By Gholam-Hossein Elham
Mahbooba Mohammadi’s escape from the Taliban was so epic that it evokes the “Seven Trials of Rostam.” Originally from Mazar-e-Sharif, she was 20 years old when she joined the army in the spring of 2016. Lacking connections or sponsors to help advance her career, she ended up in the active reserve section and later, the army’s recruitment division, serving in Mazar-e-Sharif and Kabul. While in the military, Mohammadi became the caretaker of her family of seven as her father’s mental challenges meant he could not fulfill that role.
Though some of her male colleagues deserted or abandoned their posts as the government collapsed ahead of the Taliban’s takeover, she kept working. “Until the last moments of the government’s fall in mid-August 2021, I did not take off my military uniform,” she recounts. By then, her rank was as a lieutenant though she worked as a captain.
Like most in Afghanistan, Mohammadi was completely caught off guard by the government’s fall, which upended her life.
On the day that Balkh province fell to the Taliban, she was at her office in Mazar-e-Sharif. She was so stunned by the news that for days she couldn’t believe the government had collapsed. Being a female military officer of the old government, she stayed home for fear of being identified or arrested by the Taliban. If she did have to venture out, she wore a full veil or chador, and sometimes, she moved location, either on her own or with her family.
After three or four months of hiding and fear, she felt she could no longer continue living that way. She decided to go to Iran, though her family objected to her decision. After three days and nights of walking, she arrived in Nimruz province and, with others, neared the border with Iran. However, border obstacles and gunfire by Iranian border guards forced them to abandon their crossing attempt and return to Nimruz province.
“Due to a long walk through rocky and difficult terrains, my feet and hands were completely blistered, and thorns had pierced throughout my body. I was pulling thorns out of my body for a long time afterward,” Mohammadi recounts. She stayed in Nimruz for three weeks. Then, fearful she would be identified, she returned to Mazar, where she tried again to enter Iran.
This time, she paid to obtain an Iranian visa through a travel and visa service company. Though scared that the Taliban would recognize her name, she went to the Mazar-e-Sharif airport and boarded a plane to Iran on February 26, 2022.
Once there, she found work in a shoe factory and later an embroidery factory. Unable to find proper shelter, Mohammadi slept inside the factories at night, and tied up the workspace before workers arrived in the morning. After five months in Iran, she decided to take another risky path: to smuggle herself into Turkey. Traffickers promise to take her and her fellow countrymen, some with families, to Turkey. They promise fake passports and visas.
They started their journey from the Iranian city of Qom. After two or three days of travel, spending nights in tents set up by traffickers in mountainous areas, they are moved to the top of a mountain. There, they are turned over to Iranian Kurds. “We are robbers, and you have been handed over to us by the traffickers. If you want to be free, each of you must pay us $5,000,” she recounts one of the men stating.
“We stayed with these thieves for about two weeks. They were constantly beating us — especially the men — and were not giving us water or bread, just enough so we wouldn’t die. They even poured the blood from our torture wounds into our food and bread and didn’t allow us to go to the bathroom. In response to our pleas, they said they only recognized money,” she explains. Mohammadi says that the hostage takers were taking pictures and videos of their torture and sending them to their families, threatening that they would dismember them and sell their body parts if they did not pay.
She attempted to escape early in the morning while everyone was asleep, but broke her wrist in a fall. The robbers caught her and subjected her to even more torture. Her right hand remains severely incapacitated. “My hand healed crookedly and is not fully functional. I can’t even bathe myself with it or lift anything. I have to wash my clothes with my feet, and if I do work with my hand, it hurts at night and keeps me awake,” she says. By the time Mohammadi and her companions were rescued by Iranian security forces, they were left with nothing. After a week in the Sefid-Sang Camp, she was deported to Afghanistan, despite her pleas that she feared for her life.
Eventually, she was sent to Herat, and after spending two days at a United Nations facility without assistance, she left for Mazar-e-Sharif, where her journey had originated. She feared being stopped and fingerprinted by the Taliban. It was July 19, 2022.
After nearly a year of living in Mazar-e-Sharif, Mohammadi escaped yet again. She borrowed money and travelled to Kandahar where she paid 30,000 Pakistani rupees to a reputable smuggler who got her across the border into Pakistan. In late June 2023, she arrived in Quetta, where she knew no one. After about a month, she got another smuggler to help her travel to Islamabad. Now, despite enduring many hardships, she lives in a dark rented room in the capital of Pakistan.
Mahbooba Mohammadi gets emotional when talking about her life before the government’s fall. Her voice trembles as she says, “Where were we, and where have we ended up?” Although somewhat relieved to have escaped the ever-present threat of the Taliban, she now faces new challenges, including the inability to work, the lack of security, not knowing the language, and being far away from her family.
Though she is no longer the happy, fearless girl she once was, she won’t give up on striving to reach a safer and better destination.
Mahbooba has survived her own set of seven trials, just as Rostam did, but an eighth trial remains: to settle into a safe, stable life in a new country, far away from the troubles of her homeland. Her final quest may be the hardest: a return to a semblance of normalcy.
*Names have been changed to protect the identity of the interviewees. Gholam-Hossein Elham is a freelance Afghan reporter in Pakistan.
