For International Women’s Day on March 8, Zan Times is publishing eight narratives of eight women activists who defied the Taliban. Telling their stories humanizes the struggles of so many women against the Taliban’s misogynist regime and also records their bravery in the face of imprisonment and torture chambers.
I completed my pharmacy degree at Rabia Balkhi University and worked with my parents-in-law, who owned a dental clinic in Kabul. We wished to provide quality services to people, especially women. I wanted to start my own dental practice. But it wasn’t long before Kabul fell to the Taliban and the clinic where I worked was closed. My parents-in-law left Afghanistan, and all the household responsibilities fell on me.
Our house is near Kabul Airport. Every morning when I woke up, I saw that the alleys were full of people trying to flee the country out of fear of the Taliban. This situation had a bad effect on me. I said to myself that raising my voice and protesting against the Taliban is better than gradual death at home. I contacted several protesting women and, with support of my husband and family, started working with them in November 2021.
The Taliban were already suppressing protests. Our last protest was to demand the whereabouts of girls who had disappeared in Balkh as well as to protest the murder of Zainab Abdullahi in Kabul. We were gathering in front of Kabul University when the Taliban violently attacked our gathering. They beat us with electric gears, sprayed pepper on our heads and faces, and fired tear gas. After our protest, the Taliban announced that they would identify and arrest all protesting women. We did not take their warnings seriously, but two nights after our protest, the Taliban arrested Paryani sisters. Out of fear, we went into hiding.
But it wasn’t long before the Taliban discovered our location and attacked the hotel where I and several other women were staying. I heard noise outside the room where my husband and I were staying. My husband went out and did not come back. I opened the door and saw that the hotel lobby was full of Taliban. I didn’t know what to do. Two girls came to my room and told me to put on my chador. The Taliban took our cell phones, then took all the women and girls into one room and the men in another. They beat the men so much that their screams echoed throughout the hotel. We asked the Taliban and their female agents not to be violent and scare the children. They said that the children are as deceitful and deceitful as we were.
It was February 11, 2022. They interrogated me and my friends day and night, as well as threatened us with guns and beat us. They took the passwords of our phones and asked us about our social groups and photos. They didn’t give us food. The prisons guards threatened us that we wouldn’t see our husbands again and get stoned to death.
Unaware that I had an ectopic pregnancy, the stress of the horrors of detention and the tortures inflicted by the Taliban caused me to start bleeding. No matter how I told the Taliban soldiers that I needed a doctor and medicine, they did not listen to me. They said that I was using this as an excuse to get out.
I was writhing because of my back pain and bleeding. I couldn’t get up. Finally, after seeing my condition, they took me to the health centre. I returned to the detention centre after receiving medicine, but couldn’t sleep at night until the morning, when they gave me sleeping pills.
After two weeks in prison, the Taliban finally released me, and I went home. I was still afraid that the Taliban would kill me, like they’d killed other protesting girls in the alleys and back alleys after their releases. After a week at home, my husband and I left Afghanistan for Pakistan. I still wasn’t feeling well and was bleeding. I had to have an operation. The doctors removed the fetus and a fallopian tube. After I recovered, they said that I will not get pregnant again.
Fariza Akbari is 28 years old women’s rights activists.
This narrative is based on an interview with Fariza Akbari. Some errors were made in the transcription and translation. They were corrected on March 6. Zan Times regrets the errors.
