She was an Afghani teenager living in a suburb of Kabul when the Taliban came to power in 1996, and women were excluded from public life. Kamili needed to find a way to support her family, and she settled on dressmaking. She learned from her sister how to the sewing, and she surreptitiously went to dress shops to sell the clothes she made. She was successful in her enterprise, and it gradually grew. Lemmon explains how the home business became increasingly successful, and started to employ many local girls who needed to heard money to keep their families going. Eventually, after the downfall of the Taliban, Kamila won recognition for her resourcefulness and courage in a dangerous time.