On Wednesday, July 23, at noon, my father fell into eternal sleep. The news of his death struck me like a blow. Since then, I feel as though nothing is left that could truly shake me. I carry a heavy grief, but also the memory of a man whose devotion changed the course of my life.
As a child, I saw my father clearly: a man who, despite holding a high government position, personally enrolled me and my sisters in school. He taught me the alphabet himself and, in the middle of his official duties, still sat with me over homework. By the third grade I could read, and he encouraged me with small rewards. If I correctly read the title and author of the books he was reading, he gave me ten afghani. Now I understand: he wanted me to know books and writers, to nurture a love of reading.
By the time I reached high school, he had left government service to become a teacher. A teacher who devoted himself entirely to his daughters. At times I grew tired of his constant attention, but he carried within him a mission: to raise daughters who could stand on their own feet.
When I sat the Kankor, Afghanistan’s university entrance exam, he searched for tutors, insisted I learn well, and later reproached me when I confessed to struggling in physics. When the results came, I was admitted to economics. He was quietly pleased but told me I should have pursued engineering, pointing to girls he had seen succeed in Kabul and Mazar-e-Sharif. Yet he respected my choice and turned his attention to guiding my younger sisters.
After graduation, it was again my father who found job opportunities, who accompanied me to every exam, traveling between provinces, never tiring of the effort he poured into us. When I left our district to continue studying, he did not hold me back. Instead, he accompanied me to Kabul, pressing money into my hand so I could buy a computer.
In 2018 and 2019, as I studied and worked in Kabul, our district became a battlefield. In one fight, a bullet passed close by my father’s ear. Frightened, my brother and I begged him to move the family. He agreed, abandoning his house, cattle, farmland, orchards, and grain stores to bring us to Kabul. We had barely settled three years when the Republic collapsed. In the first week after the fall, my father packed again and returned to our village. He told me: “You too can seek refuge with me.”
Since the collapse of 2021, I too have fallen many times—in spirit and in life. Each time, it was he who pulled me back from the edge. More than once, he walked from Takhar to Kabul, brought me home, and cared for me until I regained my strength. When he saw me looking well on camera, he would smile and say, “You look good,” before breaking into a laugh.
When I crossed into Pakistan, I called him. He asked why I had turned myself into a wanderer, why young people could not stay together. He urged me to write, often hurrying me: “Write it now!” Perhaps he sensed his time was short.
In exile, I often called him in tears over the smallest struggles, seeking his help, sometimes reproaching him for not being able to fix my life. I always believed he could solve anything. I was still that little girl, following in his footsteps, waiting for him to say: “Bravo, you walk like a great man.” When I heard of his death, I cried: “Did life take my father too, in the very days when I was fighting it with all my strength?”
Now I think of his quiet efforts that shaped my life, lifting me from a rural girl who milked cows to a writer and journalist. He pushed me to write more serious articles, to cite reliable sources, and to send my work to newspapers. In Afghanistan, for a girl to become literate—for a girl to become a writer—requires a father who sees his daughters’ education as his sacred duty.
My father could have sought power and wealth, but he chose instead the modest life of a schoolteacher, fixing his eyes on us, his daughters. Three of us advanced by skipping grades, all under his guidance.
Today’s Afghanistan is different. Fathers no longer have the freedom to give wings to their daughters’ dreams. My father lived our dreams as though they were his own, rejoicing in even our smallest achievements.
Even now, there are fathers who sacrifice everything for their daughters’ education—who migrate, who endure hardship again and again in neighbouring countries just so their daughters can study. In war-torn countries like Afghanistan, a girl needs immense support to finish high school, to reach university. Every successful girl today knows her father as her first supporter, her first hero. Without fathers like mine, it would not have been possible for girls to leave remote villages, go to big cities, and pursue an education.
