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At 11:00 on August 15, I was at Rabbi Balkhi University in Kabul, where I was teaching economics.
On that day, only a handful of 30 people in my class — maybe 10 — showed up because the security situation had worsened. The Taliban were advancing rapidly to Kabul, having already captured the cities of Ghazni, Herat and Mazar-i-Sharif.
I was in the middle of the talk when I suddenly heard screams and running footsteps in the hallway. At first I ignored the noise until it got louder.
I opened the door and saw students, faculty, and college staff running; they were all trying to get out of the building. I asked an employee in the hallway what was going on and he told me that the Taliban were entering Kabul and everyone was going to their homes. I saw panic and hope on everyone’s faces; the girls, in particular, were terrified.
I stopped my class and told my students to go home immediately and then I left college. There were no buses or cars, so I had to walk home.
In the crowded market in the Kote Sangi district west of the city, I saw people screaming and running in different directions. The shopkeepers were hurrying to close the shops; the women were running to their homes. The transportation system was shut down. The city was in complete chaos. But in the early afternoon, all the shops, schools, universities and banks were closed, and life in the city seemed to have stopped. It took me an hour and a half to get home. By 4:00 p.m., I saw some Taliban gunmen on the street. The Taliban took Kabul.
Kabulen ihesi
I immediately learned that I had to secretly join my colleagues — university professors, human rights activists, and journalists — in Jade-Abresham, where I also worked for a weekly.
We published a number of articles on crimes committed by the Taliban. We also organized anti-Taliban campaigns on social media, such as # Stand4ANDSF, to promote and promote the morale of the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces (ANDSF) in the Taliban advance, but also to denounce Taliban actions. I also denounced the Taliban in its articles on women’s rights and ethnic and religious minorities.
We were so terrified that we didn’t dare contact WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger because there were rumors that the Taliban controlled these channels.
But others helped us communicate and we decided to leave the country. When I was planning my getaway, I saw the news when I had time. The crowd was struggling to get out of the airport, and I was shocked and terrified by those who were killed in a U.S. military plane crash. I felt like I was falling in the middle of a storm.
On August 17, two days after the Taliban took over, we met at the home of eight friends.
Since we did not work directly with the United States and other NATO member states, we were not on their emergency evacuation lists. That’s why we had to leave the country on our own. All the banks were closed, and with very little money in our pockets, we decided to flee to Pakistan, where the people we knew could help us organize smugglers to cross the border we knew.
I always wore skirts and jeans and no clothes that the Taliban would accept. So I hurried to the neighbor’s house to look for something to wear. They gave me a blue burqa, which extended to the ground, covering me from head to toe.
Under the cover of darkness, we left Kabul and headed for the border town of Spin-Boldak. The smuggler we hired drove us the night before, and the next day, around noon, we reached the border. We hadn’t eaten in the last 24 hours, and we were all tired and had headaches. We stopped short for lunch, we were scared all the time. The smugglers we hired handed out fake IDs and took us to border controls. Heart pounding, we approached the entrance gate of Pakistan.
Doing the quetta
Near the door, I saw many familiar faces — fellow journalists, feminists, social activists, and former government officials — all desperate to cross the border. Among them was a feminist I knew well. She was dressed in a Western style, but now she wore a long black dress that covered her face, revealing only her eyes. Seeing him made me feel hopeless. Tears began to fall from my cheeks and I began to sob.
The area was flooded with Afghan refugees. We waited in line for about three hours until it was finally our turn to check. Some of us, including myself, walked through the door using our ID cards, but they didn’t work for the Pakistani border police who stopped and beat and kicked four members of our group. They were not the only people beaten by border police. I saw others playing. I remember a woman, in her 60s, begging a police officer to come in, but she was slapped in response.
Once I entered Pakistan, I went to the smugglers on this side of the border to help us and told them about the situation of our colleagues. The smugglers returned to the porch and returned four hours later with my co-workers. Eventually, we all crossed the line, leaving our lives behind.
Then the smugglers took us to the city of Quetta. On the way, passing through the village of Shaman, I saw the Taliban flag from cars and motorcycles. I was shocked to see them fly, because I thought we would be further away from the Taliban if we were in another country. Then I realized that the city, the stronghold of the Taliban’s Quetta Council, was not safe for us either.
