Saturday, 24 Asad 1405 — a day that, for the ..., marked victory and the celebration of taking control of a country, but for its people, it was a day of mourning for their dreams.
I do not write very often. In fact, until today, I have rarely felt the desire to share my feelings with others through writing. But today, strangely, I wanted to write—for myself, and for all the unspoken words that may have remained in my heart for a long time.
There are things we cannot say out loud right now. There are pains that cannot always be expressed with our voices. But today, I realized that writing can be another way of saying those very things. Writing can bring a beautiful feeling—a feeling I understood deeply today.
I write for myself, for my homeland, and for my goals. I write from my heart—about pain, disappointment, happiness, and the beautiful dreams that are still alive somewhere inside me. Until now, I had never wanted to share my feelings with others, but today I decided to write. Perhaps because, on some days, silence is no longer enough.
Exactly five years have passed—five years that have perhaps pushed Afghanistan five times further backward than before. What remains of Afghanistan is sorrow, suffering, and people exhausted by pain who have lost hope in life. For five years, girls have been deprived of education and pushed further away from many of their dreams.
Many girls, including some of my own friends, lost hope in everything and stopped pursuing their education. Even before the Taliban, there were social taboos and attitudes such as, “What is the point of a girl studying? In the end, you will get married and have your own family anyway.” But after the Taliban came, those strange words gradually began to turn into reality.
With my own eyes, I watched girls who had once studied with passion and dreamed big get married and limit their dreams to their families and personal lives. I saw girls become disappointed and exhausted. Some even lost their enthusiasm for life itself.
But the Taliban’s return did not negatively affect only the girls of my country; boys have suffered as well. Coeducational learning, despite all the debates surrounding it, created motivation, a sense of competition, and opportunities for growth for many students. I have heard boys say many times that they no longer even have the motivation to study.
It is true that education is still available to boys, and having access to it is certainly better than having none at all. But they themselves say, “We no longer have the energy we had during the Republic.” It feels as though our wings, too, have been tied.
Every day, when we leave our homes, we see our sisters looking at us with longing—and perhaps that is one of the worst feelings we can experience.
Yet despite all these difficulties, we still have hopeful girls. Girls who have not only refused to give up on their own progress, but who also refuse to let the Taliban become the reason they move backward. Girls who are constantly trying to break social taboos; girls who continue moving forward despite their greatest challenges and still achieve remarkable things in their lives.
Education has never been limited to a physical place. The Taliban may have closed the doors of in-person educational institutions, but can they truly stop those who are determined to move forward? 😅
We all became tired. We all felt hopeless at times. But we kept going.
Personally, after the Taliban came, I stayed home for only a few days. Throughout the rest of these years, I have always been involved in educational centers—either studying or teaching. I have constantly tried to adapt my life to the current circumstances in a way that would prevent anyone from stopping me.
During these five years, I faced many challenges—difficult challenges that could have made me give up. Instead, they made me even more determined to reach the three goals I have set for myself. I searched for many programs and participated in many extracurricular activities until I became familiar with the “Bridge to Education” program.
Bridge to Education was not just an educational program for me. When I joined it, I felt that I had entered a place where people still believed in education, growth, and the future. It was a program for girls and boys who had been deprived of education. But it was not only about studying; it offered another opportunity to learn, participate, connect with others, and become hopeful again.
When I joined the program, I met girls who, despite all the restrictions they faced, were still full of energy and hope. They could have spent hours talking about their problems, but instead, they preferred to talk about education, activities, their futures, and their dreams. Seeing them genuinely gave me energy.
One of the things that made EBA special to me was its teachers. They did not see a student as merely a student; they saw each student as a capable human being, and even as a colleague. That perspective may sound simple, but for someone who has faced years of educational restrictions, it can mean so much.
Gradually, EBA became more than just an educational program for me. It became a large family. A family made up of wonderful and kind teachers and students who may have been young in age, but who remained incredibly active in education despite the difficult circumstances around them.
I did not only learn academic lessons in this program. From the people I met there, I learned cooperation, teamwork, responsibility, and even how to find hope again. By participating in meetings, I became more aware and realized that there are still many people in Afghanistan who refuse to let circumstances determine their future.
For me, “Bridge to Education” truly has a beautiful name, because sometimes all a person needs is a bridge—a bridge that takes them from where they are trapped to where they want to be. For many of us, perhaps this program was one of those bridges: a bridge between deprivation and opportunity, between hopelessness and hope, and between “It is impossible” and “I will try.”
This year, I am expected to complete the twelfth grade. Because of the intensive classes I have taken this year, I am a little tired—but it is a sweet kind of tiredness. It is sweet because I know I am becoming tired for something that matters to me.
If someone had told me five years ago that one day I would have to fight this hard just to reach a classroom, an opportunity, or a dream, I probably would not have believed them. But when I look at myself today, I realize that these very hardships have shaped me into someone who no longer gives up on dreams so easily.
Perhaps it was this sweet exhaustion that made me write today. I wanted to write so that I could remind myself of everything I have gone through during these five years—how many times I became tired, how many times I lost hope, and how, despite everything, I stood up again and continued.
Five years have passed. Five years that took so much from us—opportunities, peace, dreams, and sometimes even our hope. But there is one thing they could not take from us: our desire to keep going.
Perhaps we cannot change Afghanistan all at once. Perhaps we cannot open every door that has been closed in our faces. But we can refuse to stop ourselves.
I am still studying. I am still teaching. I am still searching for opportunities. I still have plans for my future. And perhaps, under circumstances like these, this small act of simply “continuing” is itself a form of resistance.
For me, these five years are not only a story of restrictions. They are also the story of my choice—the choice not to surrender despite everything. And perhaps this writing is part of that choice as well.
Today, for the first time in a long while, I decided to put some of the words inside me onto paper. Not because I necessarily want someone to understand me, and not because I want anyone to feel sorry for me; I wrote simply so that I could remind myself that I still have something to say, that I still have dreams, and that there is still something inside me that wants to keep going.
I write for myself, for my homeland, and for every girl who has not yet forgotten her dreams.
Perhaps one day, when the doors of education are opened again to every girl in Afghanistan, we will look back and say: “See? We made it. We endured.”
Until that day, I—and many girls like me—will continue. We will continue learning. We will continue building. And we will continue dreaming.
Because Afghanistan is not only what we see today. Afghanistan is also its girls—the girls who still carry the dream of a better tomorrow in their hearts.