If I was a Boy I Could Go to School in Afghanistan
This piece has been written by Rahil (pseudonym), one of our writers in Afghanistan. The piece has been translated to English by the editors. Find the original version in Farsi here.
Futile wishes of being a boy so she can go to school
It is 12:00 p.m. and the boys have lined up on the roads to go to school. A little bit further, a girl wearing black clothes and a white scarf* is standing in front of a window, gazing into the scene intently, waiting to see if the doors of the school would open so that she could be on her way to school too. But, lamentably, that does not happen and the innocent girl, in a pleading and soft manner, asks her mother:
“Mother…”
“Yes, dear?”
“Can I cut my hair really short and wear white pants and a dress shirt** and go to school? Mom, this way, I can go to school.”
Hearing this, the mother suffocates her anger and spite in her throat. She takes her daughter in her arms and hugs her, and cries about both her own fate and the fate of her daughter. Bitter memories of her own adolescence and youth, while under the first occupation of the Taliban, resurface. She remembers how she too was deprived of an education and schooling and was therefore forced to accept an early and involuntary marriage. She had had dreams of becoming a doctor; dreams, which while now clearly impossible, still live in her even today. She still held on to the hope that her daughter could fulfill her own incomplete dreams. Therefore, she decides to admit her daughter to one of the local private schools. Heartbreakingly, this results unfortunately with the school director saying:
“The Taliban entered a private school recently. They closed the doors of the girls’ 7th-12th grade classrooms, and announced that from now on all secondary girls’ classrooms are closed”.
The mother’s dreams that her daughter could one day become a doctor turn into despair and hopelessness.
*The school uniform for girls in Afghanistan is black clothes and a white scarf.
**The school uniform in Afghanistan for boys
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