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In many families of Afghanistan, the birth of a girl is mourned. While boys are seen as blessings, girls are considered burdens and forced to live a strict life of limited options. They can't leave the house alone; they're not educated; and they're dressed in clothes that conceal them and literally restrict their view of the world.

But some young girls find a way to fight that for at least a few years.

In 2010, Jenny Nordberg wrote the first stories about the bacha posh, girls who dress up like boys to live as a boy as long as they can. Those stories appeared, to much interest and acclaim, in The New York Times. She has now expanded her reporting into a new book called The Underground Girls of Kabul: In Search of a Hidden Resistance in Afghanistan.

Nordberg tells NPR's Scott Simon about how common the bacha posh are in Afghanistan, and what's expected of them once they hit puberty.

On discovering a bacha posh among the children of a female Afghan parliamentarian

This was the very first time I was invited to her house, and I came to interview her about being a parliamentarian in Afghanistan. ... And I was with the two little twin girls, and they spoke a little bit of English, like a limited English, and we had a conversation that was mostly about, "What color do you like? What do you want to be when you grow up?" And all of a sudden, one of them said, "You know our brother is really a girl." And I looked at her, and I was like, "Yeah, yeah." And then the other said, somewhat annoyed that I didn't take her seriously, she said, "No, no. It's our sister." And at that point, I hadn't met the youngest in the family. She had four children all together, and I knew them as three girls and a youngest boy.

In 2010, Jenny Nordberg was awarded the Robert F. Kennedy Award for Excellence in Journalism for a television documentary on Afghan women. Magnus Forsberg/Courtesy of Crown hide caption

In 2010, Jenny Nordberg was awarded the Robert F. Kennedy Award for Excellence in Journalism for a television documentary on Afghan women.

On how common a practice it is in Afghanistan

Every single Afghan I have spoken to, except for those who have been abroad for a very long time and are essentially expatriates, they will know of someone. They will have a neighbor, someone in their extended family, a great-grandmother, a colleague, there will usually be one in a school. In more conservative areas, there might be more. But every Afghan will know about this, and every Afghan has a story to tell.

Continue reading here:
Why Afghanistan's 'Underground Girls' Skirt Tradition To Live As Boys