I think about the hard days when I went to school with thirsty lips and a hungry stomach, I studied day and night to succeed in the best public university. I studied with problems like lack of money. However, it doesn’t matter to me. The only thing that matters to me is NOW.
Barfeen Gul
I stare at the ceiling for hours, there is nothing in it, and I remain dumbfounded. I look at myself in the mirror. I see nothing but melt falling to the ground. Eyes that are exhausted from severe insomnia. Lips that have been cracked for days. All I see on my face is pain and despair. I come back to my room, I think so much that I think that I am the only corpse left. The flesh of my body is decreasing day by day. I can’t do the smallest thing for myself. I suffer.
I think about the hard days when I went to school with thirsty lips and a hungry stomach, I studied day and night to succeed in the best public university. I studied with problems like lack of money. However, it doesn’t matter to me. The only thing that matters to me is NOW.
Survival in Afghanistan
My survival is in Afghanistan. Here I am imprisoned and I can’t even go out alone for a moment. For days, I have been dealing with mental problems like a prisoner at home. The Taliban took my human rights, they took my freedom, and finally they took my hopes and dreams away.
I am a Hazara girl. With the arrival of the Taliban in Afghanistan, my level of vulnerability has increased. I grew up with a lot of insults and humiliation in Afghan society. Many times, educational centers, mosques, hospitals, and sports clubs were attacked by the Taliban. They killed, insulted, and humiliated our ethnic group. They did not allow us to study and to work. I am more vulnerable than a Tajik and Pashtun girl in Afghanistan, I believe.
My father and mother grew up illiterate. My father had to work day and night for a piece of bread in his childhood. He could not study. My mother also grew up illiterate, in a remote district deprived of education and got married there. In order to prevent us from growing up illiterate, my mother brought us up with a thousand economic and social problems to send us to study.
I have suffered hardships and sleeplessness during the years of study and preparing for the entrance exam so that I could study and at least become someone for myself and my family. Now that the Taliban have closed the gates of universities and work to me and thousands of girls like me, I see my future full of darkness. My mother and me: what is our sin? We do not deserve the smallest priority and humanity.
World Leaders, Hear Us!
I am addressing you in Europe and the countries of the world, where you value women more. Your men are not like the Taliban. All their wives and daughters are studying and working in Europe. They have all rights. I am addressing you. Put yourself in the place of your daughters. Do you forbid your daughters to study and work? We are under psychological torture in Afghanistan.
I don’t bother how many meetings the UN holds a day, a week, a month on the situation of women in Afghanistan. I don’t care how concerned the UN is about us. What matters to me is that action be taken. That there has been no change in the status of women in Afghanistan.
For two years, all the girls of my country, including myself, have suffered heavily psychologically. Because of the Taliban, terrorists, I cannot work. My sister, who is in the 11th grade, cannot study. For thousands of sisters who cannot go to school, cannot work. With the new year coming, we hope that the Taliban would open the gates of schools and universities to girls. But it seems again that they will only open them to boys.
The world is not concerned about Afghan Women
For days, I am imprisoned in the corner of the house like a criminal. What language should I use to express my situation so that you get aware? Don’t you see us suffering? Do you support women? Why are you so indifferent to the women of Afghanistan?
We are commemorating 8th March. A day that we should not be congratulated for. Because we do not have the slightest rights. We women in Afghanistan die every day, sometimes from despair, sometimes from poverty. Imagine: in this hard cold winter, we had to heat our houses and find a piece of bread. Do you know about the inside of our houses? Do you know what problem we are dealing with? A full-scale disaster is happening in Afghanistan. Aren’t we humans?
I and the girls of my country have always been victims of the government. The Taliban is alien to all knowledge and science, they violate the law and regulations. The Taliban sees women as a sin. We have no expectations from the Taliban. They are alien to all civilization and the system.
Despite of all these injustices, I dream of studying and working, and like thousands of girls in my country, we are in daily hope. Besides being upset with Europe, I say: don’t leave us alone.
* Journalist Barfeen Gul still lives in Kabul. Its name was also changed to a pseudonym for security reasons.