In the tradition of the international bestsellers Not Without My Daughter by Betty Mahmoody and Desert Flower by Waris Dirie, Hidden Bars tells the shocking true story of a young woman’s search for her lost mother and her struggle for self-hood and respect within a culture that brutally suppresses women’s aspirations, rights and freedoms. Hameeda Lakho was brought to Holland as a four year old, a member of an immigrant family from Pakistan. Her father soon reveals a violent and tyrannical nature, beating and abusing the girls and their mother with impunity in keeping with the iron code of his land that women should endure any punishment or humiliation in silent obedience to men. Hameeda’s mother has nowhere to turn – she is a stranger in a foreign land and cannot understand or trust the ways of a modern European society. He finally commits the cruellest act of all: he banishes the mother and the youngest child to Pakistan and lies to Hameeda and her sisters, telling them that their mother has died in car crash. Years of terror, humiliations, isolation and abuse forced Hameeda to flee the house at a young age. Their lives are reduced to that of virtual slaves as the cycle of abuse grows, until there is no option but to run away and stay in orphanages or on the road, always the outsider without hope of home and acceptance.