Jan is an Afghan native who moved to the United States in 1970 to attend college; her brother was at MIT. She became an American citizen, had a son, settled in Marshfield, and opened her Duxbury business. When the Sept. 11 attacks occurred, she was as horrified as any other American citizen.
“I’m Muslim,’’ she says, “and Islam is a very peaceful religion. Terrorists have no place in Islam; they’re evil, and evil has no place in any religion.’’
Five years ago, Jan decided that what her benighted homeland needed most of all was to educate its girls - something that under the Taliban was forbidden. The school, the Zabuli Education Center, opened four years ago in Deh’ Subz, a group of seven villages about 45 minutes from Kabul.
Three years ago, Jan moved back to Afghanistan to be closer to the school, but she still owns her Marshfield home and gets back here every several months to see her son, a director in Los Angeles, her brother in Washington, D.C., and to fund-raise. This week, she spoke at a forum sponsored by the Duxbury Rotary Club, where she is still a member. She brought along wares to sell for the school: jackets, scarves, jewelry, and bookmarks made by the girls, with their pictures on them.
In the spring, she will be back to speak and fund-raise in Wellesley and Concord, which have also been generous to the cause. That’s because the school’s executive director is Patti Quigley, whose husband, Patrick, was on United Airlines Flight 175, which crashed into the World Trade Center on Sept. 11. Quigley, who lives in Wellesley, had started an organization with another Sept. 11 widow, Susan Retik, to help Afghan women widowed in the ensuing US invasion.
In the course of their work, Quigley and Jan met, and Quigley decided to help with the school to prevent future generations from despair and violence. Neither she nor Jan is paid for their work; the money raised goes directly to the school.
