I have known Nadia for many years. I still remember when she joined the agency, with a certain distrust, but with a clean and brave look. Since then, we have worked and been through a lot together. I can say that Nadia is a special author for me. I admire her for her courage, for the way she loves her people and her Catalan parents, for how she appreciates Catalonia, that welcomed her, and for how she has never stopped fighting for what she believes in, for the women, for her people, and for peace. This book is a brutal account of what she thinks and what she has done and wants to do in order not to throw in the towel even if the world has gone backwards; even if her country is once again under Taliban power; even if it seems that everything she has achieved has been useless.

Dreaming of peace begins in August 2021. Afghan narrator and activist Nadia Ghulam, seeing the Taliban advancing in Afghanistan, begins to move desperately to help her own people. These pages were born after conversations between Nadia and journalist Ariadna Oltra, in which they talked about how she and her family have lived this last year, what she had to do to bring part of her family to Spain and what those who have not been able to leave Kabul are experiencing. The story of a few, and yet, the reality of thousands of Afghan families and other places in the world.

That same month of August, the media bombarded us with shocking images of men falling out planes as they desperately tried to flee the occupation. Months later, no one is talking about it, nor about those who were able to flee and who have been welcomed in different parts of the world. Nadia’s voice is the voice of all of those people. That Afghan girl who pretended to be a boy for ten years to have the rights she was denied as a woman, has been living in Barcelona for sixteen years. Her life goal and that of these pages is to help the women of her country so that they can continue their studies and become “agents for peace”, to expand in occupied Afghanistan.

Thank you, Nadia: for not losing hope and for continuing to fight against everything and everyone. Unfortunately, the world we live in is not as many of us would like it to be, but there are people like you who always make it better.