 Women would visit the school three times a week, ostensibly to sew, but would instead hear lectures given by professors of literature from Herat University.Children playing outside would alert the group if the religious police approached, giving them time to hide their books and pick up sewing equipment.Herat may have been the most oppressed area under the Taliban, according to Christina Lamb, author of "The Sewing Circles of Herat", because it was a cultured city and mostly Shi'a, both of which the Taliban opposed.