Najiba Hussaini was killed in a Taliban suicide bombing in Kabul in 2017. Rahila Monji was killed the following year when an Islamic State bomber detonated himself at a university entrance exam preparation center. Their loved ones were inspired to fulfill the same dream: to build public libraries memorializing the women they had lost. Today, those libraries—one in Kabul and the other in Daikundi Province—stand as symbols of the progress made toward gender equality and access to education in Afghanistan where as many as 3.5 million girls are enrolled in school, according to a recent US watchdog report, and where, as of 2018, one-third of the nation’s teachers were women.