She speaks by phone from Copenhagen in the voice of an older sister or a mother trying to protect the Afghan girls and women who found freedom and joy on soccer fields.
Khalida Popal, a founder and former captain of Afghanistan’s women’s national team, knows she is privileged to live with her mother and father in Denmark, a place of safety and freedom. Although threats of violence and messages of hate still reach her there, Popal will not be silent.
Yet silence is what she urges of the soccer-playing girls and young women now under Taliban rule.