My Shattered Dreams
This piece has been written by Rahil (pseudonym) who lives in Afghanistan in English and has been translated to Persian by us.
You can read the version in Farsi here.
Before I start on the shattering of my hopes and dreams – the hopes and dreams of millions of Afghan girls –, I need to provide some context.
My generation of Afghan women is the generation of change. We are the generation that was born in and opened our eyes for the first time in a world of hardship and struggle, and who dared to change the mindsets of our family and society about our role in society and the world, and who – just as we were about to reap the rewards of our hard work – had everything suddenly snatched away from us right before our eyes, leaving us in days of darkness, cursing the day of our birth and all our years of existence. All our hopes were killed in a single night, as our tears fell on our pillows, and our hopes and dreams were buried into sterile soil.
I thank my God that he made tears translucent, or else the secret of our pain would be made visible for all to see.
Yes.
I am talking about the day and night when a terrifying, ignorant terrorist group suddenly and unexpectedly took our entire homeland hostage. I will never forget August 15, 2021 – the day our capital fell.
I am the daughter of a freedom-loving people; a girl who was born in a distant village in the North of Afghanistan, between the mountains of the Hindu Kush, without access to any medical help, during the first rule of the Taliban in 1996-2001. In those hard times, my people struggled to find even one meal to eat a day, making long days scouring through the lands and picking vegetables and fruits from the bushes and trees.
Who knows…maybe the hardships of our early days were just a taste of the innumerable hardships we would face throughout the rest of our lives. I was one of the girls who, despite local and cultural pressures, loved to read and write. Even as a young child in my father’s home village, I would often sit outside with a pen and paper by myself, gazing at the roaring waves of our river, listening to the beautiful voices of the migratory birds on the trees, and dreaming of a bright future where I could make a difference. I hoped that one day when I grew up, I could open a health clinic in my village, unaware then of my future: a future where just as I got close to achieving my dreams, I would not even be allowed to leave my house anymore.
What could be more difficult than walking on the path towards your dreams, and suddenly having that path rupture, creating seams that are as wide as the entire sky?
Despite the many ups and downs of life, I finished high school in Kabul and received excellent results in the national university entrance exams. I succeeded in enrolling in my dream study field at Kabul University.
My educational success provided hope to the other girls both in my immediate and further removed family. I even hoped that I would be the first girl to succeed in my profession from my village and even province, and everyone around me was constantly encouraging me to continue my success and be a beam of hope for my people.
Nevertheless, even my school period was not without heartbreak and challenges. I still vividly remember the day when I was waiting at the bus stop for the bus that went to our school. Five minutes after I got onto the bus, I saw an explosion behind me at the bus stop, later claimed by the terrorist Taliban. The burnt and wounded corpses of innocent civilians who were commuting to work had painted the entire road blood red. One of my dear friends lost her father in that terrorist attack. Even seven years later, I cannot bear to look into that road because without reliving that horrifying moment.
University is the place from which I have the best memories. It was the place where I developed so much as a person. However, even from the first day that I started university, the fear that there would be a terrorist attack at the university was always present in my mind. Every day, I would go to university trembling with fear. This was not ungrounded fear. On November 3, 2022 near my faculty, there was an attack near the location where students would start their internships. Students’ corpses lay all over the street, campus, and classroom, scattered like the blossoming flowers of spring. What a terrible day that was! As soon as we found out about the attacks at our university, we were stuck inside our faculty building until 6 pm, waiting to hear when the Taliban’s attacks would stop so that we could safely leave. This attack was committed by the same group that now considers itself to be the defender of security in my country.
I will never forget the tears that my peers shed, nor the broken hearts of every mother who lost a child in that university attack.
Despite all this, I succeeded to graduate from university with top marks. I was ready to serve my country. After passing the internship entrance exam, I was preparing to start work in a key ministry of the government. Unfortunately, everything fell apart when the Taliban took over. Now, I am not even allowed to enter this ministry anymore as I am guilty of the following crimes:
- I am a young woman.
- I am a Tajik.
- I am a Panjshiri.
I will follow up with more about the injustices carried out by the Taliban currently against the non-Pashtun ethnic groups of Afghanistan, and particularly against Tajiks and Panjshiris.
