Terrified, my father and I are glued to the television listening to the evening news — news that is all unpleasant and worrying. It has been a while since the university was closed due to security concerns.
Every day, a province is falling to the Taliban. As the Taliban and the war close in on Herat city, we are getting even more worried. My father’s hair turns grey, and my mother worries about what would happen to my father, me, and my siblings. There are rumours that the Taliban are capturing young women as booty of war.
It was Thursday, August 12, when I went to the passport office to get my passport. My passport wasn’t ready. On my way back home, I found the city in a panic.
When I got home, my father said my sister and I should go to Kabul; it might be safer. Father thought Kabul, the capital, was less likely to fall to the Taliban. Not an hour has passed before we hear Herat had collapsed to the Taliban. The city went dark. Probably people are mourning the Taliban takeover by turning off the lights. The sound of gunfire was the only thing that dominated the town. The Taliban, high on their victory, were shooting in the air. We were all distraught and scared. In that night of terror and pain, lives went out of our bodies.
I dreamed of becoming the president of Afghanistan one day. With that enthusiasm, I chose political science as my major at university. I put the image of the presidential palace on my phone screen as a reminder of my goal. Although it is difficult for girls to dream big in our androcentric society, I believed in change. On August 15, when I saw a picture of the austere white Taliban flag on the presidential palace, my world darkened as if life went out of my body.
With the Taliban’s rise to power, all my dreams and hopes were crushed, like the dreams of other girls in Afghanistan. My father consoled me by saying the Taliban had changed and that they respect women’s rights. But, as the apparent sadness in his eyes revealed, he didn’t believe it either.
Weeks later, with the university’s reopening, I felt a little joy and hope. On Saturday, I was about to leave for university when my classmate Shakila told me that the Taliban had ordered girls to wear all black clothes and put on black masks. Since, in Herat, most women already wore long black chadors, I consoled myself that it should not be a big problem. I would wear it for university and put on a black mask.
When I entered the campus, all the girls were in one hall waiting for the boys to enter the class first. This is a Taliban policy to make sure the boys and girls don’t see each other. The classrooms were divided into male and female sections, separated by a curtain in the middle. We sat behind the curtain.
In the first hour, we had the “History of political thought in the West.” Our professors have been fired, and we have new mullah professors. The new professor is a graduate of Sharia from Kandahar University who knows nothing and says nothing about the subject matter.
A week passed, and the university practically turned into a religious school. New professors list the ills of the previous regime and go on long tirades about “indecency,” “moral corruption,” and the “sins” of women in the past 20 years.
In the first days, we are forbidden to talk or ask questions lest our voices arouse the teachers and fellow students from behind the curtain. The following week, when they separated the classroom by gender, I hope we could discuss and ask questions freely. But no! Everything gets worse. The professor of theology condemns women for leaving their houses, saying this will “arouse men and spread prostitution and sin.” When I express a dissenting opinion, I am expelled from the class.
In the international relations class, the professor lectured about how it is forbidden for women to study politics. When I asked a question and challenged the professor’s position, I was accused of disrupting the lecture. The university administration asks for a written commitment to keep silent and ask no questions in class. The chair of my faculty scolded me and said that I was making him commit a sin by the fact that I was making him converse with me. He told me that it was better to keep my head down and say nothing.
I gave up my dreams and preferred dropping out of school rather than studying in an environment where I am insulted and humiliated every day for the crime of being a woman. Now, I don’t live anymore; it is only days that pass. The Taliban are no different from 20 years ago, and the only thing they have improved is their art of deception. With the Taliban in power, the only news you hear is suppression of women, femicide, and suicide. We Afghan girls are the world’s saddest headlines.
No one wishes to leave their home, abandon their hope, go to a foreign land, and start from scratch. But with the Taliban in power, life has become so suffocating that everyone is looking for ways to escape.
I am no longer a lively and witty 21-year-old girl. They took the will to live from me, stole my happiness, and killed my hope. Now I only think about leaving so that I can survive and live. I won’t forgive those who took life’s passion from us girls.
