Stay, Daughter

We did not stay in our houses. Not in the way our grandmothers had, or our mothers. We went out a little more and veiled ourselves a little less. Some of us longed for more learning and dreamed about leaving home to get it. The elders shook their heads and cautioned: too much education could ruin a girl-s future.

To be a Muslim girl in the Sri Lanka of the 50s and 60s was to have to stay inside once you hit puberty; where even a glimpse of flesh was forbidden; and where things were done the way they-d always been done.

But Yasmin Azad-s family is full of love, humour and larger-than-life characters, despite the strictures half of them were under. And almost despite himself, Yasmin-s father allows her an education - an education that would open the whole world to her, even as it risked closing her off from those she was closest to.

An extraordinary portrait of a time and a community in the midst of profound change, Stay, Daughter v