A letter from an Afghan girl!

Farida Razaqi

A letter from an Afghan girl!

(I couldn’t hold back my tears when reading this)

Close your eyes and look at the darkness!
This is what the future looks like for Afghan girls under the control of the Taliban!
Girls who are searching for the light of hope in these dark days!

Yes! I am a girl from Afghanistan,

I am speaking from a land where knowledge does not breathe these days, and I am the voice of girls whose dreams are fading one by one in front of their eyes these days.

Today is March 8th, International Women’s Day, and I see the tired eyes and withered hearts of the girls of my country and myself, and I don’t know what to celebrate when in this corner of the world, women are deprived of their fundamental rights.

Today, like hundreds of thousands of other girls in this land, I feel low, my heart is heavy, and I have a lump in my throat‌ as if all odds are against me.

But we must continue to eliminate the ignorance and darkness that has cast a shadow on my land these days.

Do we have any other way to survive and breathe in a land where every gate is closed on a girl just because she is a woman, other than dreaming?

But, it is not that easy to dream, for the ones who are being killed because of their gender, for the ones who are being taken hostages, and for the ones who are deprived of their fundamental rights only because of their gender.

Yes, we have big dreams, but they are stuck in the current unstable conditions and traditions. We are girls who live with thousands of dreams, but the wings of dreams are chained.

I am sad, not only for myself and my fellow Afghan sister but for any girl born in this country each day. Became this oppression does not end with us. If this situation continues, all the achievements of Afghan women will be lost, and Afghanistan will return to a period of cultural and social decline.

This is an irreparable regression of women to the dark period, as a result of which several generations of girls in this country will be deprived of education and improvement.

Every day that passes, the restrictions on women increase, and the Taliban shows that they have not changed but have become worse.

The Taliban has imposed these restrictions on girls while the daughters of many Taliban leaders study abroad.

The girls of this land, who are known for their bravery and thirst for education despite all the challenges, today are afraid, and their fear is not a fear of death; Rather, their fear is a concern about the continuation of this dark and terrible period in which there is no hope.

I would like to call upon everyone hearing my message:

Please do not leave us alone with our resistance!
Please do not let our dream fall victim to politics!

A girl from the land of shattered dreams,
Boshra R.

Note: This letter is written by one of the Afghan girls who joined us for the panel discussion organized by the Niagara University Vincentian Center for Justice on “Women and Education in Afghanistan.”

[Farida Razaqi is Fulbright Scholar 🇦🇫; Researcher: Climate Change, Gender & Security; presently at USA]

Mahabahu.com is an Online Magazine with collection of premium Assamese and English articles and posts with cultural base and modern thinking. You can send your articles to editor@mahabahu.com / editor@mahabahoo.com ( For Assamese article, Unicode font is necessary)