I moved to the outskirts of Quetta in Hazara village, mostly the residence of the Hazara ethnic and religious minority. Rents have risen as a result of the influx of refugees from Afghanistan, and I went to a flat there to reduce the cost of living with some of my colleagues. I applied for a job as a teacher in several schools, but since I am not a Pakistani citizen, no one would hire me.
A few days after my arrival, my neighbor came to tell me that there was a meeting in the mosque about Afghan refugees. At the meeting, religious leaders and community elders ordered Kabul women and girls in particular to dress like Quetta women, otherwise they would be beaten for inappropriate dress. So I started wearing shalwar cameo with a big shawl.
In Quetta, I found myself jobless, hopeless, and worst of all: struggling with emotional and mental distress. The question I often ask myself is: Where have 20 years of hard work and hard work gone? Is it all for nothing?
A three-hour walk to and from school
I am 28 years old. I can barely remember the Taliban government in the late 1990s, so the control of the Taliban in Kabul is incomprehensible to me.
I was seven years old when I started attending school in 2002, after being closed for a decade when schools reopened the year in Afghanistan. Even if the school was open, going to school, finishing a master’s degree and starting a career was not easy, especially if you were a woman.
When I think back, my primary school years were filled with difficulties and challenges. One of the biggest challenges was that our house was located in an isolated valley called Zard Sang, far from the rest of the villages in the Shahristan district of central Afghanistan.
It was a great distance between my home and school. Every day I had to walk for three hours on a very steep path through the mountains, hills and valleys. Since we had no neighbors, I walked alone, even though I was just a child. I was the youngest of six siblings, and although my brothers provided them with a Taliban-dependent education, my sisters did not have the opportunity to learn as children.
The first seven years of school were the hardest for me. Every day, I woke up nervous and scared because I would face a potential danger on the way to school: kidnapping, raping, or attacking wild animals like wolves. I was so terrified that every time I saw a male walker in the distance, I would run behind him or hide behind a rock until he was gone. It was a struggle every day. I often heard stories of girls being raped all over Afghanistan. Every day, I made a long and lonely journey under constant and extreme psychological pressure.
Despite all the difficulties, I studied hard and was always the best student in my class in primary and secondary education. I graduated from high school in my Daykundi province with an average of 99.6 percent and won a laptop as a reward.
Everything fell apart
I passed the university entrance test and was admitted to Kabul University, the best public university in Afghanistan to study economics. But after a year and a half, due to my excellent academic performance, I was awarded a scholarship by the Indian Council for Cultural Relations and in 2013 I moved to India to study for a degree in economics, marketing and psychology at Bangalore University.
Language was a significant barrier. I still didn’t speak English, and I couldn’t understand my teacher or find my way to the next lecture hall. I relied on my classmates to take me from class to class. I was completely detached from my sounds.
I remember crying once in class because English was too difficult. My classmates consoled me. I looked at the pages of the textbooks looking for all the words in the dictionary and wrote the Persian meaning next to each word, and then reread the text to understand it better. It was the same slow and difficult process in all matters. I worked very hard and stayed awake all night to see little progress.
Sometimes I thought about going home, but then I thought I would never have a chance to learn if I did that. I felt like I had to fight to keep going.
Within a year, things got easier. As each semester went on, I got better and better, and everyone told me I was learning fast. I finally felt like I was winning the fight. I began to feel confident enough to connect with others. I made new friends from different countries. In my fifth semester, I was elected a class representative. I graduated with a first-degree distinction.
I received another scholarship, this time from USAID, where I started working with Indian and Jade-Abresham to do a master’s degree in economics as a freelance translator and journalist.
After returning to Kabul in 2019, I started teaching economics at Rabia Balkhi private university. I loved what I was doing and I was happy to teach it to the younger generation.
But all of a sudden, when the Taliban took over, everything fell apart. Everything I’ve achieved over the last 20 years is in plain sight.
Now it seems to me that all my work, struggle and dedication were in vain. There are thousands of young girls and boys who feel the same way, that their hard work was worthless. I ended up not being able to work or engage in social and political activities, and I couldn’t even dress the way I liked. I learned for nothing, I worked for nothing. Maybe my whole life was worthless.
Every time I think about my country, I remember the day the Taliban entered Kabul. I remember women, men and children running back to the house and closing the doors to feel safe. I think they fell from a U.S. military plane to death. I think of all the soldiers who lost their lives in the fight against the Taliban.
Our future looks like an empty hole.
I spend 20 years of my precious life achieving what I have achieved. Is it all for nothing?
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