Cruel games with a gun, maggoty food and regular parades of the women before their guards were part of life behind bars for the captives.

The women prisoners were a source of fascination for the jailers and their commanders. Every evening members of the Taleban Foreign Ministry, accompanied by a clutch of bearded strangers, would visit the cells and demand that the women stand by the bars. Wordlessly, they would stare at the women from head to toe. The prisoners — who were never touched or abused — called the session “zoo time�.