret Gate is inspiring on every level."-Robert Kolker, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Hidden Valley Road
"Mitchell Zuckoff's meticulous recounting provides instructive glimpses into the chaotic end to America's military engagement as well as the barbed trauma of being uprooted from home."-Nadia Hashimi, internationally bestselling author of The Pearl That Broke Its Shell and Sparks Like Stars
"This riveting book has ‘major motion picture' written all over it. A must read!"-Douglas Brinkley, New York Times bestselling author of Silent Spring Revolution and American Moonshot
"No one else but Mitchell Zuckoff could pull this diamond of a survivor's tale from the rough chaos of the evacuation of Afghanistan. A harrowing true story of escape, perseverance, and courage under fire, told with a journalist's eye and a novelist's skill."-Chuck Hogan, New York Times bestselling author of Gangland
"A triumph of narrative nonfiction. Mitchell Zuckoff reveals the chaos of the U.S. departure from Afghanistan with pulse-pounding urgency and heartrending insight."-Karen Abbott, New York Times bestselling author of The Ghosts of Eden Park
"Mitchell Zuckoff has located a genuinely thrilling tale, told with style, grace, and empathy. The Secret Gate will get your blood pumping."-Hampton Sides, New York Times bestselling auth...
"Mitchell Zuckoff's meticulous recounting provides instructive glimpses into the chaotic end to America's military engagement as well as the barbed trauma of being uprooted from home."-Nadia Hashimi, internationally bestselling author of The Pearl That Broke Its Shell and Sparks Like Stars
"This riveting book has ‘major motion picture' written all over it. A must read!"-Douglas Brinkley, New York Times bestselling author of Silent Spring Revolution and American Moonshot
"No one else but Mitchell Zuckoff could pull this diamond of a survivor's tale from the rough chaos of the evacuation of Afghanistan. A harrowing true story of escape, perseverance, and courage under fire, told with a journalist's eye and a novelist's skill."-Chuck Hogan, New York Times bestselling author of Gangland
"A triumph of narrative nonfiction. Mitchell Zuckoff reveals the chaos of the U.S. departure from Afghanistan with pulse-pounding urgency and heartrending insight."-Karen Abbott, New York Times bestselling author of The Ghosts of Eden Park
"Mitchell Zuckoff has located a genuinely thrilling tale, told with style, grace, and empathy. The Secret Gate will get your blood pumping."-Hampton Sides, New York Times bestselling auth...
Short Excerpt Teaser
1
Homeira
One bright summer morning in 2021, Homeira Qaderi hurried her eight-year-old son, Siawash, out the door of their Kabul apartment. To speed their exit, she made him a promise that set his heart racing: tonight, after school, we'll fight the Taliban.
The electricity was out again in the middle-class Fourth District near Kabul University, so Homeira ignored the elevator and followed Siawash down ten flights of stairs.
The temperature hovered around eighty degrees Fahrenheit when they stepped outside at 7 a.m. that Tuesday, August 3. Mother and son turned a corner into a cobblestone alley where a van waited to take him to a private international school that taught classes in English. As Siawash scrambled inside, Homeira heard him boast to his friends about her daring battle plan.
Homeira watched the van drive off, praying as always that a suicide attack wouldn't kill him.
She returned to the apartment building where she'd remade her life. Where she regained her balance after Siawash's father divorced her for challenging his decision to take a second wife. Where, after a forced separation, she was raising Siawash to be an enlightened Afghan man. Where she earned fame, fans, and deadly enemies as an author and activist. And where she intended to spend the rest of her days writing more books and campaigning for women's equality in a city she loved for its beauty and its possibilities, despite its dangers and its flaws.
Kabul-jan, she called it, using the Farsi term of endearment for "my dear Kabul."
Homeira breathed heavily as she scaled the last of more than a hundred steps in her headscarf and long-sleeved blouse. Inside her apartment, she moved with a dancer's grace, unwrapping her shawl to reveal a cascade of thick brown hair that fell to her waist. Homeira was thirty-eight but looked younger, with high cheekbones, full lips, and large brown eyes that expressed her every volcanic emotion. A shade taller than five feet, she typically wore three-inch heels, which she removed to climb the stairs. She remained barefoot inside her four-bedroom sanctuary.
The sunny apartment reflected a life that would have been unimaginable for a single mother in Afghanistan even a few years earlier. She purchased it with earnings from her first book published in English, an acclaimed memoir of her girlhood during the Soviet-Afghan War of the 1980s and under the Taliban's vicious rule in the 1990s. The book doubled as a love letter to Siawash during their three painful years apart. The title alone made her a heroine to progressives and an infidel to extremists: Dancing in the Mosque.
Every detail of Homeira's home delighted her: shiny wood floors with hand-knotted rugs; a tufted white couch where Siawash did his homework while she read; a high-ceilinged office with a desk fit for a prime minister; an old-fashioned gramophone to play dance music when no men were nearby; an exercise room that served as home to Siawash's pet turtle; shelves brimming with books, honors, and diplomas; a plant-filled balcony; and windows that faced north to the blue domes of a Shiite shrine and, four miles beyond, to Kabul International Airport.
Homeira went to the kitchen for a handful of grapes and a large cup of sheer chai, tea with boiled milk, to kick-start her day. As she poured the pink tea, the room filled with scents of rosemary and eucalyptus. She carried the steaming cup to her office, where a silver MacBook laptop on her desk connected her to a world spinning out of control.
