By Parisa
I am a teacher, or perhaps I should say I was a teacher, before the fall of Nimruz.
Nimruz was the first province to fall to the Taliban. In the aftermath of Zaranj’s fall, my family and I moved to Kabul, believing it would not fall soon because it is the capital. Then Kabul fell, like Zaranj, and we had no choice but to return to Nimruz.
Traditionally, Nimruz was a male-dominated province and women were severely restricted. However, after the Taliban arrived, women’s rights were even more severely curtailed. The Taliban forbid girls from going to school and women from working. In the city, women are not allowed to walk without mahram (a close male relative such as a father, brother, or husband). They must wear long black veils when outside their homes.
The situation prompted me and 35 of my school colleagues to protest. Freedom, education, and work were all we wanted. In order to open the school for our students, we marched in the streets. At the beginning of September, we demonstrated three consecutive days outside the provincial building in Zaranj. We were warned on the first and second day to return to our homes; otherwise, we would be responsible for whatever happened.
We continued to demonstrate. We were determined to continue protesting until our demands were met. During the third day of the demonstration, the Taliban beat a journalist and broke his camera. We ran away, along with several other protesting women. But we did not immediately return home, fearful of what the Taliban may do. As it turns out, our concerns were very real. One of the girls who did go home was Khatira, my colleague and friend. The Taliban killed her a few days after the demonstration, and her body was found in the desert. Although the Taliban claimed that she was killed because of personal problems, we know that they had threatened her with death. Nine of our friends were arrested by the Taliban. They were beaten and tortured. According to a message I received from them, the Taliban tortured them with snakes and scorpions to force them to confess. They were imprisoned by the Taliban for two weeks before being released, but only after taking several commitments not to speak against the Taliban. All the teachers who participated in the demonstration were fired.
Now my friends and I live in secret. We fear that the Taliban will kill us if they find us. In that fear, another of my colleagues jumped off the high border wall between Afghanistan and Iran and broke her leg. This is just a part of the punishment we have suffered for demanding our rights. No one dared to protest in the street after what happened. Protesting women are being killed everywhere.
After Khatira was killed, I didn’t dare go outside. I live in a hidden place and I embroider instead of teach. When I was a teacher, my salary was 14,000 afghanis, which was enough to cover our food and my father’s medicine. Now, I can’t even earn 2,000 a month from my embroidery. Life is forbidden to us.
Parisa is a pen name of a teacher in Nimruz province.
