Zholia Parsi bounced on a blue-and-white Noxon mountain bike as she rode laps around the fieldstone sanctuary of St. Petri Kirche in the town of Burg near Magdeburg, Germany, speaking to family on the phone and laughing.
Parsi, who led a women’s rights movement in Afghanistan and fled after imprisonment and death threats from the Taliban, is known internationally for her work on human rights. But in her past three months living at St. Petri as part of its church asylum program, she’s careful not to venture beyond the cement wall that encloses the congregation’s chapel and parish house.
But the bike, which she’d never ridden before coming to St. Petri, is enough freedom for now.
