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Afghan Sisters in Silicon Valley
By Sharon Simonson
SANTA CLARA, Calif.—As young children, Afghan sisters Hasina and Somaya Qaderi scampered through dusty streets once shared by soldiers under command of Alexander the Great. In their native Herat, an enormous citadel built in the early 14th century still occupies the same site as Alexander’s fort. The citadel's turreted walls rise high and stern from the central hilltop, a weighty symbol of the 2,500 years of civilized history that underlie the modern city’s expression.
Herat is 7,500 miles from the suburban Santa Clara ranch home that the women now own and share with their parents. Even that enormous distance doesn’t measure the intellectual, psychological and emotional chasm that the sisters have leapt in the last 12 years, and in some ways since their births.
The ...