ABSTRACT
It’s good for a girl to be educated but not to be educated too much. After marriage, she may do courses as a hobby. If her family is very liberal, she may work, perhaps in a primary school, just for a year or two; or in a women’s hospital. She may work anywhere, really, where she knows that she will not, on her daily journey, or in the course of events, come across a man. There’s a whole sealed-off floor at the Ministry of Planning, where women economists sit at their desks and communicate with their male colleagues by telephone.… It is apartheid: stringent, absolute. The cafés are segregated, the buses. Allah has laid a duty on both men and women to seek knowledge but… Education is an ornament. It makes one a better mother. The girls have a chilling saying: ‘We will hang our certificates in the kitchen.’
