American Life
Zahira moved to the United States in 1975, when her husband was Afghanistan's envoy to the United Nations.
After the Communist coup in 1978 her brother was murdered, her father put under house arrest, and all her family's assets were seized.
Around the time of the Communist coup in Afghanistan she and her husband separated.
Zahira described working for Milton Pitts, President Ronald Reagan's barber, accompanying him to the White House to give the President a manicure while he got his hair cut, and being asked whether Reagan should authorize giving the Afghan resistance stinger missiles.
Zahira also started cutting George H. W. Bush's hair, as well as Barbara Bush, Reagan, Margaret Thatcher and other dignitaries. She described feeling hurt by the number of customers she lost following al Qaeda's attacks on September 11, 2001, and being brought to tears by George H.W. Bush's thoughtfulness. He contacted her personally, following the attacks, telling her:
| “ | "I hope you're OK and that no one thinks you have anything to do with this." | ” |
When he learned of the prejudice she was experiencing he sent her an autographed photo, and organized autographed photos from several other Presidents who knew her.
Read more about this topic: Zahira Zahir
Famous quotes containing the words american and/or life:
“There is not a more disgusting spectacle under the sun than our subserviency to British criticism. It is disgusting, first, because it is truckling, servile, pusillanimous—secondly, because of its gross irrationality. We know the British to bear us little but ill will—we know that, in no case do they utter unbiased opinions of American books ... we know all this, and yet, day after day, submit our necks to the degrading yoke of the crudest opinion that emanates from the fatherland.”
—Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1845)
“I want relations which are not purely personal, based on purely personal qualities; but relations based upon some unanimous accord in truth or belief, and a harmony of purpose, rather than of personality. I am weary of personality.... Let us be easy and impersonal, not forever fingering over our own souls, and the souls of our acquaintances, but trying to create a new life, a new common life, a new complete tree of life from the roots that are within us.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)