Why is writing important for Afghan women?
In the winter of 2021, just three or four months after the Taliban took power, I was a pregnant woman travelling from Khairkhana to Darul Aman for my weekly medical checkup. I had to change vehicles three times, which is not easy for a woman on her own. For one, we have to sit in the front seat of a taxi and must pay for the two front-seat fares. Once, I protested against this rule, only to be met with the driver’s anger. Everyone around me remained silent.
With the Taliban’s arrival, people’s behaviour toward each other had changed. No one showed kindness to a woman anymore. The city had fallen into the hands of men, and women were being driven out of public spaces. I felt suffocated, overwhelmed by a deep sense of unease that worsened every time I stepped outside.
When I returned home, I wrote down everything that had happened, pouring all my emotions onto paper and screaming through my words. It was a bitterly cold winter. My in-laws and I lived together in an apartment — three rooms and a gas heater. We all relied on that heater for warmth and went to bed early to reduce gas consumption. In my journal entry from December 2021, I wrote: “The price of one kilogram of gas has reached 120 afghani. While writing, I had asked my mother and other women how much gas used to cost in previous winters. Some said 70 afghani, others 80. But in that first winter of Taliban rule, Kabul was in a state of famine.”
These notes weren’t just about the price of gas; they captured the emotions of the women around me — women who had been silenced. They no longer had the luxury to worry about restrictions on their travel, education, work, or personal freedoms. Their only concern was how to find a piece of bread for their children and how to get fuel to warm their homes. After witnessing these struggles, I began to see my surroundings differently. Every heartbreaking scene became a subject for my writing, a way to reach people who still believed that Afghanistan and its people deserved a dignified life, not the endless repetition of catastrophe.
In early March 2022, I wrote an article for a newspaper about my suffering and unemployment. When it was published, many friends read it and encouraged me to write more. From that moment on, I was no longer just an ordinary woman who silently accepted whatever the Taliban imposed. I became a woman who resisted, who voiced her thoughts through writing. I wrote about my own experience and the chronicle of the Taliban’s war on women.
In December 2022, I lost my job as a university lecturer. I was furious. Again, I picked up my pen and wrote an article filled with anger about why the Taliban are against women’s education. The publication of that article in a newspaper led many friends to warn me to be careful when writing about the Taliban. After that, I turned to writing under a pseudonym because I could not suppress the overwhelming rage I felt.
One evening in the autumn of 2023, my husband, my son, and I went to Shahr-e-Naw in downtown Kabul. We visited an amusement park and spent an hour shopping. As we were leaving a clothing store, officials of the Taliban’s vice and virtue police arrived, demanding to confirm whether we were husband and wife. Even in our own city, we did not have the right to go anywhere at will. Every day, a new law was imposed against women, and every direction we turned, doors were shut in our faces. Each time a door closed, I wrote about it.
At the beginning of 2024, my husband lost his job at an NGO, leaving both of us unemployed. We could no longer stay in Kabul, so we moved to a village. Even there, I found countless stories that needed to be told. There were women who had lost everything to war. One woman had lost three sons in battle. Another had married four times — three of her husbands had been killed in war. These women and I had a platform: they shared their stories, and I wrote them down, sending them to Zan Times for publication.
In May 2024, I began to think that I needed to do more. Instead of telling the story of just one woman, I wanted to document the stories of many women who shared similar experiences to paint a broader picture of what is happening to our society. Fortunately, I had friends and acquaintances located in different provinces who could help me to step more formally into journalism.
That month, I enrolled in Zan Times journalism training program. For six months, I learned about the craft of news and report writing. As part of my practical training, I worked on my first report about secret schools for girls in Afghanistan. It was well received by readers. After its publication, Zan Times offered me a position as full-time staff writer.
I was able to work for other media outlets, as well. In August 2024, a journalist from China reached out to me, asking me to write about my own life. In October 2024, my piece was published. Within the first hour, 40,000 people had read it, and later the reporter informed me the story had gone viral in China. The excitement and pleasure of this encouraged me to sit for long hours at my computer, writing the stories of Afghan women — their struggles, their endurance, and what we are striving for.
While investigating the murder of a woman at the hands of a member of the Taliban , I contacted a source to arrange an interview about the case. She responded by asking me a strange series of questions: “Why should I speak? What difference will my voice make? Doesn’t the world already know about Afghanistan? Why should I tell them again?” She refused the interview. With that, I came to a realization — I, an Afghan woman, was always paying the price of other’s shortsightedness. But I should never stop writing. The stories of women must be written, to document our suffering and struggle. This is history.
Khadija Haidary is a Zan Times journalist.
