Five Years of Lost Hopes: Has the World Grown Used to It?

AI-generated / Zan TV

Author: Mursal qaisari

For many people, 15 August may simply be an ordinary date, a date on the calendar, a date in political books, a date associated with the fall of Kabul and the Taliban’s return. But for me, 15 August is not an ordinary date. It is a life, a life that began to fall apart from that very day.

For me, writing is the only way I can express my pain. But for days, I have been thinking about myself and about the past five years. If I wanted to write about the pain of these five years, where would I begin? With the day we were displaced from city to city? The day I lost my school? The day I realised I could no longer take the university entrance exam? The years I stayed at home? The nights I silently cried for my dreams? Or today, when I live in another country and still have not been able to detach myself from my homeland?

I do not know where to begin. I have lost the words. It is as though even words are ashamed before these five years of pain and suffering endured by Afghan girls.

I remember those dark days well, from the day we left Jawzjan to the day I heard that Kabul had fallen. When Kabul fell, nothing remained as it had been before.

We lived in Kabul for a while. Then we returned to Jawzjan, because of my school, my brother, my father’s job and the life we still hoped we might somehow continue. But life was no longer the same. We could no longer laugh loudly, walk freely or even breathe freely.

Schools, universities and all educational institutions were closed to the girls of my country one after another. For girls who had spent their entire lives dreaming of studying, those closures meant watching part of our future collapse.

Sometimes I think I was fortunate. I was able to finish school. In 2022, I graduated as part of the last group of female students to graduate under Taliban rule. Eventually, after many efforts, I came to Pakistan in 2024. Here, I began university in the field I wanted to study. The journey was not easy. I went through a difficult and complicated path to continue my education, and I was happy because of that.

But even this happiness carries another pain with it, guilt. Because I was able to continue, while many other girls could not. Thousands of talented Afghan girls remain trapped behind closed doors.

Girls whose books are still lying in the corner of their rooms. Girls who have still not thrown away their school uniforms. Girls who dreamed of becoming doctors. Girls who wanted to become journalists. And perhaps today, the only thing they can do is look at the books they are no longer allowed to open.

Today, Afghanistan is the only country in the world where girls above the sixth grade are deprived of education because of their gender.

For Afghan women and girls, these five years have been filled with pain, suffering, darkness and endless tears. Women and girls have not only faced the closure of school doors. They have gradually been pushed out of different areas of public life. Their rights to work, freedom of movement, social participation and many everyday freedoms have been restricted.

And I ask myself: Has the world grown used to this? Are five years not enough? How many more years must an Afghan girl stand behind the closed gates of a school before the world understands that this is not only deprivation of education? It is deprivation of a future. It is the pain of a generation.

I carry the past five years with me. Wherever I go, Afghanistan is with me.

Five years have passed. Five years since Afghanistan fell and the lives of millions of people changed. For me, these five years are not simply five calendar years. They include a university entrance exam I never took, a university I lost, midnight tears, migration, separation from family, fear of returning and longing for my homeland.

But there is one thing they have still not been able to take from us: our voice.

I write because I do not want us to forget. I write for the girl who still believes in her dreams. For the girl who has lowered her voice out of fear. For the girls who resisted. For the mother who does not know what her daughter’s future will be. And for myself, for Mursal, who amid the fall of cities, migration, the closure of universities and nights filled with tears, still has hope, still studies and still writes.

Afghan girls have endured five years filled with pain, but they have not yet been defeated. I will continue to write, and I will not remain silent until our stolen future is returned to us.