Lost & Misrepresented Voices of Afghanistan Chapter 3 Page 17

Afghanastani community. Sultan also likes to dominate and control his own illiterate son. He keeps Mansur working hard within the shop but does not allow him to be educated or have any independence instead Sultan exerts his power as the male authority figure to dictate what he can and cannot do within the Khan household. Mansur is torn between his sense of duty to his father and also his sense of freedom which he struggles to exert within the controlling and powerful Khan household. Mansur is very much like his father to a certain degree. Whilst running his father’s shop he uses the opportunity to build links with female customers and he exerts his own trickster habits when he convinces a young girl to meet him out of the confines of the strict Islamic community:

He waits for the goddess all the next day, armed not