The previous night, Homeira spoke by phone with her father, Wakil Ahmad. They were ethnically Pashtun, the same tribe that spawned the Taliban, but the family scorned the fundamentalist insurgents and their repressive, misogynistic interpretation of Islam. Wakil Ahmad was his celebrity daughter's biggest supporter. He lived with his wife, Homeira's mother Ansari, and four of Homeira's five younger siblings in Herat, an oasis city near the border with Iran, five hundred miles west of Kabul. During the war with the Russians that consumed much of Homeira's childhood, her father and several uncles fought among the militants known as mujahideen. Since then, Wakil Ahmad made a threadbare living teaching literature, with a special fondness for Russian novels.
Internet phone service was spotty in Herat, so Wakil Ahmad had climbed to his roof to speak with Homeira. The call broke up repeatedly, but each time they connected Homeira heard gunshots from nearby clashes between the Afghan Army and the Taliban. Unconfirmed reports circulated that the Taliban had laid siege to Herat, Afghanistan's third-largest city, as its fighters sought to expand recent gains in rural areas, with an eye toward ...
Homeira
One bright summer morning in 2021, Homeira Qaderi hurried her eight-year-old son, Siawash, out the door of their Kabul apartment. To speed their exit, she made him a promise that set his heart racing: tonight, after school, we'll fight the Taliban.
The electricity was out again in the middle-class Fourth District near Kabul University, so Homeira ignored the elevator and followed Siawash down ten flights of stairs.
The temperature hovered around eighty degrees Fahrenheit when they stepped outside at 7 a.m. that Tuesday, August 3. Mother and son turned a corner into a cobblestone alley where a van waited to take him to a private international school that taught classes in English. As Siawash scrambled inside, Homeira heard him boast to his friends about her daring battle plan.
Homeira watched the van drive off, praying as always that a suicide attack wouldn't kill him.
She returned to the apartment building where she'd remade her life. Where she regained her balance after Siawash's father divorced her for challenging his decision to take a second wife. Where, after a forced separation, she was raising Siawash to be an enlightened Afghan man. Where she earned fame, fans, and deadly enemies as an author and activist. And where she intended to spend the rest of her days writing more books and campaigning for women's equality in a city she loved for its beauty and its possibilities, despite its dangers and its flaws.
Kabul-jan, she called it, using the Farsi term of endearment for "my dear Kabul."
Homeira breathed heavily as she scaled the last of more than a hundred steps in her headscarf and long-sleeved blouse. Inside her apartment, she moved with a dancer's grace, unwrapping her shawl to reveal a cascade of thick brown hair that fell to her waist. Homeira was thirty-eight but looked younger, with high cheekbones, full lips, and large brown eyes that expressed her every volcanic emotion. A shade taller than five feet, she typically wore three-inch heels, which she removed to climb the stairs. She remained barefoot inside her four-bedroom sanctuary.
The sunny apartment reflected a life that would have been unimaginable for a single mother in Afghanistan even a few years earlier. She purchased it with earnings from her first book published in English, an acclaimed memoir of her girlhood during the Soviet-Afghan War of the 1980s and under the Taliban's vicious rule in the 1990s. The book doubled as a love letter to Siawash during their three painful years apart. The title alone made her a heroine to progressives and an infidel to extremists: Dancing in the Mosque.
Every detail of Homeira's home delighted her: shiny wood floors with hand-knotted rugs; a tufted white couch where Siawash did his homework while she read; a high-ceilinged office with a desk fit for a prime minister; an old-fashioned gramophone to play dance music when no men were nearby; an exercise room that served as home to Siawash's pet turtle; shelves brimming with books, honors, and diplomas; a plant-filled balcony; and windows that faced north to the blue domes of a Shiite shrine and, four miles beyond, to Kabul International Airport.
Homeira went to the kitchen for a handful of grapes and a large cup of sheer chai, tea with boiled milk, to kick-start her day. As she poured the pink tea, the room filled with scents of rosemary and eucalyptus. She carried the steaming cup to her office, where a silver MacBook laptop on her desk connected her to a world spinning out of control.
The previous night, Homeira spoke by phone with her father, Wakil Ahmad. They were ethnically Pashtun, the same tribe that spawned the Taliban, but the family scorned the fundamentalist insurgents and their repressive, misogynistic interpretation of Islam. Wakil Ahmad was his celebrity daughter's biggest supporter. He lived with his wife, Homeira's mother Ansari, and four of Homeira's five younger siblings in Herat, an oasis city near the border with Iran, five hundred miles west of Kabul. During the war with the Russians that consumed much of Homeira's childhood, her father and several uncles fought among the militants known as mujahideen. Since then, Wakil Ahmad made a threadbare living teaching literature, with a special fondness for Russian novels.
Internet phone service was spotty in Herat, so Wakil Ahmad had climbed to his roof to speak with Homeira. The call broke up repeatedly, but each time they connected Homeira heard gunshots from nearby clashes between the Afghan Army and the Taliban. Unconfirmed reports circulated that the Taliban had laid siege to Herat, Afghanistan's third-largest city, as its fighters sought to expand recent gains in rural areas, with an eye toward ...
