Villages are supposed to hold elections for men's and women's councils to decide how to use the money, but sometimes, Zeithi said, "we cannot find any literate woman."
But she has become a fervent believer in the program, less for the monetary benefits it bestows than for the social transformation she sees it creating. She has watched women who once would not leave their homes sit in meetings and discuss their district's problems.
"Nothing will be done by force -- by pushing. If we go to a village and discuss what their rights are with the women, it will have a bad effect, especially with the men."
In villages, men and women are clamoring for schools and better-educated teachers, Zeithi said. Across Afghanistan, the level of education is gradually rising. There are facilities for studying and training, and chances to study abroad.
"These make me optimistic," she said.
Helal is optimistic, too, not least because of the older women who show up at her door -- having been transported by obliging, even eager husbands and brothers -- to learn to read.
Girls as well as boys crowd into her basement classroom, and she no longer needs to school them in how to lie to the Taliban about it.
Helal's husband died as the Taliban came to power, so the family lost its male breadwinner just as women were prohibited from being breadwinners. The secret teaching helped her support her three children. It also helped, she said in an interview days after the Taliban left Herat in 2001, to keep her sane.
Now, Helal seems a woman making up for lost years. Back at the government school, she starts each morning at 7, then heads home to teach private courses. After that, she is off to the university, where she is in the third year of earning her bachelor's degree, under a government program created to send teachers back to college.
"Knowledge is a river," she said. "Whatever you take is not enough." Her school had nominated her to be deputy director, but she turned it down. "I am sure if I get my degree they will offer me director."
Back home, at 4pm, some 100 students wait for her extra instruction. After 5, the professional work is done, and the housework begins.
"She's very tired," said her son, Haris, 19.
She must earn enough to keep Haris, an engineering student, in college. She wants her daughter, Ghazal, 16, who helps with the home school, to attend a university as well.
"My son is studying," she said with pride. "If I do not work like this, how can we eat? How can we survive?" She dreams that he will be able to go abroad.
The Taliban have been banished from her memory as determinedly as they were cleansed from the city.
"Nothing remained," she said. "We have completely forgotten it."
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